(...) "Gangnam Style" signals the emergence of irony in South Korea, meaning that the country has reached the final stage in any state's evolution.
(...)
My school enforced rules to make the increasing income disparities less visible. Students were not permitted to wear watches exceeding 20,000 won in value or shoes exceeding 9,000 won. We were not permitted to be picked up or dropped off at school by private car-which became a matter of controversy, since students were often required to stay at school very late into the night, giving rise to safety concerns.
Korean law prohibited private tutors for school subjects, for fear that this would give an advantage to the wealthy. Most students at my school had them anyway.
Periodically, the school would give the students a sort of denunciation pop quiz with questions such as "Who among your classmates is receiving private tutoring?"
The introduction of potatoes can explain 22% of the rise in population and 47% of the rise in urbanisation during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Summary: Using subnational historical data, this paper establishes the within country persistence of economic activity in the New World over the last half millennium. The paper constructs a data set incorporating measures of pre-colonial population density, new measures of present regional per capita income and population, and a comprehensive set of locational fundamentals. These fundamentals are shown to have explanatory power: native populations throughout the hemisphere were found in more livable and productive places. It is then shown that high pre-colonial density areas tend to be dense today: population agglomerations persist. The data and historical evidence suggest this is due partly to locational fundamentals, but also to classic agglomeration effects: colonialists established settlements near existing native populations for reasons of labor, trade, knowledge and defense. Further, high density (historically prosperous) areas also tend to have higher incomes today, and largely due to agglomeration effects: fortune persists for the United States and most of Latin America. Finally extractive institutions, in this case, slavery, reduce persistence even if they do not overwhelm other forces in its favor.Irineu, obrigado.