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SUM_GOING_SOUTH

                                             July 22, 2021

                                                             THE_SUM_OF_US
From "The Sum of Us", "Racism Drained the Pool" p. 20:

  "Today, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nine of the ten
  poorest states in the nation are in the South.  So are seven
  of the ten states with the least educational attainment.  In
  2007, economist Nathan Nunn, a soft-spoken Harvard professor
  then in his mid-thirties, made waves with a piece of research
  showing the reach of slavery into the modern southern
  economy.  Nunn found that the well-known story of deprivation
  in the American South was not uniform and, in fact, followed
  a historical logic: counties that relied more on slave labor
  in 1860 had lower per capita incomes in 2000."

  "He was building on global comparative research by Stanley
  Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff, which found that "societies
  that began with relatively extreme inequality tended to
  generate institutions that were more restrictive in
  providing access to economic opportunities."  Nunn's
  research showed that although of course slave counties had
  higher inequality during the era of slavery (particularly
  of land), it wasn't the degree of inequality that
  correlated with poverty today; it was the fact of slavery
  itself, whether on large plantations or small farms.  When
  I talked to Nathan Nunn, he couldn't say exactly how the
  hand of slavery was strangling opportunity generations
  later.  He made it clear, however, that it wasn't just the
  Black inhabitants who were faring worse today; it was the
  white families in the counties, too.  When slavery was
  abolished, Confederate states found themselves far behind
  northern states in the creation of the public
  infrastructure that supports economic mobility, and they
  continue to lag behind today."



  p.21

  "A functioning society rests on a web of
  mutuality, a willingness among all involved to
  share enough with one another to accomplish what
  no one person can do alone."


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