U.S. Economic History from 1899 to the Present - AP U.S. History

The Federal income tax is progressive for both individuals and corporations. This, essentially, means that the higher your personal income the greater percentage of that income is subject to taxation. The history of personal income tax in the United States is, perhaps, surprisingly recent. The first income tax was levied on wealthy individuals during the Civil War, but was repealed following the war’s end. Not until 1895 did the Federal government institute its first peacetime income tax. Shortly thereafter Congress passed the Sixteenth Amendment that enabled the government to levy taxes on all personal income. From that moment until now there has been a gradual trend of taxation increases and increases on the proportion of income that the wealthy are required to pay. This reflects the trends of much greater government spending and much greater social awareness in the twentieth and twenty-first Centuries.

JFK launched an ambitious attempt to re-energize the economy and provide for greater social equality. Much of this New Frontier legislation met with opposition in Congress, as Republicans and Southern Democrats blocked a great deal of laws from passing; however, the Trade Expansion Act did pass Congress. It gave the executive branch the ability to lower existing tariffs by as much as fifty percent. The intention was to stimulate the economy.

The Underwood Tariff Act, also known as the Revenue Act of 1913, was signed into practice by President Wilson. It lowered the existing tariff rate from forty-percent to twenty-five percent, in an effort to encourage foreign trade. It also established a graduated income tax following the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment (which had established the constitutional right of the Federal government to levy income taxes).

The Taft-Hartley Act was passed to restrict the ability of American labor unions to organize for better wages and treatment. It was supported by the majority of Republicans in Congress and managed to pass despite President Truman’s veto attempt. Many historians believe that the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in response to the unprecedented level of strikes that the post-war United States witnessed in 1946. During, the war the vast majority of unions had agreed to refrain from strikes over wages and benefits to assist the war effort; however, with the war ended and wages falling across the country, strikes consistently broke out in almost all major American industries.

During his 1932 election campaign, Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised that within his first 100 days in office he would pass numerous measures through Congress that would address the economic issues brought about by the Great Depression. Most of these were immediate fixes, focused on helping people's immediate economic plight. Chief among these was a measure of insurance for money held in American banks, which protected banks and allowed them to stay open while also guaranteeing that citizens would have money available to them.

October of 1929 would see the start of the largest economic decline in American History. Once the stock market crashed, it started a series of events that would cause the accumulated wealth of most Americans to evaporate.

Hoover ran for president on the platform that government should not spend more than it takes in. As the Great Depression was in full swing, the government was bringing in much less in taxes than it needed to spend in order to operate. This meant the government could barely afford to support itself, never mind give relief to citizens, so Hoover decided to stick to principles and allow the economy to right itself.

The Cartels were groups of people who sold stock in companies they knew to be worthless that way the demand for those stocks would rise. This is when they would sell their own stocks at a huge profit, but leave all the people who had bought these stocks with nothing as they figured out the company they bought into was a sham.

The Stock Market Crash was not as many people think, the cause of the Great Depression, it simply signaled the start of the deep decline that was caused by a host of factors.

Hoovervilles were named after the President who many blamed for their woes. President Hoover's response to the Depression was considered slow, and when he did respond, inadequate. He generally did nothing to ease the suffering of American workers, and when he did do something it often only made matters worse.

The Bread line was a staple of most major cities in America in the 1930's. Each morning many people would line up looking for a meal, which as the name suggest, would usually consist of a piece of bread and possibly some soup. Often the length of these lines would far exceed the amount of food that was available.

The Dust Bowl was caused by farming techniques that stripped the Great Plains of their top soil. This mixed with a severe drought meant that the winds blowing across the plains cause massive dust storms that choked towns and cities, and destroyed the few crops that would still grow. This meant a mass migration of people would follow.

The massive overproduction meant that markets in America for these goods had a huge oversupply. This led to the prices of these goods to fall to incredible lows. This meant farmers could not make a profit off their harvests and many lost their farms.

FDR was voted into office for one reason, to help the nation recover from the Depression. His plan to pull the nation out of the economic hole it was in was to create a series of direct relief programs and reforms called the New Deal.

The Great Society is most similar to the New Deal because they both aim to help poor Americans by creating programs such as Medicare (Johnson) and Social Security (FDR). All of the other answer describe socially and fiscally conservative (some would say regressive) principles.

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a period of drought which caused massive dust storms and failed crops throughout the Great Plains. As a result of unproductive farmland, many people moved from Oklahoma, Texas, and California. If the Dust Bowl is unfamiliar, the 1930s should be a good clue that increased productivity or investment of any sort would be a wrong answer.

FDR's New Deal program was a massive economic undertaking that focused on three major areas (called the three R's, for simplicity): Relief, for the poor and unemployed; Recovery, for the depressed economy; Reform, of the financial and political system to ensure there would not be a repeat of the Great Depression. It is generally considered a turning point in American history when the bulk of the American people began to believe that Government direct intervention in the economy was a positive, not a negative. For the Democratic Party it ushered in an unprecedented level of popularity - propelling them to victory in seven of the next nine elections. For the Republican Party, it caused fracturing and realignment. It greatly expanded Social Security programs, but what it did not do is turn America into a welfare state. Most historians agree that America is too ruggedly "individualistic" for a true welfare state to govern - as has been evidence in the recent debate over health care in the Twenty-First Century.

The immediate cause of the Great Depression was the stock market crash of Black Tuesday, October 24, 1929. Many factors contributed to the worldwide crisis, but World War I debts were paid off as scheduled and the years following the 1919 Armistice were actually an economic boom time.

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation is a band of warm ocean water that develops off the western coast of South America and has been known to cause climatic change across the Pacific Ocean, but not the plains of America and Canada.

Historians generally find it impossible to identify just one or two causes for the Stock Market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. So a simple explanation is difficult, however the following factors were all relevant and need to be understood for the test: A weak banking system that did not garner consumer confidence caused many Americans to rush to the banks to withdraw their money the moment the crisis began causing rapid deterioration; A crippling tariff system that was closing the United States off to profitable trade with Europe; Far too much stock and property purchased on margin or credit (similar reasons to our modern recession); A complete lack of diversity in the American economy, as the industrial and car manufacturing industries were dwindling their was nothing rising to fill the gap, leading to widespread unemployment; Overproduction of crops causing prices to drop and farmers to be unable to make ends meet. Therefore we understand that there was no shortage of crops nor rapid food price inflation, quite the opposite. It is important to remember that there was no one single cause of the Great Depression, but rather it was a combination of several factors.