Analysis Of Andrew Carnegie's Gospel Of Wealth

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Andrew Carnegie and Walter Rauschenbusch represent two opposing sides in the integration of Christian faith into society. Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth stated that the rich must reinvest their earnings into social programs that would benefit the poor without providing excess money that would enable them to spend frivolously on items that would not actually improve their overall situation. In contrast, Rauschenbusch was more concerned with the physical well being of those in lower classes. Both men wrote their works as a moral response to the rapid changes industrialization produced in their economies; similarly, today’s economy is rapidly changing as a result of technological development. However, morality has struggled to keep up with the exponential advancement in technology, leaving people with little …show more content…

Heavy industrialization in the United States created a new economic reality in which “the poor enjoy[ed] what the rich could not before afford” by decreasing the labor and money needed to produce material goods (Carnegie). However, it also created problems for the poor in the form of pollution, moral deterioration, and lack of interest in work (Rauschenbusch). Despite the fact that both works focused on a Christian approach to interacting with the economy, their conclusions differed greatly, with Carnegie arguing for the rich to continue to accumulate and distribute wealth to public projects, and Rauschenbusch calling for the rich to redistribute directly to projects that would improve the daily health and moral well being of the poor. While the beliefs were inherently different, their importance was the same. It mattered less what actions the men perceived to be the most beneficial, because both were actively engaging the moral implications of technological advances and their effect on the economy, something that few modern economists

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