we live in a world where the rich are getting richer,and the poor are getting poorer.it seems that life is getting less fair for the majority of the population.state and discuss ways in which this worrying situation can be addressed
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Answer:
Before 1800, just about everybody was poor. You had royalty, you had these huge landowners, but they were a tiny, tiny minority and just about everyone lived in poverty. And everyone lived very much wedded to their land. This was the entire history of humanity. There were some huge changes, of course: agriculture. What happened was that mostly people were hunters and gatherers before agriculture. And then, when agriculture started, food production was then brought to people rather than vice versa. People didn't go out looking for food. There were places where they knew that a steady supply of food would be created.
But wealth was tied to land, and those who controlled land, controlled much of the world's wealth. And the difficulty was in shipping or moving anything: things, ideas, people. It was very difficult to move anything, so there wasn't very much trade. And so, the cost of moving things really mattered and shaped the way societies were formed.
In the 17th century, only 3,000 European ships sailed to Asia. In the 18th century, for the next hundred years, about 6,000 ships sailed. It was very difficult to move anything.
Now, around 1800-1820, some very important things happened. And the two most important ones that most historians will look at are the Industrial Revolution and steam power. So, around 1820, steam power allowed the movement of goods, and the movement of goods fueled industrialization, trade, and economic growth.
But at that time, also was the start of--one of the great economists, Deirdre McCloskey, talked about right around that time, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and steam, you had the beginning of what she called the great divergence, meaning that certain areas, especially Europe and the United States, grew rich very, very quickly.