The Policies of Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson - Essay Example

He also has a high regard towards the upper-class and educated men as the fittest to become the country’s leaders. Opposing the political views of Hamilton is Jackson’s democratic-republicanism. He stressed out the ordinary people’s right to vote and the first president to represent all Americans, regardless of their social standing (“The Presidency”). He is known to be Hamilton’s critic who contradicts federalism ideals. He regarded Hamilton’s views as elitist and idealistic.

Relationship to Modern America Today, the American Federal government is a combination of two political views. It takes Hamilton’s view on the independence of government branches and Jackson’s idealism on suffrage. States also are given freedom provided that they also follow the national law. In other words, today’s politics resemble both political views. First, the elitist perspective of Hamilton is still surviving, although discouraged by modern thought. Many of the politicians today are with high educational background and came from influential families.

Second, Jefferson’s state independence is practiced. State leaders are given the freedom to revise existing laws or to make laws not found with the rest of the states (e.g. legal drinking age). Economic Views By the end of the American Revolution, the country has to face a tremendous economic problem. There is an estimated $54 million debt of the United States while it only has barely half of the amount as their asset (“Alexander Hamilton’s”). Clearly, there is a huge deficit in the country’s economic budget.

To address this problem, Alexander Hamilton was given the task to regulate all forms of economic activities until it stabilizes. As young as he was at that time, he regarded taxation and debt management as a two-way street to economic stability. He proposed that all states should be imposed by appropriate taxes for debt payment. Although states that are already debt-free at that time resisted against this proposal, it is still pursued and became successful. The next move by Hamilton was to establish the Bank of the United States as “modeled from the Bank of England” (“Alexander Hamilton’s”) to take care of the collected taxes.

While concerned with the nation’s debt payment, unlike Hamilton, Jackson disagrees with imposing taxes on states and became an advocate of the Laissez-Faire economy. This means to say that states are free to make international economic relations and other local economic activities without the imposition of taxes or the intervention of the national government (Ambrose and Martin 33). Despite the success of Hamilton's implementation of taxes and debt management, Jackson believes that an economy is better off without the presence of both.

Since his younger years, Jackson hated debt in general, more so with national debt (Smith).