Rousseau's And Other Historians' View On Financial Crisis

Rousseau's And Other Historians' View On Financial Crisis

Introduction

Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been one of the most important and renowned writer and critic of modern society. He has been discussing different subjects and spans of time. The acceleration of civil society is on a very rapid pace according to him, and thus he suggests that it should be slowed down. He has incorporated aspects of different times in his study. His views in 'Discourse on the Arts and Sciences' critique the idea of social progress that emerge out in the Age of Enlightenment. He doesn't accept the idea that arts and science can bring a better society. He emphasizes on the idea of pure life and virtues of the earlier people and claims that the science has brought in ignorance and lack of virtues. According to his views, it had initiated the idea of slavery and greed (Ranisch, 2009).

He also discussed 'On the Origin and Basis of Inequality among Men', in which he analyzed the development of men in different timeframe. He urges on the idea that civil society initiates social inequality and human corruption. He supports the fact that human nature doesn't enforce corruption because the people of older time were pure and clean hearted. Rousseau describes the idea of freedom for a legitimate political order. He argues that division of labor and private property has given rise to social inequality and that it creates dependency on one another. The rich have started this to achieve a desirable higher position in society, according to him (Andress, 2000).

Discussion

There has been mutual consensus about the lacking in government policies that created unrest in the global market.

Current Fiscal Situation

The current fiscal situation according to the public policies perspectives is strongly negative according to the high amount of national debt. These Public sentiments about U.S. fiscal situation arose because of the concerns about the debt. The president gave a proposal to reduce the U.S. deficits for Republicans. If Jean Jacques Rousseau was living today, he would have said the same because the high level of debt on the nation has pressurized the citizens, thus, creating inequality. Most of the time, the burden fells on the lower and middle class that is created by society, which Rousseau has always opposed (Correa et al. 2012).

The financial crisis of 2008 has been in considerations of many economists and historians. They consider it as the worst financial crisis ever. They tend to compare it with the great depression of 1930s. The financial institutions were under the threat of being collapsed because of this crisis. The government banks and stock market was badly hit by the situation not only in U.S., but the whole world. This stroke the housing markets because of the increased layoffs and unemployment. Rousseau would have considered the fact that only a few people managed to have stable position in market because of this financial crisis and thus the inequality got ...