From American Exceptionalism to the Great Compression

2021 ◽  
pp. 323-350
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
First Time

The United States was an anomaly, beginning without clear class distinctions and with substantial egalitarian sentiment. Inexpensive land meant workers who were not enslaved were relatively free. However, as the frontier closed and industrialization took off after the Civil War, inequality soared and workers increasingly lost control over their workplaces. Worker agitation led to improved living standards, but gains were limited by the persuasiveness of the elite’s ideology. The hardships of the Great Depression, however, significantly delegitimated the elite’s ideology, resulting in substantially decreased inequality between the 1930s and 1970s. Robust economic growth following World War II and workers’ greater political power permitted unparalleled improvements in working-class living standards. By the 1960s, for the first time in history, a generation came of age without fear of dire material privation, generating among many of the young a dramatic change in values and attitudes, privileging social justice and self-realization over material concerns.

Symposium on Barry Eidlin’s Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-422
Author(s):  
Nelson Lichtenstein ◽  
Cedric de Leon ◽  
Judith Stepan-Norris ◽  
Barry Eidlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
State Response ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Ruling Party

AbstractBarry Eidlin’s book, Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada (Cambridge University Press, 2018) explains why unions are weaker in the United States than they are in Canada, but have not always been that way. Indeed, unionization rates were virtually identical for much of the twentieth century, then diverged in the 1960s. Against dominant accounts focused on long-standing differences in political cultures and institutions, Eidlin argues that the divergence resulted from different ruling party responses to working class upsurge in both countries during the Great Depression and World War II. In Canada, an initially more hostile state response ended up embedding “the class idea”—the idea of class as a salient, legitimate political category—more deeply in policies, policies, and practices than in the United States, where class interests were reduced to “special interests.” In this symposium, three noted labor scholars engage critically with the book. Cedric de Leon interrogates Eidlin’s account of the role of racial divisions in explaining divergence, noting “more persistence and convergence than there is rupture and divergence” between these two countries on this issue. Nelson Lichtenstein’s critique focuses on the exceptionally vociferous character of US employer hostility, which he argues that Eidlin downplays. And Judith Stepan-Norris notes the surprising lack of actual class actors in a book about class organization, while raising interpretive questions about the relation between labor and the Communist Party in both countries. Eidlin concludes the symposium with a response to the critics.

Symposium on Barry Eidlin’s Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-417
Author(s):  
Nelson Lichtenstein ◽  
Cedric de Leon ◽  
Judith Stepan-Norris ◽  
Barry Eidlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
State Response ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Ruling Party

AbstractBarry Eidlin’s book, Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada (Cambridge University Press, 2018) explains why unions are weaker in the United States than they are in Canada, but have not always been that way. Indeed, unionization rates were virtually identical for much of the twentieth century, then diverged in the 1960s. Against dominant accounts focused on long-standing differences in political cultures and institutions, Eidlin argues that the divergence resulted from different ruling party responses to working class upsurge in both countries during the Great Depression and World War II. In Canada, an initially more hostile state response ended up embedding “the class idea”—the idea of class as a salient, legitimate political category—more deeply in policies, policies, and practices than in the United States, where class interests were reduced to “special interests.” In this symposium, three noted labor scholars engage critically with the book. Cedric de Leon interrogates Eidlin’s account of the role of racial divisions in explaining divergence, noting “more persistence and convergence than there is rupture and divergence” between these two countries on this issue. Nelson Lichtenstein’s critique focuses on the exceptionally vociferous character of US employer hostility, which he argues that Eidlin downplays. And Judith Stepan-Norris notes the surprising lack of actual class actors in a book about class organization, while raising interpretive questions about the relation between labor and the Communist Party in both countries. Eidlin concludes the symposium with a response to the critics.

Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s

1992 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Higgs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Performance Measures ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Macroeconomic Performance ◽  
Command Economy ◽  
First Time ◽  
The U.S

Relying on standard measures of macroeconomic performance, historians and economists believe that “war prosperity” prevailed in the United States during World War II. This belief is ill-founded, because it does not recognize that the United States had a command economy during the war. From 1942 to 1946 some macroeconomic performance measures are statistically inaccurate; others are conceptually inappropriate. A better grounded interpretation is that during the war the economy was a huge arsenal in which the well-being of consumers deteriorated. After the war genuine prosperity returned for the first time since 1929.

Japanese Commemorations of World War II in the Mariana Islands

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith L. Camacho
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mariana Islands ◽  
World War ◽  
War Memories ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
A Site

This chapter examines the creation and contestation of Japanese commemorations of World War II in the Mariana Islands. As an archipelago colonized by Japan and the United States, the Mariana Islands have become a site through which war memories have developed in distinct and shared ways. With respect to Japanese commemorations, the analysis demonstrates why and how they inform and are informed by Chamorro and American remembrances of the war in the Mariana Islands. By analyzing government, media, and tourist accounts of the war from the 1960s to the present, I thus show how we can gain an understanding and appreciation for the complex ways by which Japanese of various generations reckon with a violent past.

War and the Next Lesson

Money ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith ◽  
James K. Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
The Great Depression

This chapter examines the lessons of World War II with respect to money and monetary policy. World War I exposed the fragility of the monetary structure that had gold as its foundation, the great boom of the 1920s showed how futile monetary policy was as an instrument of restraint, and the Great Depression highlighted the ineffectuality of monetary policy for rescuing the country from a slump—for breaking out of the underemployment equilibrium once this had been fully and firmly established. On the part of John Maynard Keynes, the lesson was that only fiscal policy ensured not just that money was available to be borrowed but that it would be borrowed and would be spent. The chapter considers the experiences of Britain, Germany, and the United States with a lesson of World War II: that general measures for restraining demand do not prevent inflation in an economy that is operating at or near capacity.

World War II Fiscal Policies and the End of the Great Depression

1994 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 850-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Vernon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
United States Economy

The United States economy completed its recovery from the Great Depression in 1942, restoring full-employment output in that year after 12 years of below-full-employment performance. Fiscal policies were not the most important factor in the 1933 through 1940 phase of the recovery, but they became the most important factor after 1940, when the recovery was less than half-complete. World War II fiscal policies were, then, instrumental in the overall restoration of full-employment performance.

scholarly journals HISTORISITAS POTRET ISLAM DI AMERIKA

ASKETIK ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anjar Sri Wahyuni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
World War ◽  
Racial Boundaries ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S

The American state that it became the object of the first Islamic da'wah in about 1875, from what was then known as Greater Syria (Great Syria [now includes Syria itself, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine]) until the end of World War I. Followed by a second wave, in the 1920s to then be stopped because of World War II. Immigration laws in this period are rather limiting. Only black or Caucasian people can enter the United States. Arabs are considered not to fall into the two categories. While the third wave, between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s took place along with the occurrence of important changes outside the United States. Muslims who enter the US in this category are more educated. Most of them migrated because of political oppression. At the same time, especially in the 1960s various changes took place in US immigration policy. The job market is expanding and the country needs potential immigrants to fill the posts. Here ethnic or racial boundaries are loosened. Then the fourth wave, lasting about 1967 and still going on until now. They are generally very fluid and fluent in English. Their immigration is in place for various reasons such as for the improvement of professional ability and avoiding Government oppression. They also have the intention to settle or preach Islam in this Country. And the fifth wave started from 1967 until now. Those who came to America in this wave, in addition to economic reasons, political factors are also the main reasons that encourage them to migrate. There are some proofs that Islam came to America long before Columbus and the West.

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND TAX REGIMES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1763 TO THE PRESENT

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Elliot Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
World War ◽  
Ability To Pay ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Tax Regimes ◽  
The Republic

The essay explores how ideas about social justice and economic performance shaped the debates over federal taxation in the United States since the origins of the republic. The debates were most intense during major national emergencies (the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II), and each debate produced a new tax regime-a tax system with its own characteristic tax base, rate structure, administration apparatus, and social purpose. The criterion of "ability to pay" and a concern for economic efficiency powerfully shaped the formation of every tax regime, but "ability to pay" became the more influential of the two considerations during the national crises of the twentieth century.

Post-1965 Changes in Asian America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Hinnershitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
World War ◽  
Chinese Exclusion ◽  
The 1960S

After World War II and through the 1960s, Asian Americans began a transformative process, from being the “yellow peril” to becoming the model minority, and Asian Americans in the South experienced, to some degree, the same transformation. The war and its mottos of fighting for freedom and democracy at home and abroad affected the way Americans viewed their own hypocrisy toward minorities in the United States. African Americans were the largest minority group to use the aims of the war to demand attention to their plight with Jim Crow, prompting the growth of a nationwide civil rights movement, but Americans also came to view the century-old forms of legal discrimination against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans in a new light. Not only did Congress repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 (making it legal for some Chinese to naturalize and allowing a small number of Chinese immigrants to enter the United States), but Filipino Americans and Indian Americans received similar treatment during and after World War II. In 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act (or the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952), although designed to protect American security during the early Cold War by prohibiting and deporting subversive aliens, also made it possible for Asian immigrants of all ethnicities to become American citizens (while the number of Asians admitted to the United States did not drastically increase). Americans also viewed the ability of Japanese Americans to overcome the massive civil rights violations of wartime imprisonment and achieve economic and educational success as a model for all minorities to follow. Asian Americans came through the fires of World War II and proved that they were loyal Americans and deserving of equal treatment and respect, and while more subtle and sometimes not so subtle forms of racism and discrimination ...

United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 346-353
Author(s):  
David Sorkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
American Jews ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter looks at how the Great Migration from eastern Europe made the United States a center of world Jewry. The Nazis' murder of most of European Jewry magnified that status. While the migrants and their children were citizens, their rights were restricted. Thus, in the period after World War II, American Jewry's civil defense organizations engaged in a concerted emancipation campaign. Jews collaborated with African Americans, Catholics, and other minorities to end inequality. That campaign succeeded: from the 1940s to the 1960s, state and federal civil rights laws, and court rulings prohibiting discrimination, dismantled the structure of inequality. Those events constituted American Jews' second emancipation: it positioned the immigrant's children and grandchildren to realize the promise of American equality.

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