Blaming colonialism is an 'attractive idea to those who want to absolve Middle Eastern political, religious, and economic leaders from contributing to economic stagnation.'
About 15 years ago, I was at a large American university to give a lecture/talk I wish I could remember which one -- I gave the talk many places that year. At any rate, I was assigned the wrong room, and the place began to fill with the class that was scheduled there, which was a 3rd year undergraduate economics class. So the person I was presenting with went to find out where we were really supposed to be while I stayed there to collect the people who were also lost, and looking for our talk.
It was clear that the last people to use the whiteboards in this classroom were doing some sort of introduction to science course, and they had written: The Law of Conservation of Energy: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed from one form to another. So I decided to ask the economics students something. "That's physical science. Is there a similar law about wealth in Economics? What say you to "Wealth can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another?" -- true or false?. To my horror, about a third of the people in the room thought it was true. I said, well, if I burnt down this building right now, would I be destroying wealth? No, they said, the insurance would just transfer the wealth to the university. I thought to myself, you people are going to have one hard time making good economic policy if a third of your colleagues don't understand this very basic economic fact, and confuse wealth creation and destruction with accounting.
About 15 years ago, I was at a large American university to give a lecture/talk I wish I could remember which one -- I gave the talk many places that year. At any rate, I was assigned the wrong room, and the place began to fill with the class that was scheduled there, which was a 3rd year undergraduate economics class. So the person I was presenting with went to find out where we were really supposed to be while I stayed there to collect the people who were also lost, and looking for our talk.
It was clear that the last people to use the whiteboards in this classroom were doing some sort of introduction to science course, and they had written: The Law of Conservation of Energy: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed from one form to another. So I decided to ask the economics students something. "That's physical science. Is there a similar law about wealth in Economics? What say you to "Wealth can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another?" -- true or false?. To my horror, about a third of the people in the room thought it was true. I said, well, if I burnt down this building right now, would I be destroying wealth? No, they said, the insurance would just transfer the wealth to the university. I thought to myself, you people are going to have one hard time making good economic policy if a third of your colleagues don't understand this very basic economic fact, and confuse wealth creation and destruction with accounting.
That goes for pretty much all Western nations as well. Nations do not get rich by exploiting poor nations. They get rich by creating wealth.
Great article. Agreed.
Additional important element not mentioned: jews