History of American Business: A Baruch College Blog

Month: May 2022

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.

The New Deal Timeline

The New Deal Final Timeline

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1cRKDhWvE5p184HwLV65IW6B8gc8n_MxsMhiA8CW3nHY&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650

Works Cited

Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York, NY: Knopf, 2003.

BLOG POST 4

My overall experience with this course was very positive. I learned a lot about the business history of America which I previously did not think that deeply about. I was only expecting to learn about the various business policies/ history of business in America. It was very interesting to learn how intertwined the history of business in America is with its geopolitical and social history. From 13 colonies to the world economy empire it is today, America has come a long way in a short few hundred years. But that is not without adversities such as slavery and the great depression. One of my biggest takeaways from this course is the connection between slavery and capitalism. And the policies that helped America recover from the great depression and become one of the largest economies of the world that it is today.