SLATE: What would it look like if the government defaults?

[TalkingDog]

To sum: That there would be what we call yer "Super Depression"

http://www.slate.com/id/2299460/

So this is what a U.S. debt default would look like. The private sector would collapse. Unemployment would quickly surpass 20 percent. The government would shrink, but it would remain the employer of last resort.

The House and Senate Republicans who do not want to raise the debt ceiling are playing with fire. They are advocating a policy that would have dire effects, and that would accomplish the opposite of what they claim to want. A default would immediately make the government more, not less, important. The only law that Congress cannot repeal is the law of unintended consequences.

[William769]

1. Will be a reenactment of this.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm

[RKP5637]

2. The republican dream, this seems to be the America they loved and want again, that

they so desperately want to return to ... I wonder if the poor republicans have enough sense to even realize what this is all about. I think not.

[jwirr]

4. Thank you for the site.

[TalkingDog]

6. wow, some nice images. thanks

n/t

[Urban Prairie]

20. Would likely be much worse, since the amount of small, family-owned farms

in the US is miniscule, compared to the 30s. My mother lived in Michigan's Upper Peninsula as a young child during that decade, and they did "okay" , mainly b/c they could grow crops, and eat them. and live on canning them for winter and eating farm animals, pigs, chickens, eggs and the like. The winters were harsh, however, they had to have many cords of wood chopped up and ready by mid-fall for their wood stove in their kitchen to cook and to heat water to bathe, and the fireplace to keep the farmhouse warmer. She said that their bedrooms were unheated and quite cold in the winter mornings. Her father also augmented their income by chopping down and cutting up trees in the vast forestland, for the local sawmills, dragging logs by horse to them. Most people knew how to make and repair things by hand, such as furniture, clothing, and the like. Clothing was sturdier and could be washed and scrubbed by hand. They had many places to go to hunt and fish.

Most of the much larger population of the US lacks those basic skills, and is much more dependent upon store-bought food, and have fewer places to go to be able to hunt or fish, that is,. if they even own a gun and ammo, or bow and arrows, or fishing rods and tackle, or a boat. and most are not experienced hunters or fishermen.

[shanti]

22. a similar story

my mother was born in 1932 in southern california. when asked, she told me that she never noticed the depression. my grandfather (her father) was the foreman for a large lima bean ranch. they lived in a house on the ranch and had cows, chickens, etc., so their wants and needs were taken care of.

not so today, indeed. whole 'nother ballgame!

[ixion]

3. the REAL private sector is in a depression, hence suseptible to collapse either way...

and real unemployment is already 20%, uncooked. Raising the debt ceiling buys the beltway well-connected a bit more time, and digs the hole deeper for the rest of us once the time comes to climb out. And now that our debt is pushing 100% of our GDP, that time isn't too far off, and raising the debt ceiling doesn't change that.

[pinqy]

8. Amusing...

and real unemployment is already 20%, uncooked.

because the only way to get 20% is to seriously mess with the data. Even if we included everyone who says they want a job now, regardless of whether they could actually accept one and regardless of whether they've even looked for a job in years if ever, and also include everyone who wants to work full time but is working part time because of the economy, the rate would be only 18.2% and you'd have to add another 3.5 million to get up to 20%.

[ixion]

10. Then toss in the under-employed, and it's not so amusing

Nor is your original sentiment.

[pinqy]

11. There's no way to define or measure underemployed

So all you're doing is just adding people who aren't actually unemployed to make a 20% unemployment figure. How is that not "cooking" things if you're not mentioning that you're adding more than half the number of actual unemployed?

[ixion]

12. When someone has a degree and is working in a restaurant for example

because it's the only thing they can find, hence not by choice -- and there are numerous cases like that currently -- that person is effectively unemployed.

It's a more realistic number to include them than not to do so. Not including them equates to the GOP labeling Ketchup a vegetable, as they did in the 80's.

[pinqy]

13. For a Fine Arts Major that's not underemployed..

that's pretty normal. Or it could be by choice, unrelated to the market conditions. If a person has a BA and is working at a restaurant part time while getting her Masters, is she underemployed? Or someone who has kids and needs flexible hours? Or a retiree who just wants a part time job. Or someone who had been fired for criminal behavior and can't get a "real job."

There is just no objective way to defining "underemployed in any meaningful way that reflects the actual job market and is not subject to extreme biases from individual experience.

[ixion]

15. BS.

You can take your rationalizations and stuff them in a sock. You know very well the people I'm talking about, but your goal is to obfuscate.

[pinqy]

16. It's not rationalizations

I know the people you're talking about and I'm telling you that thousands of economists over more than a century have not been able to come up with any objective way to measure them. It can't be done. It's just way to subjective to be useful.

[ixion]

17. Yes, well the problem in that straw man is a bunch a sycophant economists

it's actually very easy to tell who is under-employed and who is working in a bar because they're working on their masters, or what have you. Software engineers, business professionals, people with skilled trades, working beneath their capacity not by choice at job with no future whatsoever. This is the simple definition of an under-employed worker, and it matters because it is indicative of the types of jobs the economy is producing.

I'm not saying (nor would I include) gray area and overlap such as you mention. However, there is a distinctly different class of worker that fits spot on into this category.

All jobs are not created equal, and the class of job matters more than the job itself, in many regards. And despite the fact that it may be 'hard work' :nopity: for the tenured group to discern this issue from their belltowers, it is nevertheless an issue which is significant, and which needs to be accounted for and not ignored simply because "it's too hard."

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. No, technically they are under employed

they are still working...

Unemployed are people like my BIL. Still looking, but don't have one.

[ixion]

14. wrong post

self-delete

[robcon]

5. Some vendors won't be paid on time.

Nothing major, IMO.

[BootinUp]

7. Are there other areas besides this where you agree with Michelle Bachmann? nt

[treestar]

9. If this is true, then people condemning Democrats for

agreeing to the cuts are being reckless. If the default is going to be so horrid, Obama should not getting so much crap for trying to find something to cut.

[ixion]

18. lol... so criticizing anyone who helped put us here is "reckless" but putting us here

in the first place, that's okay, right? :eyes:

While Obama didn't start it, he picked up where BushCo left off. And it was BOTH parties who put us here. The Dem leadership is not innocent.

[treestar]

19. Why are you blaming Obama rather than the Republicans?

this is Democratic Underground.

[ixion]

24. I place blame where blame is due... and I'm not blaming one or the other. I blame both parties

I'm not a moral relativist. I am working from the same set of precepts I was working under when BushCo was in office. I don't change these precepts simply because another 'team' is in the WH.

Obama had the chance to be a populist of historical magnitude, and he chose instead to be a corporatist like the rest. That's his decision, not mine.

[Bragi]

26. I think you are correct in blaming both sides

The GOP is run by reckless, ignorant fools. The President lacks the ability to stop their reckless behavior. Both are to blame for the unfolding horror show that is the U.S economy.

[treestar]

29. Your second sentence is correct.

That is how it is supposed to work. No President should have the power to stop the House from doing as it will.

[treestar]

28. Look at how bills are made

And that we need the ceiling raise or terrible things will happen and then get back to me. If it's the default or the cuts, then no populist would be able to do anything different. Blame the damn Republicans for using this debt ceiling issue as a way to get cuts.

[Bragi]

25. Obama has been sadly ineffectual and incompetent on this

He has demonstrated that he cannot control or counter the right-wing crazies now running things, and that the U.S political system is now out of control, and reckless.

That's why U.S bonds will be downgraded no matter how this week plays out.

[MilesColtrane]

23. Tick Tock, Boehner.

[mmonk]

27. We would look similar to Chile when we implemented Freidman

economics through shock there.