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INTEREST: 12 Things You Can Learn About World History From Manga, And More


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unready



Joined: 07 Jun 2009
Posts: 401
Location: Illinois, USA
PostPosted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 4:00 pm Reply with quote
unready wrote:
dtm42 wrote:
Quote:
Felipe II drove Spain to bankruptcy despite all the gold and silver from the New World.

Yet another reason why monarchies are an inferior form of government. Sure, that's not to say that democracies can't get into financial trouble; just look at the great depression or the global financial crisis. But it is harder for one prick to squander a country's wealth in a democracy than an absolute monarchy.

Felipe could have been the most careful spender in history, and all the world's gold wouldn't have saved Spain. The only thing importing gold did was drive up the inflation rate, devaluing the currency. The more he imported, the more he devalued his own currency. It's basic economics that lots of politicians still don't grasp today.


dtm42 wrote:
^
Then don't spend the gold in Spain; simple as that. Keep it in reserves, buy things from other countries or pay off debt.

You make it sound like being wealthy is automatically a bad thing when it's not.

I didn't say anything about being wealthy.
1. Importing gold from the New World didn't increase the size of Spain's economy. It actually didn't change the size at all.
2. Importing gold caused inflation proportional to the amount of gold imported. Importing an infinite amount of gold would have caused an infinite amount of inflation.
3. Paying for a war he couldn't afford made bankruptcy inevitable. Importing gold had no effect on the result, nor would it have no matter how much he imported.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 7:41 pm Reply with quote
dtm42 wrote:
Quote:
Felipe II drove Spain to bankruptcy despite all the gold and silver from the New World.


Yet another reason why monarchies are an inferior form of government. Sure, that's not to say that democracies can't get into financial trouble; just look at the great depression or the global financial crisis. But it is harder for one prick to squander a country's wealth in a democracy than an absolute monarchy.


(Although, of course, spending most of it trying to kick Elizabeth I off the throne, only to fail epically in English history, didn't help the Spanish coffers much either...)
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 7:49 pm Reply with quote
Cptn_Taylor wrote:
Paul Soth wrote:
I'm a bit concerned about the portrayal of Henry Ford, since in real life he was a union buster and a fierce anti-Semite who had professional dealings with Adolf Hitler based on mutual admiration.


Henry Ford was many things. For an elementary schoolkid you give a general view of Henry Ford's accomplishments. A more nuanced view on him, his life, his politcal views etc... simply are not material for 2nd or 3rd graders. C'mon man let's be realistic here.
Do you make elementary schoolkids read Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire when telling them about Greek and Roman history ? Wink


Also, Henry Ford didn't need to bow to Thomas Edison for "permission" to invent the auto--They weren't even in the same industry. (Edison specialized in the push for electricalization, that barely even touched on the gasoline powered industries.)
Ford also didn't invent the auto out of thin air, he invented the assembly line process that made cars better, and mass-produced affordable. (Much as there were computers in the 70's, but you couldn't buy one for your home before Steve Jobs.)

And supporting Hitler in the 30's didn't make you an anti-Semite or a fifth-columnist--Back before things turned bad, most movers-and-shakers of the business world admired this "plucky" lil' leader's attempt to get German's industry out of poverty and back into mechanization (conveniently ignoring what he was planning to use those factories for), and his promise to push back the spread of the "Bolsheviks".
Even Japan was attracted by that promise, when the Axis formed. (In Maison Ikkoku, we see one of Yotsuys's ancestors, or is he, striking a Japanese nationalistic We Love Adolf pose.)
Were some of those US business leaders sympathizing with the fear mongering against "Jewish bankers"?...Possibly. But it was easier after the war to say "Who knew??"
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Paul Soth



Joined: 06 Jul 2010
Posts: 141
Location: Columbus, Oh
PostPosted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 9:11 pm Reply with quote
EricJ2 wrote:

And supporting Hitler in the 30's didn't make you an anti-Semite or a fifth-columnist


No, but printing frequent anti-Semitic articles in your own newspaper sure in hell does: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/ford1.html
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jonstjon



Joined: 02 Feb 2014
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 2:30 am Reply with quote
Man, I wish I could read it. It sounds like something I would totally be into.

How did you manage to read it? Did you have a physical copy of all the volumes? Or scans? Is it translated into english or something?
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Brutannica



Joined: 18 Mar 2007
Posts: 257
PostPosted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 10:52 pm Reply with quote
I haven't finished it yet - only 8 out of the 20 volumes in total.

I have physical copies.
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