Merrill Lynch reported last week that the number of millionaires in the United States and Canada has risen almost 40 percent since 1997 to 2.5 million. As for ordinary Americans, they view the country's greatest problems as moral. Get used to it. There's a regular cycle, he says. Changing technologies and economic conditions collide with moral values to produce spiritual crises, social reform and political upheavals.
People strive to impose a moral framework on new economic realities.
Technology drives these moral reappraisals by altering how we live, Fogel says. By 1860 the trip had dropped to seven days, while the costs and hazards had declined about 90 percent. Cheaper and safer travel encouraged immigration. This led to bigger, more chaotic cities and fed a sense of moral crisis. By the 1890s, the focus on individual sin was shifting to society's sins.