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Structural Changes in the American Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

F. K. Mann
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Extract

Whether, some day, the twentieth century may claim to have inaugurated as fundamental a change in economic organization as did the monetary revolution of the sixteenth and the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century is still an open question. While in most European countries the transformation is evident, and from Spain to Scandinavia and from the British Isles to the Balkan states, it has been intensified under the impact of war economy, American public opinion still hesitates to admit any break with the past. Most people believe that expansion of governmental activities, concentration of economic power, rigidities, monopolies, public indebtedness and taxation as consequential as they are should be evaluated as accessories of an economic system which in its foundation has remained intact. In its very essence, this system is supposed to rest upon the great principles of private property, freedom of enterprise and social mobility.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , April 1942 , pp. 144 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1942

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References

1 See Hansen, Alvin H., Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles, New York, 1941, Chapter XX: The Dual Economy (pp. 400–410)Google Scholar.

2 George, Henry, Progress and Poverty, 50th ed., New York 1940, p. 405.Google Scholar

3 Kimmel, Lewis H., The Burden of Taxation and Public Debt in the United States and Other Countries, Nat. Ind. Conference Board, Economic Record, 11 3, 1939, p. 178Google Scholar.

4 See Alvin H. Hansen, 1. 1. p. 409.

5 The Tax Foundation, Tax Fads and Figures, New York 1941, p. 39Google Scholar.

6 Mann, Fritz Karl, Die Staatswirtschaft unserer Zeit, Jena 1930, p. 14Google Scholar.

7 Hansen, Alvin H., The Business Cycle and its Relation to Agriculture, Journal of Farm Economics, vol. XIV (1932), p. 62Google Scholar.

8 Annual Report of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for the year ended December 31, 1940, p. 13.

9 Goldenweiser, E. A., Public Nature of the Reserve Banks, in: Banking Studies, 1941, pp. 231–246Google Scholar.

10 Bulletin of the Treasury Department, January 1942, p. 50.

11 Fortune, May 1940, p. 45.

12 As the London Economist recently complained: “Every attempt to organize a field of economic activity by principles other than the marriage of demand and supply tends to be defeated by the subborn rearguard actions of “free enterprise” and “sound money”” (Dec. 20, 1941, p. 742).