Franklin's Thrift

The Lost History of an American Virtue

AvDavid Blankenhorn,Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

Inbunden, Engelska, 2009

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Beskrivning

Americans today often think of thrift as a negative value-a miserly hoarding of resources and a denial of pleasure. Even more telling, many Americans don’t even think of thrift at all anymore. Franklin’s Thrift challenges this state of mind by recovering the rich history of thrift as a quintessentially American virtue. The contributors to this volume trace how the idea and practice of thrift have been a vital part of the American vision of economic freedom and social abundance. For Benjamin Franklin, who personified and promoted the idea, thrift meant working productively, consuming wisely, saving proportionally, and giving generously. Franklin’s thrift became the cornerstone of a new kind of secular faith in the ordinary person’s capacity to shape his lot and fortune in life. Later chapters document how thrift moved into new domains in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It became the animating idea behind social movements to promote children’s school savings, create mutual savings banks and credit unions for working men and women, establish a federal savings bond program, and galvanize the nation to conserve resources during two world wars. Historians, enthusiasts of Americana or traditional American virtues, and anyone interested in resolving our society’s current financial woes will find much to treasure in this diverse collection, with topics ranging from the inspirational lessons we can learn from the film It’s a Wonderful Life to a history of the roles played by mutual savings banks, credit unions, and thrift stores in America’s national thrift movement. It also includes actual policy recommendations for our present situation.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2009-05-01
Mått:152 x 229 x 25 mm
Vikt:454 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:272
Förlag:Templeton Foundation Press,U.S.
ISBN:9781599471488

Utforska kategorier

Religion: allmänt inom Filosofi och religion

Mer om författaren

David Blankenhorn is the founder and president of the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan organization devoted to strengthening families and civil society in the U.S. and the world. For the past three years, he has led an initiative at the institute to study thrift. A 1998 profile in the New York Times described Blankenhorn as a “consensus builder for a moral base in society.” He lives in New York City with his wife, Raina, their son, Raymond, and their two daughters, Sophia and Alexandra. Sorcha Brophy-Warren is a doctoral student in sociology at Yale University. Previously she was an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, where she researched thrift and wrote a literature review of business ethics curricula. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is the codirector of Rutger’s University’s National Marriage Project and an award-winning journalist. Her books include Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman and The Divorce Culture.

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction / ixDavid Blankenhorn, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, and Sorcha Brophy-Warren Part One: Franklin’s Thrift: The Creation of an American Value 1. Franklin’s Way to Wealth / 3Barbara Dafoe Whitehead Part Two: Thrift after Franklin: Institutions and Movements 2. U.S. Mutual Savings Banks and the “Savings Bank Idea”: The Virtue of Thrift as an Institutional Value / 29Sorcha Brophy-Warren 3. Thrift for a New Century: Public Discussions about Thrift in the 1910s and 1920s / 57Sara Butler Nardo 4. A Century of Thrift Shops / 97Alison Humes 5. I n Savings We Trust: Credit Unions and Thrift / 127Clifford N. Rosenthal Part Three: For a New Thrift: Meeting the Twenty-First Century Challenge 6. Confronting the American Debt Culture / 145Barbara Dafoe Whitehead 7. Crafting Policies to Encourage Thrift in Contemporary America / 165 Alex Roberts 8. Private Enterprise’s Role in Increasing Savings / 187Ronald T. Wilcox Conclusion / 207David Blankenhorn, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, and Sorcha Brophy-Warren Notes / 211 Contributors / 243 Index / 247