Kurt Johnson

 In 1870 Australia had the highest per capita GDP of the modern developed countries, more than 10% higher than Great Britain and 50% higher than the US after adjusting for purchasing power differences.  Today the US per capita GDP (PPP) exceeds Australia by about a third.

We confirm that Australia had a substantially higher per capita income than the United Kingdom in the late nineteenth century. Furthermore, we show that this was due primarily to higher labour productivity, since labour force participation, although higher in Australia than in the United States, was lower than in the United Kingdom.

…

Australia’s overall labour productivity lead owed a great deal to agriculture, where labour productivity was nearly twice the UK level in 1861, rising to a peak lead of more than three-to-one in the 1880s. Although the severe drought of the 1890s diminished Australia’s advantage in this sector, as reflected in Butlin’s figure for 1901, Australia’s productivity rebounded and was more than double that of the United Kingdom through the first half of the twentieth century.

Since output per worker was broadly similar in US and UK agriculture during the nineteenth century, this suggests that Australia was the world’s agricultural productivity leader at this time.5 The productivity difference seems to reflect the relative importance of high value added pastoral and dairy farming in Australia, compared with a high reliance on low value-added arable farming in the United States. McLean (2005b: 12) also observes that whereas the United States was much more abundant in cultivated or improved cropland, Australia’s endowment of this higher quality land was greater on a per capita basis. In addition, the Australian staple of wool had a high value-to-weight ratio, required little capital and labour to produce, and promoted the development of subsidiary transport and financial services.

From http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dirwin/Australia9.pdf#search=%22australia%20gdp%201870%22

1985 in Winona; David D., Michael J., and Granddad.

Old slides are a lot more fun to work with than old negatives; the negatives have a more grain and color problems to begin with and tend to accumulate a lot more scratches on the film surface.

Even though it’s not travel writing per se this was the article I enjoyed most about Argentina: Argentina On Two Steaks A Day

I’ll echo everything in the article except that our steaks were pretty moderate in size. The best meal we had was on the first day when we stumbled into a no-name restuarant across from the Teatro Colón and got two 10oz sirloins, fantastic steak fries, drinks, etc. for $9 total.

Below the fold: Non-vegetarian-friendly photo of meat grilling al asador.

(more…)

More semi-organized notes on our trip to Hoi An, Vietnam, mostly for the benefit of people who get here via search engines.

• We stayed at the Phuong Nam hotel in Hoi An; it’s about a half mile from the old city but the service was incredible and the owner made sure there was always a van available to drop us off in town or out at the beach (5-10 minutes the opposite direction from old city). If the shuttle wasn’t around we paid moped taxis ~20-30,000vnd (< $2) to give the two of us a lift back to the hotel at night.

Shopping

• Like most tourist towns there are a lot of small shops selling similar stuff – 50 tailors, 25 souvenir shops, 20 tour operators, etc. The tailoring is probably one of the only things it makes more sense to buy in Hoi An instead of in Hanoi or Saigon on your way out of the country (where it would be cheaper and avoid hauling it around longer than necessary)
• The tailoring is neat and very cheap. We got phenomenal service at Tan Toan’s shop but at the end of the day the machine made stuff you buy at JC Penney’s is probably higher quality material and craftsmanship than 99% of the shops in Hoi An; maybe I should have bought a bunch of pants on sale stateside and taken them there to get adjusted
• Many of the art galleries in town offer cool stuff that looks extremely similar to other shops; I can only assume they are knocking off some famous local painters/styles. The art is neat, though, and affordable at < $50 for almost anything smaller than 20”x30”

If you have any interest on hosting photo albums on your own website, let me quickly put in another plug for Porta; I am flipping through some old albums on the plane and realizing how far superior it is to the programs I used to use. A sample album is here; it should automatically default to the non-flash version here if you do not have flash installed.

I’m back in Philadelphia trying to get ready for school.  Some of what we saw last week:

The Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral, looking up at the tomb of General José de San Martín.

And the Basilica Cathedral we visited in Rosario, AR: