William Graham Sumner’s term “the forgotten man” has been revived. Like "American Exceptionalism," it is a phrase that is adopted liberally by people who misuse it, often in a way directly opposite of its original meaning.
It is the title of Amity Shlaes' reassessment of the Great Depression. And it has appeared in Trump's speeches as well.
Sumner introduced the term “forgotten man” in 1883 as a reminder of the overlooked decent and hard-working people whom the government taxes, pushes, and prods in order to acquire the resources and create the privileges that it then bestows on those who do not earn these things.
Shlaes writes that in 1936 Franklin Roosevelt systematically established the modern political constituency, from unions to artists, to senior citizens. Her website summarizes that Roosevelt's solution was to spend for these groups, so extensively that federal spending that year outpaced state and local spending, for the first time ever in peacetime. The consequence was the Roosevelt landslide of 1936 --but also the modern entitlement trap. Roosevelt often spoke of the Forgotten Man, the man "at the bottom of the economic pyramid." Yet, Miss Shlaes shows, his New Deal recreated Sumner's forgotten man, the man who subsidizes the funding of other constituencies -- and who haunts politics in all developed nations today.
It is the title of Amity Shlaes' reassessment of the Great Depression. And it has appeared in Trump's speeches as well.
Sumner introduced the term “forgotten man” in 1883 as a reminder of the overlooked decent and hard-working people whom the government taxes, pushes, and prods in order to acquire the resources and create the privileges that it then bestows on those who do not earn these things.
Shlaes writes that in 1936 Franklin Roosevelt systematically established the modern political constituency, from unions to artists, to senior citizens. Her website summarizes that Roosevelt's solution was to spend for these groups, so extensively that federal spending that year outpaced state and local spending, for the first time ever in peacetime. The consequence was the Roosevelt landslide of 1936 --but also the modern entitlement trap. Roosevelt often spoke of the Forgotten Man, the man "at the bottom of the economic pyramid." Yet, Miss Shlaes shows, his New Deal recreated Sumner's forgotten man, the man who subsidizes the funding of other constituencies -- and who haunts politics in all developed nations today.
But central to Trump’s worldview is his belief in the economic and ethical merits of economic protectionism. Yet no policy received more withering criticism from Sumner than protectionism. In “The Forgotten Man,” Sumner complained that “The biggest job of all is a protective tariff. This device consists in delivering every man over to be plundered by his neighbor and in teaching him to believe that it is a good thing for him and his country because he may take his turn at plundering the rest.”
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