Blind Fait In The Free Market

To me, yes, I think that America had a blind faith in the free market, because although American society had a "user's manuel" which was Smith's "The Wealth of Nations", they obvisously didn't pay much attention to where Adam described the "cycle" of when things are good, they're good, but a "high" always has it's "low" and America's low came in the early 1930's with the Depression. They were shocked to find that their nation was poor. The stock market crash was only the first symptom.

There were a few Americans that did suspect a major economic disaster to come around, but a majority of Americans were concerned with something else. The stock market boom in 1929 pulled about 10 million people into the "the market". Many of them found pleasure in sitting back and wathing their money grow effortlessly. On Tuesday, October 29, 1929 millions of people who had watched their dollars grow, now found themselves to be poor. The nation suffered terribly. The gross domestic product (measure of the nation's total output) fell by almost half from 1929 to 1933. (p. 100 "The Making of Economic Society) As a result of all this, the unemployment numbers rose dramatically. In 1929, the numbers reached 1.5 million. And by 1933, the number had risen eightfold. One person out of every four in the work force found themselves without a job.

Their blindness lead America to continue to believe that as long as they keep working, or investing their money in the stock market, they won't become poor. Well, this shows that you have to do more than just invest and earn money. Savings is a major part in the generation of wealth.

The "get rich quick" way of thinking is one of the reasons that brought America to this sad point in economic history. This crash was a strike against the confidence of the banks to pay their ability to pay off all debts and