What Was a Result of the Laissez-Faire Economic Policies Followed by the Federal Government Between the Civil?

Question by Sal: What was a result of the laissez-faire economic policies followed by the Federal Government between the Civil?
War and 1990?

A) Consumers benefited from government regulation of prices in the oil and steel industries.
B)Employers used their profits to improve wages and working conditions for their employees.
C)Entrepreneurs created trusts and monopolies to maintain control of the market.
D)Lower tariffs increased foreign trade and the sale of United States goods abroad.

Best answer:

Answer by simplicitus
None of the above. The Federal government did NOT follow laissez-faire policies.
Laissez-fAire means “hands off”, “no intervention”, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire

It does NOT mean “no regulation.

The government may not have regulated all that much, but it actively promoted the big business interests with subsidies of all sorts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railway_Acts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_welfare
http://www.essential.org/features/corporatesocialism.html
http://internationalecon.com/Trade/Tch20/T20-3.php

supported the corporations against the workers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_busting

etc. None of this is laissez faire.

Even Republicans such as Eisenhower realized the extent to which the government was involved with the big corporations was dangerous for the country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex

In those cases where the government did keep hands off, at the request of big business, we got major shocks: the Great Depression and the current/recent recession as the most obvious examples.

BTW, note that all of the above is true even if you meant 1890 and not 1990. Instead of the Great Depression and the current recession, I’d use the Long Depression (1873 – 1879) as an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

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