Juan Bravo

ePortfolio Project
ECON 1740 Economic History of the U.S

The United States has a rich a diverse history. One aspect that is
widely overlooked however is the economic history of this country, and
because of this I believe this assignment will be beneficial. For the purpose of
this assignment students have been tasked with writing an essay which will
demonstrate the understanding of the concepts learned in this class. For this
assignment I will be writing a paper that will explain how I was able to use
concepts in U.S economic history and apply them to concepts from other
courses, contemporary business or economics and to me personally as an
individual.
As a business major I have taken a number of business courses. The
first and most diverse course that I took was foundations of business and
business thinking. This course was a bit of an introduction to business
thinking and analyzing different schools of thought. During this course we
learned about different philosophers such as Karl Marx or Aristotle and Ayn
Rand and what their ideas or ideals were pertaining to business and business
behavior. Because this was the first course that we took it was hard to know
how it would apply to the rest of my degree, but upon taking classes such as

ECON 1740 it makes perfect sense. One concept in particular that I

remember from that class was Karl Marxs concepts of redistributing wealth
amongst citizens and making sure that nobody went without. That concept in
particular came to mind when we were discussing The New Deal and the
different programs meant to help with unemployment or with destitute
citizens during the depression. There were programs in place that would
assist with creating jobs, and assisting people in need right then but some of
the most applicable programs in my opinion were Social Security which was
designed to combat the widespread poverty, especially among senior
citizens, and the Federal Housing Administration which was put in place to
fight the housing crisis that stemmed from the Great Depression.
To me these are applicable because they take borderline socialist
approaches to a problem and are able to solve it in such a way that citizens
are taken care of even if they are not actively contributing to the economy
which is kind of what Marx advocated and it was easy for me to make that
connection. Additionally, this helped to reroute my beliefs in the way that
American economics has always worked because I was always under the
impression that America was a strictly capitalist system but had never really
stopped to think about how many different programs we have in place that
would be right at home in a more socialist system and makes me think that
probably the most efficient system might be a mixed system finding as close
to a balance between capitalism and some degree of socialist ideas.

Another concept that stuck with me was when we discussed the

decline of the economy of the South once slavery was abolished. I knew that
the south relied on slave labor for the cotton and tobacco industry, but I had
no idea how absolutely dependent they were on it. When we discussed
Slavery and Civil War it talked about how once slavery was outlawed the
southern economy completed fell apart because it was completely
dependent on agriculture and on slave labor. On a personal level, especially
as a business owner this stuck with me and taught me that it is absolutely
critical to diversify, or at least to not keep all your eggs in one basket if you
will. It is impossible to predict all outcomes and because of that one should
always explore different avenues for revenue and resources. Its easy to look
back and think that it was silly to think that slavery would be around forever,
but even in modern times we fall victim to the same mentality. We are very
dependent on technology under the impression that modern power grids or
the internet will be around forever, and overlook just how fragile that
infrastructure really is.
As I had stated earlier, in most cases when one thinks of American
history it usually brings to mind thinks like the Battle of the Alamo or World
War II but it is very easy to overlook the economic impact that all of these
events had on the country. Having taken this course has given me a much
greater understanding of economics and how the U.S has been impacted by
things like advents in technology, war or failure to diversify such as during
slavery. Because of this I now have a much better idea as to what to look out

for and how to prevent personal economic failure. Ultimately, I believe that
the main objective of this course is to prevent history from repeating itself.