In Dusty Archives, a Theory of Affluence, an article in the NY Times has some interesting thoughts on the history of the industrial revolution:

Generation after generation, the rich had more surviving children than the poor, his research showed. That meant there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. “The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,” he concluded.

It is fascinating to me that we still do not have a true handle on how we got where we are, and by extension, what it has/is costing us. For, what are we really?

Found via Slashdot