The cotton gin is a perfect illustration of the economic fact to which I keep returning: a new technology makes workers more efficient, increased productivity results in more profits, and the economy grows. But as I’ve also said, every economy is a political economy, and the story of the cotton gin is also an extreme illustration of that fundamental truth. Cotton growing happened in the South, of course, and the people whose productivity dramatically improved were enslaved African Americans, at least two-thirds of whom worked producing cotton. And the profits that dramatically improved as a
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