Korea grows at 4 percent yearly while the US grows at 2 percent. What happens?
- Korea doubles slower than the US
- Both double at the same speed
- Korea doubles roughly twice as fast
What drives living standards over decades?
- Output per hour
- Total hours worked
- Total soil fertility
Working longer hours cannot make a country rich on its own.
Circle one: True False
Why do property rights and honest courts raise growth?
- No factory is built to be seized
- Seizures encourage more factories
- Courts matter only for criminals
Which trio raises productivity?
- Longer shifts, richer soil, harder summers
- Better looms, trained workers, courts that guard property
- More holidays, older machines, weaker schools
How did Korea and Taiwan sprint without proving America was regressing?
- By inventing everything from scratch first
- By working the longest hours on earth
- By copying tools already invented abroad
Which explanation for riches fails against the evidence?
- Rich soil alone; Korea passed richer lands
- Secure courts, since seizures scare builders
- Open trade, since copying needs contact
A copier has installed every foreign machine. What comes next?
- Its rich soil guarantees wealth
- Its sprint ends and home-grown ideas must take over
- Its hours must triple to keep growing
Why hours do not make nations rich W1-mt_n6KY-0vlw_-s1
- Korea doubles roughly twice as fast · Small rate gaps compound like savings, so the gap narrows fast and then closes.
- Output per hour · Machines, skills, and power multiply each hour, while long days with hand tools stay poor.
- True · Extra hours add output once, while better output per hour raises every future hour.
- No factory is built to be seized · Secure profits turn tools and skills into growth, since firms can plan ahead.
- Better looms, trained workers, courts that guard property · Physical capital, human capital, and safe institutions feed output per hour together.
- By copying tools already invented abroad · Copying proven technology is far cheaper than pushing the frontier, so followers sprint.
- Rich soil alone; Korea passed richer lands · Soil explains little when poor-soil sprinters overtake richer lands with tools and rules.
- Its sprint ends and home-grown ideas must take over · Once copied machines are installed, further gains need new ideas, skills, and daring firms.