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I’m not an economist and have a hard time following the most complex arguments relating different means to measure wealth etc but by reading your comment two th

I’m not an economist and have a hard time following the most complex arguments relating different means to measure wealth etc but by reading your comment two things came to mind. If you slave all the working population in a country you will could position that the overall wealth did not change, ok I get the point. But what about wages? You’re effectively appropriating a non insignificant amount of money and transferring it elsewhere. Some people are effectively getting wealthier. Which relates to the second thought, you say slavery was capping the growth of the south. But only if you measure the overall economy? Effectively for big plantation owners it did not necessarily mean less wealth? More than happy to understand the finer points of your argument since I’m probably missing an obvious concept known to economists that scapes me

rayiner 6y ago
You're correct. The plantation owners were benefitting, and that made them wealthier. But that came at the expense of the rest of the economy. Those plantation owners, likewise, lost wealth when slavery ended. But the rest of the economy grew. The distinction is relevant to the political debate around why all this matters. Labor was expropriated from slaves, and that enriched plantation owners, there is no doubt about that. But some people want to go a step further, and say that America owes its overall prosperity to slavery. Except insofar as you can trace wealth to certain slaveholder plantation fortunes, that assertion probably isn't true.