SW 290 Lecture 1: English Welfare through the 1600s
Document Summary
England through the 1600s: social welfare and poor laws. Social contract: everyone is in a known mutual network of obligations and support. No real class system, all in it together. Royals owned everything, though the serfs didn"t necessarily know. Serfs worked (there may have been some distinction among them that some jobs were better than others, there was some competition, but. Lords still ran their manors, but didn"t feel responsible to workers because they were now able to support themselves. Extraction economy: nation-states form and want power. They go to the colonies to get materials, and they get labor from the enslaved. Economy built on labor abuse: economics helped breed notions of slavery. Before this time, slavery existed only as a byproduct of war. Now, it would begin to become more universal and common. The move toward mercantilism was also a move toward social stratification. Link to today: economic change leaves some people out: as technology increases, jobs decrease.
