Is it really though? For instance, in the post-war period of the 1950's which is often taken as the period where the American Dream was in full force, organized labor was much stronger in the US than it is today, and a huge chunk of the population was essentially inserted into the middle class through the GI bill, which was really a social welfare program when it comes down to it.
I think the degree to which individual grit gave rise to American prosperity is often over-stated, and the degree to which it was a result of collective action is often overlooked.
That measure inherently excludes the “wealth” represented by ownership of enslaved people. It includes what those people produce, but the “per capita” measure also includes enslaved people in the denominator.
The production of enslaved people represented a small fraction of the economy—about 5% of GDP during the peak of the cotton boom: https://fee.org/articles/no-slavery-did-not-make-america-ric... see also https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-c...
More importantly, you can’t increase a country’s overall level of production by enslaving people. Its basic economics—unfree labor misallocates labor resources to industries controlled by slave owners. Slavery obviously redistributes wealth from enslaved people to a slaveholding aristocracy, but that comes at the expense of economic growth for the country overall. This is true both theoretically and empirically. As shown in the GDP chart linked above, the end of slavery didn’t produce an economic collapse, as you would expect of it really was responsible for America’s productivity. There was not even a dip. In fact, ending slavery made America richer, exactly as economic theory would predict: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html
It was not just reallocation of wealth like tax, it completely changed his money were made.
I don't really understand this argument. Surely reducing one of the operating costs of doing business to zero leads to economic growth right? In your hypothetical scenario, wouldn't the business owner just invest some of that profit into growing the business, thereby increasing productivity?
Alternatively, they can lower their prices in order to beat competitors. If they're producing a commodity, this can have the knock-on effect of lowering the price of finished goods using that commodity.
Another point of comparison is, in places where they discover "free resources" like petrochemicals, like Norway, that does lead to prosperity, doesn't it?
Sure, but imagine the alternative where the slaves are paid workers instead: then the same money that you use to invest into your business in slave scenario is instead spent by your workers on other businesses, which then use it to produce other things or invest in their businesses. Again, slavery, instead of increasing total wealth, just redistributes it in favor of slaveholders.
You are however averaging production to slaves too. So in countries where blacks outnumber whites you get much smaller wealth then what contemporaries commented on.
The alternative scenario is north in any case. The kind of society and production south was is plain impossible without slavery. It just did not exist.
I thought it was the abundant resources, rule of law, respect for property rights, free slave labor (for the first ~200 years, including before independence), and wave upon wave of immigrants who through self-selection were highly motivated and risk-taking. The post-WW2 prosperity was largely due to a lack of competition from other developed nations.
Do you think a free person or an enslaved one produces more economic value? If we decided to enslave everyone with green eyes tomorrow do you think GDP would grow or shrink?
Just because a certain practices makes certain individuals wealthy does not mean it makes the society wealthier.
> self-selection were highly motivated and risk-taking
This is beliefs seems to be very entangled with belief in a meritocracy. If you believe hard work and risk taking doesn't pay off why work hard and take risks. If you believe hard work and risk taking does pay off, well than that sounds a lot like belief in meritocracy to me.
And if slave labor were an important component driving the relative wealth of the US, wouldn't you expect the abolition of slavery to decrease the relative wealth of the US?
But that isn't what we see in the decades after the abolition of slavery in the US: "In the last third of the 19th century the United States entered a phase of rapid economic growth which doubled per capita income over the period. By 1895, the United States leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output." See also, "Gilded Age".
I tend to agree that from the perspective of public policy we should take a more systematic view. But as I said, I think how we want politicians to view to world for public policy purposes is different than how we want people (individually and collectively) to view the world.