“BLACK & BROWN FOLKS BUILT THIS COUNTRY (AND WE’RE DOING IT AGAIN) JOIN US OR GET OUT OF THE WAY!”
Hey asshole, the Mexicans will kill you when you’re done.
From: http://www.econdataus.com/trade06.html (for some reason the percentage of GDP chart at the bottom differs from the absolute numbers at the top, which I used to calculate GDP share -- I prefer the absolute numbers in order to see the GDP growth over each decade; also, 1860 is not the best year for comparison, as the coming turmoil was well launched, but I'm going with the round numbers here). If someone has more specific numbers on slave-economy's portion of GDP over time, I'd love to see it. This is from a quick internet search (not going through Jstor, etc.). Regardless of the weakness of my reading of this data, it's clear that slave-plantation output, which was largely for export, constituted a narrow portion of the economy. Furthermore, the labor component of cotton production was likely a small portion of the commodity's value, even if slave labor were translated into wages. Worse, when considering the well-documented condition that slavery inhibited economic growth, we might change this billboard to read, "Black and brown people hindered the building of this country." |