Interest groups seeking influence in public policy making
Interest groups are clusters of people that come into existent to make stresses on government. The leading interest groups that are located in the United States are financial or occupational, but a range of other clusters--philosophical, public interest, foreign policy, government itself, and ethnic, religious, and cultural--have memberships that cut across the big economic groupings; thus, their influence is both reduced and stabilized. Actions of great amounts of individuals who are irritated with government strategies have continuously been with us in the United States.
U.S. History Midterm Exam Essay Questions, Two
Classical and laissez faire economic theories that had developed in a period when capitalism was small-scale no longer applied to a system of giant industrial and financial cartels and monopolies. By the 1880s and 1890s, as the U.S. became the leading industrial power in the world, it was already clear to Populists and Progressives that previous political and economic theories about capitalism and the proper role of the state would have to be greatly revised—in a more regulatory and socialistic direction, even if the actual "s" word was not used. John Maynard Keynes became the most important economist during the era of Fordism and industrial capitalism, and his views generally reflected those of Progressives, social democrats and New Dealers. He argued that capitalism did not produce full employment in the absence of fiscal and monetary stimulus from the central government, which would increase aggregate demand (Mankiw 770). Reduced government spending, balanced budgets and austerity measures were not the correct way to deal with depressions, although this had been the standard government response in the depressions of the 1840s, 1870s and 1890s—