Articles of Confederation<span> (1781) This was the first governing document of the United States of America.</span>
In general, when anything is "merit based" it means that it relies strictly on the knowledge and ability of the person in question, instead of special privilege such as family connections. <span />
During the high Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church became organized into an elaborate hierarchy with the pope as the head in western Europe. He established supreme power.
By the 1700s, France and England were primarily in conflict with each other over "territorial expansion", especially when it came to North America, since each nation was trying to harvest resources from the same land.
China has grown by more than 6 percent every year since the late 1970s, with rates that sometimes exceeded double digits and lifted the poverty of 700 million Chinese (using many other millionaires).
Decades of migration from the countryside to the cities have led to a large contingent of workers already earning the highest urban wages.
Migration would have made the rural labor market tighter, and the remaining rural workers would already have greater bargaining power to ask for higher wages.
The large public investments in backward infrastructure, as well as new social security and cash transfer programs.
