Economics and Poetry - Cotton and Corn: a Dialogue" by Thomas Moore
What really makes economics and society flow nicely together? Economics can be described as the social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Society is described as the social relationships among us. The answer is always changing as well as the economical and sociological thoughts behind it as well. This paper will relay a couple economic views from the poem "Cotton And Corn: A Dialogue" by Thomas Moore (1779-1852), an Irish poet. Should people be allowed to trade with whomever they want to? We've been doing it for thousands of years. There should always be fare/free trade, even if the government manipulates it a little bit. If there is an unhappy consumer out there, there is at least one unhappy firm. People should be able to trade freely and hardly controlled by the government. Too much of the time the government regulates it too much, and we lose some of our free trade rights, as this poem illustrates. As François Quesnay believed the idea of "Laissez-Fair," the government should have very little control, if no control over the economy at all. The government will then regulate heavily, create high tariffs, embargoes, and other forms of monopoly to accumulate wealth. This poem was written about the famed Corn Laws that took place in England, that limited the trade of corn to other countries if international rates fell bellow a certain value. The government didn't want wealth to leave the country, as they stopped importing corn, wouldn't export their corn out, and monopolized peasants to buy the countries corn with a regulated price. This is third idea, is a form of mercantilism. Hoarding a countries wealth, and building up power. Thomas Moore addresses some of these views by introducing thoughts about fare trade, how the government can control/manipulate trade, and mercantilism, in his poem about the Corn Laws. The question is then, with all of this government supervision and control over trade, how do