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Professor John Simoulidis
SOSC 1340
Friday, December 2, 2016
Does the Wealth of a Country Simulate Prosperity?
Throughout the nations, there are many that are facing the controversy question of ‘is a
wealthy nation a prosperous nation?’ There are many elements that come into play to decide
whether the wealth of a nation leads to prosperity. In the current society, today, there are some
nations where the answer to this question is the wealth of nations does not lead to a prosperous
nation. In a reading by Charles Dickens, Hard Times, there is much suffering among families
even though the country is producing a healthy amount of goods which provides enough wealth
to spread around the people. Similarly, Upton Sinclair writes about a family’s travel in a book
called The Jungle. The family in this story proves that there are many individuals that can fool
other persons into gaining more money. For this reason, there are many aspects in classifying
whether a wealthy nation is a prosperous nation. In current society, certain influences prevent a
wealthy nation to be a prosperous nation which would be the imposition of division of labour,
the establishment of government interventions, and the workers’ rights for freedom in the work
place.
Firstly, wealthy nations impose division of labour on workers to create the most efficient
outcome during the work process. This theory by Adam Smith creates oppression on people who
want to find a job; they are forced to specialize in a field so that they can successfully earn
money. Dickens shows that an abounding number of workers being selected to perform a job,
“Set anywhere, side by side, the work of God and the work of man; and the former, even though
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it would be a troop of hands of very small account, will gain in dignity from the comparison”
(Dickens 40). The character in this chapter, Stephen Blackpool, is being put in the spotlight
about how he lives his life and the job he is currently regretting. All the workers that surround
Blackpool have a skill set that allows them to do a specialized work diligently and efficiently. In
every workplace, there are always skilled workers who are exceptional at the job they perform.
As he observes this occurrence, Dickens mentions, “He took no place among those
remarkable ‘Hands,’ who, piecing together their broken intervals of leisure through many years,
had mastered difficult sciences, and acquired a knowledge of most unlikely things” (Dickens 37).
Blackpool represents the misery of workers who cannot participate in positions that require high
specialization. He constantly glimpses at the workers that have superior skills then discloses to
himself that he is unworthy of doing such jobs in his lifetime. In Twenty-First Century
Capitalism, by Robert Heilbroner, it mentions, “An individual who owns no capital is perfectly
free to labour as he or she wishes, and may, in facet, become very successful using only the
property of his or her body…” (Heilbroner 29). When Heilbroner addresses the situation where
individuals can freely do what they wish to do, those individuals are the ones that Blackpool
constantly glimpses at whenever he works. These individuals have the motivation to achieve
their hopes and dreams in life as opposed to Blackpool who always contemplates on why he is in
a worse position than them. Dickens writes about how Blackpool is stuck with a position that he
is inadequate in while someone else takes the position where he is more efficient. He also
compares Blackpool being cemented in an animus job and someone stealing his desired job by
saying, “It is said every life has tis roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a
misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his
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roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own”
(Dickens 37).
As a result of Blackpool’s lack of talent, he is fastened in a position that he would dislike
for the rest of his life while the other individuals are taking his most desired job and enjoying
their lives. This result that Blackpool creates is similar to what Heilbroner says in Twenty-First
Century Capitalism. Heilbroner writes, “But anyone who has no such personal talents must pay
for the privilege of making use of wealth that belongs to others” (Heilbroner 29). In comparison
to Blackpool, Heilbroner describes certain individuals to be incapable of achieving new heights
due to a lack of a certain skill level in order for them to become successful and use their own
wealth to drive themselves forward. With Heilbroner’s analysis, Blackpool’s life is similar to
what Heilbroner has to say in a sense where Blackpool does not have the skills to move up the
