History 479B
Devine/Adams
Fall 2012
FINAL EXAM STUDY
GUIDE
FINAL
EXAMINATION: Thursday, December 13th, 12:45-2:45 pm, 288 Sierra Hall
The final
will cover all lectures and readings since the midterm.
The final
will have the same basic format as the midterm.
ALL questions will be drawn
directly from the review questions listed below.
In Part I (70%), you will answer 7 of 10 short essay questions. Provide as much specific information
as you can – SHOW, don’t tell.
Demonstrate why something is true, don’t just assert it. A one or two
sentence answer is insufficient if you wish to receive full credit.
In Part II (30%), you will answer 2 of 4 long essay questions. Be sure you state your answer to the
question at the very beginning – this is your thesis. Then, using specific examples, spend the rest of the essay
demonstrating that your thesis is true. Don’t write in generalities or
assertions – give specific facts that support your case.
PLEASE BRING AN UNMARKED GREEN
BOOK WITH YOU TO CLASS.
Final Exam Study Questions
- After the war, why did European
nations need American dollars? In
what ways did Americans help to get these dollars into European
hands? In what ways did United
States make it difficult for Europeans to get these dollars?
- What were the international
consequences of American businessmen and bankers’ decisions to establish
factories or capital investments in some foreign countries but not in
others? For these nations, what
were the tradeoffs of the U.S. economic presence in their country?
- What was the economic impact of the
Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? How and
why did such a bill get passed?
- How were both “politics” and the
inaction of the Federal Reserve responsible for the banking collapse in
March 1933? (Capagna article)
- Why does Jim Powell believe FDR’s
raising taxes and tariffs in 1933 was a bad decision? Why does be believe high taxes fostered
continued high rates of unemployment?
- Through the NRA, New Dealers
(often veterans of the War Industries Board) sought to establish a planned
economy that would eliminate the negative aspects of competition and
replace them with harmonious, well-ordered government-business-labor
relations. Is this how things worked out?
Why didn’t the NRA live up to the reformers’ hopes?
- The AAA sought to raise
agricultural prices, raise tariffs, and “dump” American products on
foreign markets in order to give relief to American farmers. Why does Powell believe these policies
were ill-advised?
- Though David Kennedy concedes
that the New Deal did not bring economic recovery, he argues that FDR’s
reform program did produce numerous favorable consequences in the long run.
What were they and why were they significant?
- Why does Anthony Badger disagree with
those who claim that New Deal reforms merely extended the power of big
business and undermined more radical ideas and solutions to the nation’s
economic problems? What evidence
does he introduce to show this was not the case?
- According to Anthony Badger, what
were the external constraints (those outside FDR’s control) that kept the
New Deal from achieving its reform goals in full? How did these
constraints limit the intended impact of New Deal programs?
- What was “hard core” unemployment?
Why was it so hard for the “hard core” unemployed to find jobs?
- The conventional wisdom that
higher unemployment causes lower wages was not true in the 1930s. Instead,
real hourly wages held steady or rose. Why did businessmen persist in
paying high wages even in the midst of the crisis of the Great
Depression? Why did increasing
wages – to an “efficiency wage” – increase profits?
- According to Jensen, what three
policies did the New Deal not
pursue to combat the Depression? Why were these potential remedies not
tried?
- What factors – “push” and “pull”
– account for the African American migration from the South in the years
after World War I? Why have some
referred to this migration as the “second emancipation”?
- What evidence does Mandel cite to
demonstrate an “incremental chipping away at the structure of the
plantation economy” from 1900-1939? What structural/economic forces were
at work here? What were blacks themselves doing to undermine the
plantation economy?
- How did the beginning of World
War II affect the plantation economy? What specific factors doomed the old
system of production?
- According to Mandle, “the civil
rights movement was born precisely because the South had begun to change.”
(95) How does he connect these two
developments? Why does he argue that economic and structural factors
explain why the Civil Rights Movement was more successful in the South
than in the North?
- African Americans did well in the
1950s and 1960s, but by the 1970s this economic progress seemed to ebb.
Why did this happen? Who or what
was to blame? Why did this
development produce more inequality within the African American
population?
- What factors – political,
economic, organizational, and ideological – kept the United States and the
Roosevelt administration from launching an efficient, streamlined,
long-range plan for mobilization in the months and years leading up to
World War II?
- Why could one argue that the New
Dealers in the Roosevelt administration hindered the process of rearmament
and mobilization for World War II?
According to William O’Neill, why did they prefer a
“politically correct” war effort to an efficient one?
- Why do Stephen Horwitz and
Michael McPhillips believe that is wrong to say World War II restored
economic prosperity to the daily lives of most American people?
- After World War II, what steps
did national leaders take to avoid the international economic instability
that had occurred after World War I?
- How did Eisenhower’s economic
policies differ from Truman’s? How
did his policies reflect the conservative view of the source of wealth and
the need for stability of prices?
- What were some of the major
transformations in the US economy during the 1950s?
- How did the “three C’s” – cars,
construction, and credit – contribute to ‘50s prosperity?
- What were the three major lines
of the “Keynes-cum-growth” economic policy? (see Collins, p. 18 ff) How
did this policy differ markedly from New Deal economic policy? How did the
success of “Keynes-cum-growth” policies affect the national mood?
- How did the assumptions of
“growth liberalism” help shape U.S. defense policy and foreign policy?
(Flexible response, “usable power,” the escalation of the Vietnam war,
etc.)
- Why did Johnson’s insistence on
pursuing a “guns-and-butter” policy destroy his presidency, and, arguably,
discredit liberalism more broadly?
- What does “Populuxe” mean? What kind of style, attitude, and way of
life does this word describe?
- In Populuxe Thomas Hine argues that both historians and the
contemporary critics of the suburbs were out of sync with suburban
residents. What evidence does he offer to suggest that the conventional
wisdom about conformity in the suburbs of the 1950s is wrong?
- According to Nickles, why did
working-class taste not only persist
as blue-collar families became more prosperous but also pervade the mass market?
- During the 1950s, the cultural
critic Vance Packard accused marketers of designing status symbols like
the tail fin and chrome covered refrigerator as a way of fostering status
anxiety and encouraging conspicuous consumption. How does Nickles’ article call into
question Packard’s notion of a conspiracy of manipulating marketers “fooling”
consumers?
- Despite the lavish advertising
campaign that accompanied its introduction, why didn’t the Ford Edsel
sell?
- What arguments did President
Kennedy make for a tax cut even though the economy was doing fairly well?
What results did the tax cut produce once it went into effect in 1964?
- What are “conglomerates”? What
were some of the factors that led to the formation of more conglomerates
after World War II? What advantages
did conglomerates offer for businessmen? Why did the “conglomerate craze”
of the 1960s end badly?
- What steps did the government and
the private sector take to fuel the “go-go” stock market of the 1960s?
- What were the pros and cons of
government-funded health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid?
- What impact did increasing oil
prices have on the US economy? Why
did high oil prices limit economic growth? Why did controlling the price
of domestically produced oil not solve the problem?
- How did the expectation of
inflation make it harder to control inflation? What role did labor unions
play in fueling the spiral of inflation?
- What is the difference between
fiscal and monetary policy? How did Keynesians and monetarists differ
regarding the role government should play in the economy?
- How did deregulation and
increasing worker productivity help control inflation without increasing
unemployment?
- Why did many Americans initially
support Jimmy Carter? How did a
Carter presidency promise to be different than what had come before (i.e.
Johnson, Nixon)? How did Carter’s
approach to the office differ from that of his predecessors’? Why,
ultimately, did he prove to be an ineffective president?
- Why, according to Bruce Schulman,
was the great inflation of the 1970s “a transformative event?” (p. 131) What
changes occurred? Why was inflation
such a big deal?
- How did inflation affect
attitudes about credit, spending, and investing? How did it help to produce changes in
the way people did their banking?
- What was “stagflation” and why
did it contradict conventional economic wisdom? Why did it prove so devastating for the
economic position of those Americans near the bottom of the economic
spectrum – the unemployed, the elderly and those on fixed incomes, etc. –
and even average Americans (those trying to save for their children’s
college education, for example)?
- What role did Federal Reserve
Chairman Paul Volcker play in fighting inflation after his appointment in
1979? What policies did he pursue? What
were their effects?
- According to Wells and Sloan, why
did the U.S. economy begin to recover after 1982?
- In what areas did the Reagan
economic policies of the 1980s succeed and why? In what areas did they fail to achieve
their goals and why?
- What role did broader social
developments and changes in the economic structure play in widening the
gap between rich and poor during the 1980s? What trends in particular were most
significant?
- What were the pros and cons of
“downsizing” and corporate reorganization?
According to Wells, how can a country “downsize” its way to
prosperity?
- What factors caused the high
deficits that characterized the Reagan/Bush years? (Note that there is
some disagreement on this issue.)
What impact did these deficits have on the economy? Did they matter?
- What factors account for the
increasing economic inequalities of the Reagan/Bush years?
- After taking office, why did
President Clinton decide to abandon his plans for increased public
investment and instead focus on reducing the deficit and free trade?
- What role did new information
technology play in increasing worker productivity during the 1990s?
- What factors contributed to the
economic prosperity of the 1990s?
To what extent was the prosperity due policies pursued by the
Clinton administration and the Federal Reserve? To what extent was it due
to structural changes in the economy beyond the control of the federal
government?