[dredmorbius]

The US was booming as one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world in the 19th century. Why?

It had tremendous untapped natural resources, a wealth of coal and oil (it was the worlds leading exporter of oil until the late 1940s), and the social structures to allow mobilization of those resources.

Population isn't enough, and can be a curse. Europe saw a tremendous economic boom following the Black Death, largely because financial and real capital was concentrated in fewer hands, and populations were reduced below carrying capacity.

Education isn't enough. Drop a highly educated individual into the heart of Africa or slums of India, and they may do well compared to the locals, but it'll be a small fraction of what they'd be able to accomplish in the US or Europe, or by being wealthy and in India.

The role of resources, particularly agriculture and energy, in economic growth, are highly discounted by contemporary economists.

Hell, you can even get an expert on poverty and a Nobel prize winner on stage saying with an absolutely straight face that economists cannot explain growth:

http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wf57z/econ_pau...

[joeyo]

  > Population isn't enough, and can be a curse. Europe saw
  > a tremendous economic boom following the Black Death,
  > largely because financial and real capital was concentrated
  > in fewer hands, and populations were reduced below
  > carrying capacity.

I won't dispute that there was both a population decline and an economic boom following the Black Death, but do you have anything to back up the assertion of causality? Could the boom not be more parsimoniously explained by the inflow of wealth from the New World? Indeed, perhaps the Black Death dampened this boom and ultimately delayed the industrial revolution.

[dredmorbius]

The Wikipedia article on the topic gives a good overview:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat...

As I recall, James Burke's Connections discusses this tangentially at least once (several times as I recall -- it somewhat traipses back and forth across history a bit).

[vidarh]

Columbus didn't even get to America until about 140 years after the Black Death. It took much longer than that for it to have a substantial influence on European revenues.