Jeffersonian Democracy - Economics

Economics

Jeffersonian agrarians held that the economy of the United States should rely more on agriculture for strategic commodities than on industry. Jefferson specifically believed, "Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if He ever had a chosen people, whose breast He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue." However, Jeffersonian ideals are not opposed to all manufacturing; rather, he believed that all people have the right to work to provide for their own subsistence and that an economic system which undermines that right is unacceptable. Jefferson's fear was that unlimited expansion of commerce and industry would lead to the growth of a class of wage laborers who relied on others for income and sustenance. The workers would no longer be independent voters.

Jefferson's belief was that unlimited expansion of commerce and industry would lead to the growth of a class of wage laborers who relied on others for income and sustenance. Such a situation, Jefferson feared, would leave the American people vulnerable to political subjugation and economic manipulation. The solution Jefferson came up with was, as scholar Clay Jenkinson noted, "a graduated income tax that would serve as a disincentive to vast accumulations of wealth and would make funds available for some sort of benign redistribution downward."