{"id":15479,"date":"2017-07-10T09:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/?p=15479"},"modified":"2017-07-10T00:18:15","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T04:18:15","slug":"the-economics-of-prisoner-of-war-camps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/2017\/the-economics-of-prisoner-of-war-camps\/","title":{"rendered":"The Economics Of Prisoner Of War Camps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/071017_0415_TheEconomic1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"463\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Frances Woolley delved into a paper from 1945 written by an English soldier taken as a Prisoner of War during World War 2:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Prisoners of War received four and three days&#8217; worth of rations of bread and margarine on Thursdays and Mondays.<\/li>\n<li>These were supplemented with extras like cigarettes, chocolate, meat, and tea by the Red Cross and other aid organizations.<\/li>\n<li>Cigarettes emerged as a form of currency. They&#8217;re uniform, durable, and can easily be packaged together for large transactions.<\/li>\n<li>There was weekly inflation in the lead up to ration days. By Sunday, the day before the next ration, the price of bread had increased by 14% &#8211; from seven cigarettes to eight.<\/li>\n<li>More often though there was deflation. The problem with cigarettes as a currency is that they eventually go up in smoke, creating recessionary conditions when they weren&#8217;t replenished.<\/li>\n<li>This economy rewarded special skills. An Urdu speaking English prisoner could engage in a form of international trade with the Indian part of the camp.<\/li>\n<li>Soldiers who were particularly addicted to cigarettes risked starvation \u2013 as they bartered all their food away for the next nicotine hit.<\/li>\n<li>Officers in the camp considered policies of redistribution where bread would go to hopelessly addicted smokers in need.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Read more on the <a href=\"http:\/\/nationalpost.com\/opinion\/frances-woolley-the-pow-economy-explained\/wcm\/8fe4b91e-e8c2-4acc-8a0e-6f065b491e68\">National Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frances Woolley delved into a paper from 1945 written by an English soldier taken as a Prisoner of War during World War 2: Prisoners of War received four and three days&#8217; worth of rations of bread and margarine on Thursdays and Mondays. These were supplemented with extras like cigarettes, chocolate, meat, and tea by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bulletin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/071017_0415_TheEconomic1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15479"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15482,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15479\/revisions\/15482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}