Economic Inequality and the New School of American Economics
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2017, Vol 8, Issue 6
Abstract
This essay analyzes economic inequality in the Gilded Age, roughly from 1865 to 1900. It focuses specifically on a group of economists who identified working-class consumption as an economic stimulus, and accordingly advocated an increase in wages to bring this about. It is structured in three sections: first, it demonstrates how industrialization in the late-nineteenth century sparked social tensions, convincing observers that there was a crisis of inequality; second, it explains how these tensions produced a “New School” of economics who sought to alleviate these issues by changing economic doctrine; it concludes by noting how this New School exerted an influence on public policy in the Progressive Era. In their conception, economics should be redesigned to promote a more equal distribution of wealth. Therefore, higher wages would stimulate working-class consumption, which would stabilize the economy and overall alleviate class conflict. This story offers a unique way to view the development of consumerism and social reform in American history.
Authors and Affiliations
Stephen Leccese
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25715
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8060099
- Views 344
- Downloads 10
Stay Your Blade
In their article ‘Transmedial worlds: Rethinking cyberworld design’, Klastrup and Tosca show that the core elements of a Transmedial World are: Mythos, the lore of the world, the central knowledge necessary to interpre...
Between Buddhism and Science, Between Mind and Body
Buddhism has been seen, at least since the Theravāda reform movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as particularly compatible with Western science. The recent explosion of Mindfulness therapies...
The Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS)
The Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS) is a measure of the centrality, importance or salience of religious meanings in personality that has been applied yet in more than 100 studies in sociology of religion, psychol...
Transcendence, Taxis, Trust: Richard Kearney and Jacques Derrida
Whatever else it takes to drive a taxi, it takes trust. Day after day, the driver has to decide whether the other is or is not trustworthy. I take the taxi as a test case to analyze and assess Richard Kearney’s diacrit...
Special Issue “International Conference of Spirituality in Healthcare. Sowing the Seeds”—Trinity College Dublin 2015
This is an editorial of a Special Issue concerning the International Conference of Spirituality in Healthcare held in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, Republic of Ireland (ROI), in June 2015...