On H. M. Oliver’s “Established Expectations and American Economic Policies”

Abstract

H. M. Oliver’s “Established Expectations and American Economic Policies” bears directly on a normative problem at the intersection of ethics and economics that has received much less attention from philosophers than from social scientists and policy makers: how should we respond to changes that threaten to disrupt established expectations? This problem remains as central today as it was seventy-five years ago. For Oliver, the threat came from the Great Depression, while today’s established expectations face challenges ranging from technological innovation to free trade to climate change. Oliver’s article makes three core claims: