Building Wealth
The New Rules for Individuals, Companies, and Nations in a Knowledge-Based Economy
Chapter One
The Economic Landscape
Two hundred years ago, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution brought eight thousand years of agricultural wealth creation to an end. Agricultural activities, which had been the sole economic activity for 98 percent of the population in the eighteenth century, were the sole source of income for less than 2 percent of the American population by the end of the twentieth century. By providing a source of energy much bigger than either animals or humans could provide, the steam engine opened up opportunities to do things previously impossible. Leonardo da Vinci could imagine all kinds of brilliant mechanical devices, but all of them remained on paper, unbuilt, because he could not imagine an engine to power them. With the advent of the steam engine, much of what he could only imagine quickly became reality.
A hundred years later, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, ... read full excerpt from: Building Wealth ebook
