Recession or Depression -- Are We Really Better Off Than in the 1930s?

[marmar]

Recession or Depression -- Are We Really Better Off Than in the 1930s?
[font color="green"]The Investigative Reporting Workshop[/font], News Report, Kat Aaron, Posted: Dec 25, 2011


Some call this moment the Great Recession. As the hardship has lingered, others have begun calling it the Little Depression. But equating the hard times of the 1930s with the hard times of today is mostly overblown rhetoric. Or is it?

On the surface, the comparisons are obvious: a period of great wealth and exuberance, followed by a stock market crash. After the crash, widespread economic pain. Millions of people out of work, thousands of homes lost. Families going hungry.

But much has changed. There is social security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, none of which existed when the Depression hit. Breadlines and shantytowns, emblems of the Depression, are nowhere to be seen. Today, though, there is great hardship out of view. Behind closed doors, apartments and shelters are overcrowded, and cupboards are bare.

In interviews with dozens of people who lived through the Great Depression, both similarities and differences between the eras emerge. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://newamericamedia.org/2011/12/recession-or-depression----are-we-really-better-off-than-in-the-1930s.php

[geefloyd46]

1. To the people who run the country depression has been stricken from the English language

It won't be called depression because depression is bad. It is just another case of how the elites in this country believe the words they choose totally shape the message. It's almost like when the Russians use to erase people from their history text books. I also don't think that the role this economic mess has created has totally taken it's eventual form. By the 30s, in Europe, it was starting to get the sence that it was taking a very dark turn.

[Minarchist]

2. Not even close...

The Great Depression


The Great Recession

[daa]

7. Wrong when I see the sheriff dump

the contents of two homes in the front yard on a foreclosure and the vultures come by and take the stuff that is 1930. The blip in the stock market 1930s. The only difference is we have Obama, the dems and pugs destroying the social safety net from unemployment to Medicare to Social Security. And worry about the deficit, so 1930s.

[bongbong]

9. Your second cartoon

The government DOES help out in these - and normal - times. If you think "the government" (which is just the people that YOU & I elect) is taking too much money from your pocket, you should try Somalia. A tax-free haven, no "big government" to hurt you. Otherwise, taxes are the cost of living in a civilized society.

I'm glad you're visiting DU to see what reality looks like. Enjoy your (brief) stay.

[Minarchist]

10. Somalia is in a state of anarchy, i.e., might makes right.

I prefer the concept of certain unalienable rights,...

And That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government,...

[bongbong]

13. wrong again

Somalia is NOT in a state of anarchy. You're wrong again. The feudal/religious courts are very active, and keep things in order on a very local basis. Go there, you'll get rid of your hated "big government".

[Downwinder]

3. I think I'll wait until we find a bottom to make a comparison.

There are still a lot of toxic derivatives out there.

In the thirties there was a lot of locally grown food.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Yes, that's right.

A depression hits rural people very differently than it does an urban population. Farmers can grow their own food, as you noted.

As an interesting sidenote, the rich were doing quite well in the 30's, and there was a market for luxury goods. My father & his brothers trapped beaver, mink, muskrats & fox for the pelts. A prime beaver pelt could go for $5, which could be a week's wages at the time. (Beaver is rather tasty, too.)

I also had an older cousin who hated venison until the day he died in the 1990's because he had to eat so much of it in the 30's.

[PETRUS]

12. Hitting bottom

Some economists compare today's environment unfavorably to the great depression in one key way - during the '30s, there was a higher rate of forward-looking investment than we have today. That is, when WWII provoked massive fiscal stimulus, the pump had already been primed. Today, our infrastructure is crumbling.

[geefloyd46]

4. I think the hungry homeless children are waiting for the guy with all the money to drop by

Hunger in America exists for nearly 49 million people. That is 1 in 6 of the U.S. population – including more than 1 in 5 children. I am not one of them. I just work around them.

http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america.aspx

[Cigar11]

6. The fact that we’re in the Internet even asking this question …

Is nothing short of humorous

[xchrom]

8. interesting. nt

[treestar]

11. We do have some social safety net now

Food stamps, welfare, social security. Unemployment never got as high as during the Great Depression. We have a lot more ability to move things and help people who are victims of natural disasters, so something like the Dust Bowl would see people taken care of better.

[meow2u3]

14. The official unemployment numbers don't tell the whole truth

The unemployment stats are intentionally deflated to mislead Americans into thinking there are fewer jobless people than there actually is.

We can never get the real unemployment numbers because the official unemployment rate is defined too narrowly to reflect it. Only people actively seeking work and/or those receiving unemployment are regarded as unemployed. Discouraged workers--those who have given up looking for work after months, or sometimes years, or those whose unemployment payments have been exhausted, are seen as "out of the work force", according to official statistics. In short, the real unemployment rate is at least twice the official one.

The underemployment rate is also defined too narrowly, as only those who are forced to settle for part-time employment when they want to work full time. Official underemployment stats don't include people who work in jobs that either pay far too little for and/or well beneath the level of their education, experience, and/or skill level.

The social safety net, though present, is being threatened by right-wing ideologues who think everybody should have to fend for themselves, whether they're able to or not. These right-wing guanopsychotics tell us to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps after they've stolen the boots off our feet.