August 25, 2019 Sunday
Bedtime Story
The Wealth of the Gilded Age
These plutocratic millionaire families
included the likes of Rockefeller and Carnegie who prescribed to the philosophy
as advocated in the 1889 article of Andrew Carnegie ‘The gospel of Wealth’.
This article emphasized though emphasizing
that hard work and perseverance leads to wealth was less about wealth creation
and more about the way to live one’s life after having earned it.
It was his form belief that it was
inevitable that the successors of the affluent and wealthy would end up living
a conspicuous life style and thereby squandering all the wealth accrued with
through hard work and intelligent investments.
As a result it was far more prudent to
distribute the wealth carefully and meticulously back to the society in a way
that would benefit it the most.
The capital that created the difference
between the affluent families and the rest ought to be used over one’s entire
life in such a methodical and careful manner that it would eventually help in
reducing this disparity between the rich and poor.
In short, the culture of philanthropy began
to gain ground and got firmly established by the end of the Progressive Era and
without a doubt one of its greatest beneficiary turned out to be Harvard.
The donations from such plutocrats soon
made Harvard the wealthiest private university of the world.
There is no doubt that both Harvard and Eliot
reaped their rewards due to the simple factor of chance of being at the right
place at the right time.
It was a time when the government went at
war with corruption festering within and carried on from the Gilded Age that
saw wealth created like no other age and time.
Gilded age is the era that started after
the end of Civil War and overlaps with the Reconstruction era that ended in
1877.
Gilded Era was an age of rapid economic
growth particularly in the North and West than in the South accompanied with
rapid influx of European immigrants.
Industries began to be set up at an
unprecedented pace and the real wage continued to grow.
Railroads, mining, finance, factories grew
up in the North and East and this allowed farming, ranching and mining to pick
up in the West.
It was in this period, that is the 1870s
and the 1880s that U.S. economy grew at the fastest rate in its history with
all the vital parameters of economy such as real wages, GDP, wealth and capital
formation showed rapid spurts.
In the United States in this period of say
thirty years the output of wheat increased by 256%, corn by 222%, coal by 800%
and railway track by 567%.
For the first time the per capital income
of the citizens of United States surpassed those living in the magisterial European
empires including those of British Empire, German Empire, French Empire and the
Italian Empire.
It was a boom time in the United States!
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment