The Gilded Age

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will always feel cheated because they feel as if opportunity never has and never will pass them by. The rich, conversely, will always feel as if they are doing society a great favor simply by having their wealth. Poor versus rich debates will never go away no matter how much change is done to government and society. The “just deserts” theory of poverty is one that best describes American society. “For many, the logic of the mobility ideology led to a ‘just deserts’ rationalization. The matter was simple, according to a local editor: ‘We declare it a vice and a sin for a man to be poor, if he can help it.’ And the typical poor man in America could help it”(Thernstrom33). More often than not poverty can be helped. Perhaps poverty is what is deserved for laziness in American society. America can not alleviate the defective state of society. Other nations inevitably encounter many of the very same problems and deal with them differently, establishing a wide range of economic systems. ...

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advantage of) the new system.
Although the gap between rich and poor during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was unquestionably large, the nation was also prospering through large economic gains. Although it may have seemed like a nation in which the rich were detached from the poor, the US was actually harvesting a new breed of self-accomplishing individuals. With the end of free labor, the US had sought a new ideology, and found it in Adam Smith’s market model. The market model was a beneficial system overall, however, many focused not on the gains that it brought but instead on the condition of the poor. The market model was indeed a gain of the time period and was met ...

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