U.S ECONOMY

What Could United States Do to Achieve Economic Prosperity

What Could United States Do to Achieve Economic Prosperity

As we all know, the economy fluctuates. Sometimes irrationally, and sometimes unpredictably, the economy goes through all sorts of highs and lows, bringing the assurance of financial stability one month and looming like the specter of monetary ruin the next. The toughest thing about understanding the United States economy, then, is the excessive complexity within which the system itself works. Because it is a mixed economy - meaning that both private enterprise and governmental institutions have their hands in the game - the debates over the future of the United States economy, and the recent historical reasons for its proficiency and/or lacking thereof, are subject to an extremely wide array of variables. The complexity of the system naturally leads to a great variety of interpretations as to how the economy really functions, as well as a diversity of opinion as to how it should best be run by the government. Of course, this pronouncement of the economy as an exceedingly complex system with no objective authority that can categorically prove just how to stimulate it sounds a lot scarier than it actually is. And so, since the best way to quell any lingering fears about the world is to ground oneself with a historical perspective, here is a brief history of the US economy.

Probably the best place to start learning about the United States economy and the reasons why it has led the country into unprecedented realms of wealth and global power is right after the First World War. Coming off the Allied victory, the United States entered the 1920s with economic prosperity previously unheard of on its own soil. It seemed, for a time, that the United States could do no wrong, and the money rolled in along with a wave of social change and lifestyle modifications. It was, as it was later dubbed, truly the "Roaring Twenties" - a period when there was not only elation that the Great War had ended, but an optimism about economic prosperity that could only come to pass in a country that had not yet experienced a grand failure. Add to this outlook a massive cultural shift in the method of work since before the turn of the century - highly industrialized, production-line factories - and just as the economy in the US was increasing ...