Granular misery — the Great Depression and Now
Last edited Fri Dec 27, 2013, 04:04 PM - Edit history (1)
People who were around during the Great Depression learned that even if they had plenty of money in the 1930s it was common decency to pretend that it had been a tough time for them.
But for lots of people (30% or more, I'd guess) the Great Depression was pretty cool. If you have a steady income then your buying power greatly increased.
For every story where the sheriff auctioned off somebody's farm for $5, somebody else was buying a farm for $5. That's cool... if you have $5. Like all deflationaty eras, it was a great time to have money.
It wasn't that bad for the top third, or even top half, because the misery was granular. Lumpy. Insecurity was high, of course, which is not fun, but financially it was okay for most people. (51% is most people.) It was a national calamity on average.
There is a big political difference between 25% of people being unemployed and thus having a pay-cut of 100%, and cutting the income of everyone by 25%.
Same thing with health insurance in the modern era. The misery has been granular. The misery is concentrated in individual grains of utter disaster, rather than the misery being evenly spread through society.
And we, as a society, can take a lot of granular misery before reaching a tipping point where the pitch-fork weilding peasants storm the Bastille.
However, take something that is not granular—the price of gasoline. Everyone pays the same. So people pitch a fit and give up on America and hate incumbent politicians when the price of gas goes up 50 fricking cents.
But if the price of gas went up $5.00 for only 10% of the population... well, sucks to be them. And that 10% would be on TV yelling, and the other 90% would be going, "Look at those crazy malcontents on my TV."
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