Did the 'Spanish flu' (1918-1920) contribute to the Great Depression (1929)?

[bobbieinok]

I don't remember ever seeing the 2 events put together.....

Edited to correct date of 'Spanish flu'

[SheltieLover]

1. Good question!

I'm not sure though.

[Takket]

2. According to drumpf it ended WW2 lol

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Not sure, but according to His Lardship it did end WWII.

[hlthe2b]

4. Spanish Flu pandemic was from 1918-1919. Please correct (Trump keeps saying 1917)

Some say circulation continued to April, 1920, but there is little disagreement that first cases were recognized in February, 1918 and the bulk of the pandemic occurred in 1918.

[empedocles]

10. You are correct. There was no Spanish flu, '29 Depression connection. There was a sharp,

deflationary recession in 1921 that was not related to the '29 Depression either. Some call the 1921 recession a depression. In any event, it was not related to the infamous '29 Depression.

'The Depression of 1920–1921 was a sharp deflationary recession in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries, beginning 14 months after the end of World War I. It lasted from January 1920 to July 1921.[1] The extent of the deflation was not only large, but large relative to the accompanying decline in real product.[2]

There was a two-year post–World War I recession immediately following the end of the war, complicating the absorption of millions of veterans into the economy. The economy started to grow, but it had not yet completed all the adjustments in shifting from a wartime to a peacetime economy. Factors identified as contributing to the downturn include returning troops, which created a surge in the civilian labor force and problems in absorbing the veterans; a decline in labor union strife; changes in fiscal and monetary policy; and changes in price expectations.

Following the end of the depression, the Roaring Twenties brought a period of economic prosperity between August 1921 and August 1929, one month before the stock market crash that triggered the start of the Great Depression.' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_of_1920%E2%80%93

[Bengus81]

5. Not in Kansas--and that's where that pandemic really started, or got a foothold

The economy of Kansas and Wichita was through the roof in the roaring 20's because of aviation. What caused the Depression IMO was the wild west Stock market and letting everyone buy stock on margin and endless mergers. You couldn't lose!!!

Well....not until mid summer of 1929 a good three months before the crash and the signs started in aviation. Sales of aircraft started dropping and dropping compared to 1928 and never picked up when temps cooled down in early Sept. When the crash hit it was instantaneous in that business.

The newly formed Beech Aircraft Co. in April 1932 came within a hair of bankruptcy by mid 1933. It would be well into 1934 before any signs of an uptick in aviation started happening again.

[Bucky]

9. The virus evolved in Kansas, but the surge in its spread was on the Western Front in France

The greatest cause of the Black Tuesday Crash in 1929 was the commodity glut in US manufacturing, where production surged based on productive capabilities rather than market demand. That is, they were making more than could be sold. Stock prices were being calculated based on productivity rather than consumer trends. In other words, the Great Depression occurred due to a lack of trade unionism.

[sanatanadharma]

13. Sounds to me like supply-side economics...

Sounds to me like supply-side economics brought about the great depression.

[Bucky]

14. They're not unrelated.

The argument for supply side economics is rooted in money supply, not product supply.

The Great Depression was a mix of laissez faire economics and simply piss poor management decisions, of which anti-unionism was just a single feature.

But the same type of well-educated idiots and gold leeches brought about both disasters.

[Wounded Bear]

6. There was a pretty good economic expansion...

called the Roaring 20's, so I don't think so.

There were plenty of purely economic reasons for the Great Depression, perhaps most importantly exploding credit and margin buying on the stock market. Perhaps our first real "bubble" of the modern era.

[Bucky]

7. I'm a history teacher. I've never heard the two events connected

The impact of the Spanish flu was significantly less than what we've faced with the Coronavirus for four reasons.

1. Economies are more globalized and more capitalized than they were in right after WW1. Our pandemic disrupts global trade for everyone, so it's not just a sequence of local events.

2. Covid19 also disrupts markets and drives more lay-offs than the Spanish flu did, a larger share of the economies of the industrialized countries are under corporate employment.

3. Today, we're more vulnerable because we're used to controlling the flu season. In early industrial America, the seasonal flu was a fact of life. People and economies were prepared for annual disruption. Because of wide-spread vaccinations and disease eradication programs, we're less prepared to take a month off and ride out the contagion.

4. Finally, coronavirus is more resilient than the Spanish flu virus. It went away in the summer months. The novel coronavirus has not. It's just kept chugging along all summer. It may or may not surge again in the autumn. We won't really know until we force all the schools to reopen and see how many teachers it kills.

[bobbieinok]

8. Thank you for your very interesting comment!

[TreasonousBastard]

11. Probably not, and I've never heard a non-crackpot economist say it did...

If anything, WWI had more to do with it, killing off over half the younger males in Europe.

No one has a real handle on what started the Depression, with the major theories being demand was down or monetary policy causing retractions.

There was also that nasty drought in the Midwest and its dust bowls. And the Gold Standard, which restricted the money supply. And trade was down, with everyone afraid trading partners were robbing us blind, leading to tariff wars, which made things worse.

And starvation in Europe which had a tough time recovering, leading to demagogues.

[comradebillyboy]

12. No but it did bring World War Two to an end. /s