What Is the Point of the Colonial System?

In the West, we faced a crisis of inflation. To keep inflation reasonable and to keep living standards good, like, let's say, in the West, required an external output. So what colonialism allowed were European empires to basically subsidize living standards at home by having an input of really cheap goods and labor from abroad. That is how you would subsidize the way of life in what they would call the core countries. This is really what helped us advance.