Question

Briefly describe ONE key historical similarity or difference between laissez-faire economic policies in the Gilded Age and economic policies in the Jacksonian Era.

Answer 1

Response:

There is a difference between Jacksonian and Glided age stances towards central or national banks. A growing body of evidence supports the idea that during the Jackson government there was a push towards the creation of a central bank system in the US. Central banking may be at odds with Laisses-faire philosophy because it can be used to intervene in the market, and therefore reducing the individual's natural right to freedom.

Source:

Schweikart, L. (1988). Jacksonian Ideology, Currency Control and Central Banking: A Reappraisal. Historian,51(1), 78-102.

Explanation

Laisses-faire supporters believe that the idividual, as the most basic unit of society, has the natural right of freedom. Additionally, the interactions between individuals tend to create a natural, harmonic, ordered and self-regulated system. Therefore any form of government intervention in private issues disrupts this natural order. These interventions include but are not limited to central and national banks, which intervene the way in which currency circulates in the national market economy.

Governments during both Jacksonian and Glided Age periods based its economic and political policy under this Laisses-Faire economics. However, during the Jacksonian Era, the government tried to create a central bank that could intervene in the way money circulate. Particularly because there was an interest in replacing metallic money with paper-based money, which requires the backing of a national bank. This contradicted some of the basic principles of Laisses-Faire economics and therefore generated large discussions among politicians of that era.