WEBVTT NOTE Why Should We Study History, In the First Place? 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Welcome to the Economic History of the United States. 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:09.000 My name is Dr. Mark Thornton. 3 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:13.000 I'll be your instructor for this course. 4 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:24.000 I want to begin today with a discussion of why we should study history in the first place. 5 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:45.000 Many people and many students consider the study of history to be a boring, antiquated process, something that really isn't quite necessary and is much more of a burden and something that bears very little benefits or utility to them. 6 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:50.000 What does it have to do with your future? What does it have to do with your job? 7 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:56.000 What does it have to do with your understanding of the world you live in? 8 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:06.000 Or as one observer noted, history is just one damn thing after another. 9 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:19.000 Of course, there is the notion widely held that the reason we study history is so that we don't repeat our mistakes. 10 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:30.000 But if this was really the case, it doesn't seem to be working because, in fact, we do very often repeat our mistakes. 11 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:35.000 So if we have been studying history, it hasn't worked on that account. 12 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:44.040 And that is why we, in this class, study history from a very particular angle. 13 00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:53.280 We seek to achieve and to learn lessons from history by using economic theory. 14 00:01:53.280 --> 00:01:58.960 And therefore, this is an economic history of the U.S., not just a history of the economy, 15 00:01:58.960 --> 00:02:06.200 of Using Economic Tools such as Supply and Demand, Opportunity Cost, the fact that Incentives 16 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:14.500 Matter, things of that nature in order to understand and derive the lessons that history 17 00:02:14.500 --> 00:02:16.560 in general can teach us. 18 00:02:16.560 --> 00:02:18.960 So it's not a business history. 19 00:02:18.960 --> 00:02:26.480 We look at all history but from the lens of economic theory. 20 00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:34.640 Now some of the main lessons that we're going to look at in this course for example are 21 00:02:34.640 --> 00:02:40.360 why did America do so well economically? 22 00:02:40.360 --> 00:02:52.880 This area, this nation of the United States has been around basically the beginning of 23 00:02:52.880 --> 00:03:02.280 Our settlement starts about 400 years ago and yet we now surpass all other nations around 24 00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:06.640 the world basically in terms of economic performance. 25 00:03:06.640 --> 00:03:13.040 We surpass Europe where most of Americans' roots are from. 26 00:03:13.040 --> 00:03:17.880 We certainly surpass most of the European economies in terms of economic performance. 27 00:03:17.880 --> 00:03:43.880 Countries, regions, nations that have been around for much, much longer. We also have surpassed countries such as Mexico and South America, which went through the basic same process of colonization and development, but are now much worse off economically than is the United States. 28 00:03:43.880 --> 00:03:55.880 So we're going to use economic theory, we're going to use the past to try to divine and provide the keys to success. 29 00:03:55.880 --> 00:04:03.880 What are the keys to our current economic success and the success that the nation has achieved over time? 30 00:04:03.880 --> 00:04:11.880 Of course, a second set of lessons is we have problems in this country as well. 31 00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:37.880 Economic problems and other types of problems. We certainly have a very large national debt for example. This is something that doesn't get discussed or thought about on a day-to-day basis, but it is something that could cause tremendous economic hardship as it has in other nations throughout history. 32 00:04:37.880 --> 00:04:48.880 We have problems of war. We have problems of terrorism. The economic history of the United States speaks to both of those issues. 33 00:04:48.880 --> 00:05:02.880 We have more modern problems about immigration and outsourcing to foreign countries, and the past has much to say about issues such as these as well. 34 00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:12.560 But, even though this is a history course, as I said before, it's not really a course 35 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:15.440 about history per se. 36 00:05:15.440 --> 00:05:22.080 It's not going to be a chronology of economic events. 37 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:27.760 We want to apply basic economic tools in this class to understand our history, to be able 38 00:05:27.760 --> 00:05:35.280 to tell successes or failures, or rather whether something specifically contributed to our success 39 00:05:35.280 --> 00:05:44.280 or whether it caused a failure or a problem. We can then use those lessons to go forward 40 00:05:44.280 --> 00:05:52.520 in time. A good example of all this is the railroads, the railroads of the United States, 41 00:05:52.520 --> 00:06:01.160 The Intercontinental Railroads. History, American history, textbooks and books and professors 42 00:06:01.160 --> 00:06:06.840 have very much emphasized the importance of railroads in the development of the United 43 00:06:06.840 --> 00:06:12.880 States and there's no question that it did play a role here in the United States, but 44 00:06:12.880 --> 00:06:18.560 of course railroads are something that can be built in any country and indeed were built 45 00:06:18.560 --> 00:06:23.360 around the globe at approximately the same time. 46 00:06:23.360 --> 00:06:27.480 Then there's the issue of subsidies, whether or not that they were 47 00:06:27.480 --> 00:06:32.180 necessary. Of course, the building of the Intercontinental Railroads across the 48 00:06:32.180 --> 00:06:33.820 United States from 49 00:06:33.820 --> 00:06:37.640 the Midwest to California and the West Coast 50 00:06:37.640 --> 00:06:41.360 is considered a grand and glorious achievement 51 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:44.140 in American history. 52 00:06:44.140 --> 00:06:46.440 But what we found is that 53 00:06:46.440 --> 00:07:16.440 By analyzing the intercontinental railroads, the building of these railroads, we found that, first of all, that the railroads did not really contribute anything magical or mystical to economic development in the United States and we also have found that the subsidies provided to some of the intercontinental railroad projects were basically unnecessary and in many cases 54 00:07:16.440 --> 00:07:23.880 were actually wasteful in terms of resource allocation and there are other 55 00:07:23.880 --> 00:07:30.520 problems with railroads so that today from the economic point of view we would 56 00:07:30.520 --> 00:07:37.640 not place as much emphasis on the idea of building railroads across the United 57 00:07:37.640 --> 00:07:44.520 States as the American history presentations would have had it in the 58 00:07:44.520 --> 00:07:52.040 In the past, there's simply nothing magical or mystical about building railroads. 59 00:07:52.040 --> 00:07:59.840 If railroads could cause prosperity, then we would have a magic elixir for underdeveloped 60 00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:04.840 countries that they could simply build railroads and they would achieve prosperity. 61 00:08:04.840 --> 00:08:13.000 That simply is not the case in other countries that have built railroads or have built subsidized 62 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:19.400 Railroads or even government produced railroads, they have achieved no significant increases 63 00:08:19.400 --> 00:08:27.680 in economic development. So there's a big problem with that notion in American history. 64 00:08:27.680 --> 00:08:39.040 Now the railroads, to take that forward and looking at government efforts to promote railroad 65 00:08:39.040 --> 00:08:49.040 Railroad Building vs. Private Initiative and Entrepreneurship Building Railroads 66 00:08:49.040 --> 00:08:58.040 In today's environment, we have a similar situation with space travel. 67 00:08:58.040 --> 00:09:08.040 In the United States, NASA basically has been controlling space exploration, space travel, space transportation. 68 00:09:08.040 --> 00:09:19.040 They basically have a monopoly where the United States is concerned with space travel, space exploration, and so on. 69 00:09:19.040 --> 00:09:25.940 And basically I think anybody would have to admit that NASA and its various projects have 70 00:09:25.940 --> 00:09:30.680 been or constitute a very large economic mess. 71 00:09:30.680 --> 00:09:38.280 They basically have not been able to fulfill any of their targets in terms of their timetables. 72 00:09:38.280 --> 00:09:44.720 All of their projects have experienced significant cost overruns and many of the projects that 73 00:09:44.720 --> 00:09:53.020 What they've developed have resulted in failure, where the missions are incomplete, where the 74 00:09:53.020 --> 00:10:02.900 aircrafts and the crews are killed or destroyed, or where the payloads simply don't get into 75 00:10:02.900 --> 00:10:10.540 outer space the way they're supposed to, whether it's the Hubble telescope or the shuttles 76 00:10:10.540 --> 00:10:16.100 schedule to get things like satellites and scientific experiments and so on and so forth 77 00:10:16.100 --> 00:10:23.580 up into the outer atmosphere. They've had setback after setback after setback. And lo 78 00:10:23.580 --> 00:10:31.420 and behold a couple years ago a private individual decided to offer a prize, the X prize, for 79 00:10:31.420 --> 00:10:40.420 anybody who for the private sector could achieve to get up into space on private initiative. 80 00:10:40.540 --> 00:10:46.140 And of course that XPRIZE has already been claimed, where someone was able to design 81 00:10:46.140 --> 00:10:56.100 a craft, to launch that craft, to get it into the upper atmosphere, to land the craft safely, 82 00:10:56.100 --> 00:11:00.420 and then within a very short period of time to be able to refuel and restock and do the 83 00:11:00.420 --> 00:11:02.140 same thing over again. 84 00:11:02.140 --> 00:11:07.060 So that you have something that is cost effective, you have something that is effective in what 85 00:11:07.060 --> 00:11:23.120 and the Reusable, the one-shot deal, the private initiative, a small amount of money, in the 86 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:29.060 relative sense of NASA's multi-billion dollar budget, was able to achieve its goals and 87 00:11:29.060 --> 00:11:34.720 its targets, a tangible goal, in a very short period of time, for a very small amount of 88 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:41.320 Money without any apparent loss of life or anything of that nature. 89 00:11:41.320 --> 00:11:47.320 So that's another thing that we're going to be looking at, who wins and who loses the 90 00:11:47.320 --> 00:11:52.720 race or the game or the goals or whatever we're looking at in terms of the government 91 00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:57.720 or the private sector, who cares for their employees, who's efficient, who's effective, 92 00:11:57.720 --> 00:12:04.600 who kills and who saves, those sorts of issues, not just who wins the race but how it's done 93 00:12:04.600 --> 00:12:10.800 as well. Now, of course, I'm sure many of you are wondering, well, can we really say 94 00:12:10.800 --> 00:12:17.120 that business people or politicians and bureaucrats are always bad or always good? Well, of course 95 00:12:17.120 --> 00:12:22.120 not. Business people are not always good or always bad and politicians and bureaucrats 96 00:12:22.120 --> 00:12:31.120 are not always good or always bad. But there are some very strong scientific reasons that 97 00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:37.500 We're going to present in this course regarding the role that competition and entrepreneurship 98 00:12:37.500 --> 00:12:44.280 plays versus that of bureaucracy and government management of resources. 99 00:12:44.280 --> 00:12:48.880 Indeed, one of the focuses in this course is going to be on the entrepreneur. 100 00:12:48.880 --> 00:12:51.160 It's going to be on entrepreneurship. 101 00:12:51.160 --> 00:12:58.520 And we're going to look at some case studies of the successful entrepreneur in developing 102 00:12:58.520 --> 00:13:01.520 in the American Economy. 103 00:13:01.520 --> 00:13:09.640 Now, entrepreneurs, there are many, many famous entrepreneurs who have invented things, who 104 00:13:09.640 --> 00:13:21.840 have developed businesses, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, and the list is very, very long. 105 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:26.060 But entrepreneurship in a market economy is also something that's pervasive. 106 00:13:26.060 --> 00:13:30.060 It's not just the big entrepreneur that gets written up in history books. 107 00:13:30.060 --> 00:13:37.540 It's also the little entrepreneur who is so very necessary in daily life, not to invent 108 00:13:37.540 --> 00:13:43.660 the next computer or the next appliance or the next mode of transportation, but somebody 109 00:13:43.660 --> 00:13:50.060 who is operating a gas station or a grocery store. 110 00:13:50.060 --> 00:14:04.100 Entrepreneurship also seeps down into everyone's life in a market economy. 111 00:14:04.100 --> 00:14:06.240 Where are you going to work? 112 00:14:06.240 --> 00:14:09.060 What profession are you going to get into? 113 00:14:09.060 --> 00:14:11.500 What city are you going to live in? 114 00:14:11.500 --> 00:14:14.860 What neighborhood are you going to build your house in? 115 00:14:14.860 --> 00:14:21.580 Goals in a Market Economy make entrepreneurial-like decisions on a regular basis, so it's a general 116 00:14:21.580 --> 00:14:24.020 feature of the American economy. 117 00:14:24.020 --> 00:14:29.660 We're going to take a very in-depth look at that throughout this course. 118 00:14:29.660 --> 00:14:36.220 Now the major goals of this course include, first of all, America's success, you know, 119 00:14:36.220 --> 00:14:40.260 why has America succeeded? 120 00:14:40.260 --> 00:14:46.900 If we know that, we have a very powerful tool about the present world in which we live in, 121 00:14:46.900 --> 00:14:48.900 in our future going forward. 122 00:14:48.900 --> 00:14:52.300 Second, America's mistakes. 123 00:14:52.300 --> 00:14:54.900 We've made plenty of mistakes in this country. 124 00:14:54.900 --> 00:14:58.740 We've gotten ourselves involved in wars. 125 00:14:58.740 --> 00:15:01.500 We've had our own civil war. 126 00:15:01.500 --> 00:15:03.620 Of course we've had the problem of slavery. 127 00:15:03.620 --> 00:15:08.660 Now that's a very big problem, enslaving part of your population. 128 00:15:08.660 --> 00:15:31.660 Big Mistakes, The Growth of Government, The Growth of Government is one of the pervasive 129 00:15:31.660 --> 00:15:40.180 The features we see in the history of the United States, when the United States is formed, 130 00:15:40.180 --> 00:15:46.660 basically the federal government is very small, state government is very small, local government 131 00:15:46.660 --> 00:15:57.740 exists but it's not very large and the private sector is enormous, where you have families, 132 00:15:57.740 --> 00:16:02.620 You have businesses, you have churches, you have social organizations, things of that 133 00:16:02.620 --> 00:16:13.060 nature make up the massive bulk of what we call society and government. 134 00:16:13.060 --> 00:16:18.100 The portion of society that is government is very, very small in the U.S. 135 00:16:18.100 --> 00:16:27.780 So, for example, that an American born at the time that the Constitution is formed might 136 00:16:27.780 --> 00:16:34.180 go their entire lives without seeing an employee of the federal government outside of somebody 137 00:16:34.180 --> 00:16:39.980 that's working for the U.S. Postal Service or maybe somebody who is a military veteran. 138 00:16:39.980 --> 00:16:46.020 But other than that, many Americans would never have any cause to see a federal employee 139 00:17:16.020 --> 00:17:20.980 Crisis and your professions. We want to know what caused that. We want to know what the 140 00:17:20.980 --> 00:17:28.480 implications of that are. So we're going to look at that in detail and find out why, possibly 141 00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:36.260 what can be done about it. In that regard, one of the textbooks in this course is Crisis 142 00:17:36.260 --> 00:17:43.100 and Leviathan, Critical Episodes and the Growth of American Government by Robert Higgs. It's 143 00:17:43.100 --> 00:17:51.300 It's an economic classic and it teaches a very valuable lesson as well as presenting 144 00:17:51.300 --> 00:17:56.540 important historical information about the economic history of the United States. 145 00:17:56.540 --> 00:18:02.980 So that's going to be a major goal and outcome of this course. 146 00:18:02.980 --> 00:18:10.700 Another goal is to look at the hidden role of money and banking in the history of the 147 00:18:10.700 --> 00:18:12.540 United States. 148 00:18:12.540 --> 00:18:19.540 Now when you look at American history, there's very little about money and banking that actually 149 00:18:19.560 --> 00:18:26.560 makes it into your standard textbook on American history. But it is indeed very important. 150 00:18:29.100 --> 00:18:36.100 Money and banking really play a pivotal role in American history. It should not be too 151 00:18:36.100 --> 00:18:44.580 It's not be too surprising that money is more important than historians understand because 152 00:18:44.580 --> 00:18:53.140 money isn't the type of tangible event that historians typically link onto. 153 00:18:53.140 --> 00:19:00.180 They have to report on what history was and they have a comparative advantage in reporting 154 00:19:00.180 --> 00:19:01.180 on that. 155 00:19:01.180 --> 00:19:17.420 Money and banking don't seem to work themselves into the historian's consciousness. 156 00:19:17.420 --> 00:19:24.460 The economist on the other hand sees money and banking as really the ultimate key in 157 00:19:24.460 --> 00:19:29.500 the good and the bad in the economy and in economic development over time. 158 00:19:29.500 --> 00:19:31.380 Let's look at today. 159 00:19:31.380 --> 00:19:36.720 If we look at modern America, we look at today, we look at the newspaper today, if we look 160 00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:42.420 at the television today and you turn to the news and you turn to the business news, what 161 00:19:42.420 --> 00:19:49.820 you'll see is that the stock market and the economy and the business channels are looking 162 00:19:49.820 --> 00:19:52.580 at what is the Fed going to do next? 163 00:19:52.580 --> 00:19:57.440 What is the Federal Reserve or the Central Bank of the United States going to do next? 164 00:19:57.440 --> 00:19:59.060 What's happening to the money supply? 165 00:19:59.060 --> 00:20:01.140 What's happening to the consumer price index? 166 00:20:01.140 --> 00:20:02.700 What's happening to interest rates? 167 00:20:02.700 --> 00:20:05.820 What's happening to mortgage rates? 168 00:20:05.820 --> 00:20:14.180 All of those things are considered really the key factor in today's economic events. 169 00:20:14.180 --> 00:20:20.100 So it really shouldn't be surprising that those same issues of money, of banking, of 170 00:20:20.100 --> 00:20:27.620 inflation, of prices in the economy and of mortgage rates and construction and everything 171 00:20:27.620 --> 00:20:48.180 The History of Money and Banking in the United States The Colonial Era to World War II by 172 00:20:48.180 --> 00:20:52.940 Murray N. Rothbard 173 00:20:52.940 --> 00:20:59.860 The History of Money and Banking as well as key theoretical insights about money, about 174 00:20:59.860 --> 00:21:06.620 banking and about monetary institutions, because it's monetary institutions that have changed 175 00:21:06.620 --> 00:21:10.540 so dramatically in the United States. 176 00:21:10.540 --> 00:21:22.820 We start the nation off with a system of basically gold and silver coins with no national federal 177 00:21:22.820 --> 00:21:29.420 regulatory structure over money and banking and contrast that today where we 178 00:21:29.420 --> 00:21:33.380 don't have gold or silver backing up our money we have paper money and we have a 179 00:21:33.380 --> 00:21:41.780 central bank the Federal Reserve that's more or less completely in control of 180 00:21:41.780 --> 00:21:48.500 the money supply or inflation it regulates all the banks in a variety of 181 00:21:48.500 --> 00:21:55.500 of Different Ways, and so we've really flip-flopped the whole monetary and banking system in the 182 00:21:58.140 --> 00:22:05.140 United States. And finally, we're going to highlight some myths about American history 183 00:22:05.780 --> 00:22:12.780 to more or less debunk some myths about various episodes in American history. The clarity 184 00:22:18.500 --> 00:22:24.500 The first example here is that World War II got us out of the Great Depression. 185 00:22:24.500 --> 00:22:31.500 Now, historically those two items are closely linked. 186 00:22:31.500 --> 00:22:34.500 The Great Depression comes. 187 00:22:34.500 --> 00:22:41.500 It is followed by World War II, which is followed by a return to prosperity. 188 00:22:41.500 --> 00:22:46.500 But there's nothing logical to suggest that World War II got us out of the Great Depression. 189 00:23:16.500 --> 00:23:45.500 This week's topic begins with colonialism. This of course is a time period in the United States from about 1600 to 1776. We are going to be looking at a lot of the historical facts and institutional development and that sort of thing. 190 00:23:45.500 --> 00:23:51.980 I title it colonialism because we also want to look at it in a more broader context. 191 00:23:51.980 --> 00:24:00.200 We want to get more of a general idea of how colonialism applies to the United States in 192 00:24:00.200 --> 00:24:07.460 the past, other nations in the past, and how that, what are the similarities regarding 193 00:24:07.460 --> 00:24:10.640 colonialism over time. 194 00:24:10.640 --> 00:24:13.580 What is colonialism? 195 00:24:13.580 --> 00:24:15.080 Why was it put in place? 196 00:24:15.080 --> 00:24:17.960 Why did people do it in the first place? 197 00:24:17.960 --> 00:24:21.320 And why did Americans want to get out of it? 198 00:24:21.320 --> 00:24:25.520 And of course, it's not just Americans that wanted to get out of colonialism, a lot of 199 00:24:25.520 --> 00:24:29.400 people have wanted to get out of colonialism and indeed have. 200 00:24:29.400 --> 00:24:37.320 So you know, the who, the what, the where and how many are important, yes, but we want 201 00:24:37.320 --> 00:24:40.860 to answer the questions, why was that there? 202 00:24:40.860 --> 00:24:42.780 Why was it replaced? 203 00:24:42.780 --> 00:24:45.620 What Were the Implications? 204 00:24:45.620 --> 00:24:51.140 In developing this topic of colonialism, one of the things we're going to see is it's 205 00:24:51.140 --> 00:24:57.360 going to be a very useful tool for the remainder of this course. 206 00:24:57.360 --> 00:25:03.980 What that tool is, is a basic understanding of three schools of economic thought, or three 207 00:25:03.980 --> 00:25:07.420 schools of economic policy. 208 00:25:07.420 --> 00:25:14.580 In other words, what is the role of government in the economy and there's going to be three 209 00:25:14.580 --> 00:25:22.140 basic approaches where we have either socialism, capitalism or mercantilism. 210 00:25:22.140 --> 00:25:29.340 Now socialism is where the government is basically controlling everything. 211 00:25:29.340 --> 00:25:37.240 In capitalism, we're going to have a situation where the government is really not involved 212 00:25:37.240 --> 00:25:45.680 in the economy to any significant extent where the government is limited and it's limited 213 00:25:45.680 --> 00:25:56.680 to non-economic functions such as national defense, a justice system, crime control, 214 00:25:56.680 --> 00:26:03.040 things of that nature, but is not involved in production, distribution, deciding on who 215 00:26:03.040 --> 00:26:09.880 And who gets what in society, so there's no redistribution like there is in socialism, 216 00:26:09.880 --> 00:26:17.880 where the government has the basic functions of defense and property and crime, justice, 217 00:26:17.880 --> 00:26:25.000 but also is in charge of production, distribution and consumption. 218 00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:32.000 And with socialism, of course, you also have this general tendency for a socialist economy 219 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:41.400 Money or State to redistribute wealth and goods across society so that there's a more 220 00:26:41.400 --> 00:26:47.600 even or level or equal distribution of consumption. 221 00:26:47.600 --> 00:26:54.000 And finally there's mercantilism, and mercantilism is actually going to be the most important 222 00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:58.200 school of economic thought for us to understand. 223 00:26:58.200 --> 00:27:06.400 Modernism was an economic philosophy that dominated Europe during the time in which 224 00:27:06.400 --> 00:27:10.960 colonization started and flourished. 225 00:27:10.960 --> 00:27:19.060 So it's going to be an important component to the genesis of the discovery and colonization 226 00:27:19.060 --> 00:27:23.080 of the New World. 227 00:27:23.080 --> 00:27:31.680 And it's also the philosophy that sort of structured what the Europeans were doing in 228 00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:32.680 the New World. 229 00:27:32.680 --> 00:27:39.600 So it's going to have a lot to tell us about what was happening and why it was happening 230 00:27:39.600 --> 00:27:40.600 in the New World. 231 00:27:40.600 --> 00:27:47.460 And with mercantilist economic thought, basically you have a philosophy which is designed to 232 00:27:47.460 --> 00:27:51.120 make the state stronger. 233 00:27:51.120 --> 00:28:00.880 It's an alignment between government and big business to make themselves both better off 234 00:28:00.880 --> 00:28:07.240 so that the state becomes more powerful, that business is there to support the state, and 235 00:28:07.240 --> 00:28:12.560 that the state is there to support business. 236 00:28:12.560 --> 00:28:24.320 So that mercantilism proposes that, for example, that gold is wealth and that a primary goal 237 00:28:24.320 --> 00:28:32.680 of economic policy should be the accumulation of money, that the government should do everything 238 00:28:32.680 --> 00:28:40.840 in its power to use all of its resources in the economy to make it as productive as possible, 239 00:28:40.840 --> 00:28:46.960 that production should center on manufacturing rather than agriculture and raw materials, 240 00:28:46.960 --> 00:28:53.080 that manufactured goods should be exported and that import should be restricted and should 241 00:28:53.080 --> 00:28:57.920 be restricted to raw materials which then the domestic economy turns into manufactured 242 00:28:57.920 --> 00:29:02.280 goods. 243 00:29:02.280 --> 00:29:10.540 So we'll be looking at all the tenets of mercantilism and how that develops over time and we'll 244 00:29:10.540 --> 00:29:20.060 We'll also be showing how mercantilism really was an important policy theme, not just in 245 00:29:20.060 --> 00:29:23.220 Europe but also in the United States. 246 00:29:23.220 --> 00:29:30.140 So that we're really going to be introducing all three schools of economic policy in this 247 00:29:30.140 --> 00:29:39.660 colonialism period and we'll be then using those as a method of understanding future 248 00:29:39.660 --> 00:29:42.660 and their historical development in the economy of the United States.