Historians From The United States

"By the middle of my second graduate year, I was committed to writing the history of early woman suffrage, which became my first book Feminism and Suffrage, as my doctoral degree. I had two professors: Christopher Lasch (while recognizing my ability, disparaged the topic) and Robert Wiebe (an historian of American democracy, gave me great support). I soon connected with two senior women doing women’s history, Anne Firor Scott and Gerda Lerner, and with about a dozen other young scholars, all graduate students, following their women’s liberation inclinations into history."

"The new book – Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote – is the first comprehensive, evidence-based history of the American suffrage movement to appear since 1959. That book [Century of Struggle] was written by Eleanor Flexner...Since Flexner wrote her superb book–on which I and virtually every other suffrage historian has relied–there has been tremendous amounts of new research that has enhanced our picture of the suffrage movement, or I might say, suffrage movements, particularly on the activism of African-American women, who were segregated out of the white-dominated movement in the late 19th and early 20th century."

"Feminism was an entirely political movement then. Those of us in gradate school who began raising these issues in fields (history, anthropology, literature, etc.) did not think of ourselves as entering or even pioneering an academic field but rather producing serious intellectual resources for our movement. At the time, it hardly seemed like a smart academic move: there were no positions, no recognition from our profession. When it came time to get jobs, those of us who found them did so because women students pressed their colleges and universities for a different kind of education and some of those institutions–mostly public ones–reluctantly gave in. That’s how I got my first job at the State University of New York at Buffalo, as part of one of two or three women’s studies programs in the country."

"My first article, published in 1970 in a movement journal entitled Women: A Journal of Liberation, was focused on the first historical figures that caught my attention: Sarah and Angelica Grimke. From there, I moved on to Seneca Falls and the early women’s rights movement and Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (to whom I have remained attached ever since)."

"The meltdown of 2008 was a wasted crisis... because the homeowners were not bailed out. The financial sector was bailed out, the banks... the bankers... but... 8 million homeowners were thrown out of their homes."

"Usually the relationship between the true unemployment rate and the official unemployment rate is 2:1."

"[A]cademics and politicians continue to sing the praises of abstract markets as if... descended... from heaven while maintaining... silence about the fact that without government help, countless... corporations would have landed in the dustbin of history."

"[M]uch work remains to be done before we have even a complete of Europe and America. ...The contributions to this volume testify to the fact that much has already been accomplished. ...It is important that the research continue, inasmuch as it promises to illuminate a large number of problems."

"The new normal is what I call Bailout capitalism because Ben Bernanke put a lot of money [creation of $trillions by the Federal Reserve] into the financial sector."

"Here is the , 2008... the assets of the Federal Reserve is under $1 trillion... and within weeks you have more than a doubling of the assets of the Federal Reserve, and then comes 2 and... 3 and by that time you're at $4 1/2 trillion... and then... comes the Covid crisis and we're up to $7 trillion. Now... that kind of a Capitalism is unsustainable. ...[N]o wonder that there is asset inflation as a consequence... and the stock market went through the roof."

"[F]our economists have received Nobel Prizes for Behavioral economics... [T]hat should be the default model. ...Forget about rationality. That's a silly assumption."

"The financial crisis of 2008 illustrated... how markets often go haywire, yet textbooks remain unchanged, failing to convey the fundamental flaws and systematic weaknesses of the free-market system."

"In all studies without exception, the positive relationship between social status and physical stature has been consistently documented in various societies and at different times. ...[E]ven in egalitarian America, social standing affected height throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the wake of the New Deal, these effects became less pronounced as became less skewed."

"Economists disregard the... crucial result that people can be conditioned and... corporations can take advantage of that."

"[N]utritional advantages of the were quite pronounced by the early eighteenth century. Thereafter, the height of the American population was above European norms until the mid-twentieth century, confirming the extent to which the new... environment was favorable from a human biological point of view."

"The ideological commitment to "," ...has brought us to our current, precarious situation."

"So why were economists so wrong? The problem is that economics is an axiomatic theory, it's deductive, based on assumptions almost all of which are false [with] too many omitted factors, and they don't care about contradictions. They don't care about people killing themselves... That's not an economic problem."

"IQ, intelligence quotient is normally distributed. ...The smart can take advantage of those with low IQ. That's not going to be the basis of a good economy and a good democracy if if people take advantage of one another. ...That's especially true of an educational system that is mediocre for a goodly portion of the population."

"The US became a dual economy... which generated a lot of despair. Half the population is doing well and the other half is getting by... or getting by in very difficult circumstances... Trump would not have won otherwise in 2016. That's the basis of the Trump revolution... against... the political elite, the foreign policy elite, the intellectual elites."

"The Gallup poll says that half of the population is doing well, 52%... thriving, but the rest are either struggling or suffering... 44% struggling means that they have a very difficult time meeting their obligations. That's not a good economy."

"The recent election of Donald Trump was fueled by... an economic system that skews its benefits to a select few and leaves too many... scrambling to eke out a bare existence."

"[I]n the United States... southerners were 1.5 cm taller than men of the more industrialized North, even though the per capita income was greater in the North. ...Although England had a higher per capita income... as much as 25%, its soldiers were shorter than those of the United States in the eighteenth century. A century later, Irish recruits into the Union Army were taller than soldiers born in England, although English per capital income was... higher..."

"[I]n Europe the quantity of land under cultivation could be expanded only slowly; therefore, population growth ran again into Malthusian ceilings in the eighteenth century. The subsequent rise in food prices led to a decline in consumption, particularly of meat, because the for meat was much greater than that of grains."

"[S]o far all anthropometric studies have indicated substantial gender-based differences in the biological standard of living during episodes of economic change. ...[F]emales began to experience nutritional stress earlier than men during a downturn and were less likely to show improvements in an upswing."

"[A] more unequal distribution in income will have a negative effect on the mean height of a population."

"[T]eachers of economics should admit... that while markets do well in some circumstances they only do so within an appropriate institutional framework and... in others... [they] often tip the stream of benefits toward a few insiders."

"Being isolated from markets... had its advantages as long as the population density did not exceed the carrying capacity of the land, because subsistence peasants/farmers had little choice but to consume all of their own food output. Once they became integrated... they had to compete with other segments of the population for food, which tended to impinge on their nutritional intake..."

"The great power for good which the University of Virginia has exercised, during these first one hundred years, is too subtle, too far spread, and too voluminous, to be gauged to the farthest limits."

"Friedrich Hayek made a tremendous mistake in arguing that The Road to Serfdom leads through tyrannical governments... because there are multiple roads to serfdom... [A]nother... leads through the tyranny of oligarchs."

"[I]f we're not able to shift our paradigms, if we are stuck in the Arrow–Debreu world, then we're going to become the neoserfs of the oligarchs. Just like Aldous Huxley predicted in his novel, a Brave New World"

"[[w:Humanistic economics|[H]umanistic economics]] advocates a creation of a capitalism with a human face. That requires a paradigm shift... away from a rat race, [away from] a social Darwinistic economy with a few winners and many losers."

"[T]he current system depends too much on luck. If you choose your parents right and you live in a decent neighborhood, you can grow up and become a productive member of the society... and John Rawls argues that... [luck] cannot be the basis of a just society."

"I am advocating... a new paradigm of humanistic Rawlsian economics which puts human beings at the center... and not income, not growth, not GNP..."

"Rawls says... let's design an economy... in such a way that you would be willing to enter that society at random. That's a just society... You don't know your position in it. You don't know whether you're smart or dumb. You don't know your skin color. You don't know your gender. You don't know your parents. You don't know anything about yourself. ...[In that case] we wouldn't design a society like it is today. You would make sure that there is an equitable distribution of power.... that the power is not concentrated... that there is countervailing power, that wealth is not concentrated..."

"Capitalism with a human face would require the elimination of poverty... the reduction of inequality... the establishment of real true... ... a less stressful life. ...Economists disregard stress."

"Today 21% of [total] annual income goes to 1% of households. ...That cannot be the basis of a good democracy."

"Reagan lowered the taxes on the top bracket and that made the [top] 1%... super rich."

"Blackboard economists said that globalization would be good for Americans. ...It had a few winners and... many losers. ...It ...led to an epidemic of Deaths of Despair in which so much was destroyed in America. Hyper-globalization destroyed... neighborhoods and cities and everything in the ... It was like an atomic bomb hit... Alcohol poisoning, drug overdoses accelerated... the destruction of human lives."

"[H]ousing prices had doubled by 2005 in 10 years time, which would have made sense if incomes had also increased substantially, but they didn't."

"Deregulation was supposed to make the economy more efficient... but instead it led to the financial crisis... and Blackboard Economists did not even see the crisis coming when it was around the corner."

"[M]arkets were not made in heaven... and they are helping the privileged, as they are constituted today."

"[M]ainstream economics is fundamentally flawed [and] ignores the elephant in the room, which is the real existing economy."

"Less anxiety, less insecurity and less crime. That's Capitalism with a human face, and you can read more about it in my textbook..."

"There must be something wrong with an economics that fosters a system that leaves so many... stranded that they strike back at the establishment by voting for a leader such as Donald Trump."

"One need not be a native utopian to be appalled by a society... [of] gross inequality..."

"[T]his book is dedicated to a new kind of economics that promotes Capitalism with a Human Face."

"[F]ree markets, being a human invention, often become dysfunctional; they do not deserve our blind faith."

"[R]andom allocation at the start of life cannot... be the basis of a good society."

"[T]here are better ways to measure progress than in terms of money."

"George Akerlof, Kenneth Arrow, Daniel Kahneman, Paul Krugman, Thomas Schelling, Herbert Simon, Robert Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, , and Oliver Williamson... these Nobel Prize winning economists... are usually excluded from mainstream Econ 101 textbooks or relegated to obscure footnotes. ...[I]ntroductory textbooks hype a free-market utopia ...Hence ...do not help to understand the essentials of the real existing market economies... Rather, they present a caricature at a level of abstraction that creates a fantasy world and distorts the student's vision... [A] stereotype that markets are efficient... automatically leading to a blissful life, and they continue to sing the praises... keeping any demurrals muted."