The Shifting Economic Wealth of Nations

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I remember listening to a lecture by a well-known film director from mainland China. It was the case at the time that Chinese students had to strive very hard to get into the top schools. The number of applicants was huge and the number of university spaces was small in comparison. They could get top grades but there were very few jobs available in their chosen fields once they graduated. This is similar to what rioters in France have been saying in the autumn of 2026, as found in The New York Times. These young graduates in France have completed their studies but they have no income and all purchases are expensive.

According to Wallace (page 121 of the aforementioned book), England had a lot of benefits early on: vast natural deposits of coal and iron, exceptional early industrial development, such that England “[had] inundated the world with her manufactures - using unscrupulously her powerful navy and all the other forces at her command... In that way her hungry proletariat has been fed.” And what did Wallace predict for the future? Writing in 1877, he correctly predicted that other nations would soon learn to manufacture their own goods, instead of paying England enormous sums to manufacture for them. If British-manufactured goods were no longer wanted by foreign consumers, then what would the hungry British proletariat do? As noted by Wallace, the British population had increased significantly and the grain production of England was far from sufficient for the wants of their population. They needed funds to buy grain from other countries. They no longer found it easy to pay for this grain by selling their own, now unwanted, manufactured goods.