Just as America has been a melting pot
of many differing ideals, so too has there always been differing theories about
how the economy and interrelation between the social classes should be
organized. Economic capitalism, which has been a baseline economic system in
the country harkening back to the deeply-rooted tradition of the Protestant
Ethic. In theory, this economic system uplifts the American Dream by rewarding
those who work hard to earn their wealth and their happiness. However, when
systematic failures in the economy, such as the Great Depression, prevent this
economic organization from working properly, it soon becomes a question of how
wealth should be distributed to those who have been most impacted by a
financial crisis and what the relation between the wealthy and the working
classes should be and how wealth is distributed between them. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s theories laid forth in the New Deal doctrines call for a
distribution of wealth that allows for the working class and underprivileged to
be provided for in times of need or crisis while maintaining the capitalistic
spirit and promise of the American Dream. The New Deal theories are preferable
to social Darwinist theories like those of William Graham Sumner and
anti-capitalistic theories like those of Orestes Brownson, on the grounds that
Sumner’s vision does not fully take into account unfair business practices
within American capitalism while Brownson fails to juxtapose capitalism with an
alternate economic theory that upholds the promise of the American Dream.
