ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses why the United States was “born into” the laissez faire tradition. While laissez faire, hands-off economic policy in its purest form might have produced “the greatest good” in Thomas Jefferson’s visualized agrarian society, it was obviously not capable of addressing the problems of an increasingly intense industrial era. The scarcity mentality still prevailed. The share of wealth siphoned off by the wealthy, contrary to Smith’s prediction, was continuing to grow long after the amount necessary to satisfy reasonable needs and desires had been obtained. The relative share left to the workers continued to shrink. As Ricardo had said, they were being allowed to survive, but little more. As in England, following the excesses bred by laissez faire, the pendulum of economic philosophy was swinging sharply in the opposite direction, toward socialism. The United States was beginning its struggle to discover the best way to develop and release the positive, constructive potential of all its citizens.
