Author: TASEEN MAHMOOD
Blog post 4
What I liked about this class and why I think learning about U.S history in a economical lenses is because It offers a different way of viewing history that gives context for the world today. Often times people study in a political or social manor and largely ignore economics, which makes sense since a-lot of history has to do with people groups and politics. But I think ignoring the economics of history or condensing it to only the most important parts does a disservice to our understanding of history. Often times I think that the economics of a historical era gets taken in in a very abstract and general way. In the beginning of the semester you asked us when capitalism first emerged or if the original colonies were capitalist and those are all terms we knew well but we couldn’t really answer the question well which I think reflects my previous sentence. I personally only had a superficial knowledge of U.S economic policy after WW2 but knew alot about the cultural changes that happened. So prior to the class I knew how the U.S changed but by learning about History in a economic perspective I got to understand the Why a little better.
Taseen Mahmood 3
Governments could choose tax, spending, and monetary policies to produce full employment. In 1969, the unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent.
Economists became an honored breed. In 1965, Time magazine named Keynes its ‘‘Man of the Year.’’ The Nobel committee first awarded prizes in economics in 1969 largely because Keynesianism transformed gloomy science into a hard science that benefited mankind. ( Stein 4)
This excerpt from the text stood out to me because firstly it praises economists, which is my major so partly that. However, Stein also recognizes the shift of economics into the mainstream public consciousness which I think is a very interesting development. Many people around my age, born before 2003, grew up during the 2008 financial crisis which was a generation-defining moment in so many ways. I remember eating breakfast in the morning and overheating while my father was watching the news that “the housing mortgage crisis and recessions were due to mismanagement of the economy” At the time I had no idea what it meant but I knew that there was something called the economy and we were doing something bad to it. I bring up this anecdote because I think it reflects the modern continuation of the phenomenon Stein brings up. Stein here establishes the trend that begins in the 1960s but doesn’t fully mature until later. The emergence of economists into the public mainstream has downstream effects as they now have more say in the levers of government. I don’t intend to talk down to the median voter however, I think my earlier anecdote reflects the median voter’s view of the economy. A view of the economy as this abstract thing that when fiddled with enough when bad, will lead to good results. This view latter leads to reactionary voting that leads to presidents like Regan and more presently Biden.
This phenomenon Stein brings up allows for the rise of economists but also changes the debate economists are having. Because of Keynes, economics is becoming more prominent in government, however, at the same time, it standardizes it. The U.S after WWII was able to establish Keynesian economics in the postwar nations of Europe and Asia, which allowed it to become the economic orthodoxy of the western world.
Thoughts on white’s
White in the reading describes the rapid settlement of the American midwest because of the railroad and its perception and impact. Moreover this rapid change in the Midwest reflects a growing idea of American exceptionalism that I have begun to notice in class. White starts off the chapter with a hypothetical “If a western Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in 1869 and awakened in 1896, he would not have recognized the lands that the railroads had touched. Bison had yielded to cattle; mountains had been blasted and bored.Great swaths of land that had once whispered grass now screamed corn and wheat.” (White 455) This hypothetical spin on the Rip Van Winkle story exemplifies just how rapid of a change occurred in a 30 year period and how people out the time would view it.
Moreover from the accounts of Hesse-Wartegg who was a German traveler in America, we get a non-American view of the settlement of the west. “Built through a dry, treeless, unpeopled desert, the railroad now crosses an agricultural paradise. Civilization sweeps like a storm across the plains and smashes what will not bow down or give way before it.” Although this review may have been a bit biased as Hesse would be incentivized by the railroad to write good things about it, what Hesse chooses to praise about the railroad and its effects says alot about what the americans/railroads would have valued. Hesse describes the railroad’s effects as a storm of civilization that rips through everything without question.
Both Wartegg account and Van Winkle use aggressive language that presents the railroad as a civilizing force that pushes through lands and peoples. Their accounts remind me of American Progress by John Gast which is the quintessential representation of manifest destiny. Manifest destiny was enabled by the railroad and plays into the larger idea of American exceptionalism because it is rooted in ideas of divine right. The seeds of this have been planted since the first settlers and their city upon the hill and the ambitious egalitarian principles rooted in the constitution which strived to be better than England. Moreover the idea of conquering nature, grass to corn, buffalo to cattle, and the positive feedback by people of the time indicate the idea that Americans have the ability to change the world through their own ability, ie technology like railroads, selective breeding etc etc.
Thoughts on Mandell
One issue Mandell talks about in the reading is the clashes and contradictions between the enlightenment ideals of equality and the individual right to property, both of which were important revolutionary ideals that the fledgling nation struggled to deal with. “insisted that the country’s inhabitants “are more upon an equality in stature, and powers of body and mind, than the subjects of any government in Europe, and that New Englanders in particular “enjoy the most perfect equality.” (Mandell 83) People in the united states feared a new aristocracy that would dominate them as the British did, and this fear caused them to try and prevent an aristocracy from forming. What would allow a new aristocracy to form would be wealth and power typically in the form of property such as land and slaves, there were attempts to limit these potential aristocrats’ wealth through various means but doing so would interfere with their rights to control over the property of individuals. Other ways of introducing an aristocracy were through education or through the structuring of political systems to favor certain groups. This political favoring can be seen by denying suffrage to all, by having large voting districts letting those with more resources be able to win elections. I saw many parallels between this reading and contemporary issues, the prominent challenges the U.S faces that Mandell talks about in this reading are fear and equality and the proposed means to solve each. I specifically thought that the means he chooses to highlight was interesting as many of the pushes for equality come down to a battle between individual property rights and broader equality economically and politically. The U.S still faces challenges such as implementing taxes, gun rights, abortion, and LGBT issues. Moreover, something the reading and more generally the class has is the fear that was held by the post-revolutionary U.S, some of the measures talked about such as landholding limits seem extremely radical even for today and indicate the sense of fear drilled in from the colonial period into the nation’s psyche to cause them to act in such radical wasys. I think we still feel this national fear as can be seen by our last few wars and democratic rhetoric by politicians.