Posted on 08/05/2011 1:28:20 PM PDT by Kaslin
Having used the “D” (depression) word for what we will experience over the next few years instead of the “R” (recession) word, I’ve been inundated with emails and texts that say I’m simply out of touch with reality.
So, for everyone who disagrees with me, let me provide a clear dose of reality by revisiting the past.
Most people have an image of the 1930’s and the Great Depression as a time period of monumental job loss, vast family dislocation, widespread famine, and severe uncertainty. The typical head of household toiled daily in order to put bread on the table and keep a roof over their family’s head. New clothes were a luxury and an automobile was in many instances, way out of reach.
Quite frankly, many people are in the exact same situation today. Uncertainty, fear, and even panic are pervading the land as our economy grinds slower and slower.
One reason most people cannot make the link between now and the 1930’s is because of the visual image of the soup kitchens.
Today, we still have this important service, as it seems more and more middle class come to find life’s necessities have become life’s luxuries. A hot meal and a warm bed are definitely finding a new audience. But alas, we haven’t seen the lines of people extending around the block like the 30’s.
Why? Are things not as bad, or is there something else?
In the 1930’s, either you had money or you didn’t. There were no credit cards to max and no home equity loans to borrow against. If you didn’t make your house payment, you were foreclosed on and kicked out of your house.
Today, we let people exist as squatters in their own home because it’s favorable for the bank’s balance sheet. However, the main reason it doesn’t feel like a depression to most people is due to the marvel of food stamps.
Almost 46 million people (a record number) are living on food stamps. There’s no need for a soup kitchen when you’re receiving $135 per month from the government. In fact, most recipients receive $285 per household per month. If food stamps existed in the 30’s, there would have been no need for those long lines that we remember seeing in those old black and white photos.
Recently, it was announced the latest monthly jump in food stamp recipients was almost 1.1 million people. Imagine that being the pattern for the rest of Obama’s term.
Extremely frightening and very sad; that’s a potential of 100 million people receiving the equivalent of a daily soup kitchen pass.
In addition, the old photos of men and women in those long soup kitchen lines illustrate they were dressed very properly in suits, dresses, and hats. They were suffering, yet managed to maintain their dignity. From a fashion standpoint, today is totally different.
But make no mistake; the suffering is just as severe.
You can change the way people receive food, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that it was given to them.
Yes, the overall images and perception of our current economic situation may seem less stark, yet millions of Americans are truly experiencing the 1930’s all over again.
That’s just the reality of the situation.
Stands to reason that the first letter of a parties name reflects the first letter of the economic situations they are responsible for. Republican, "R", for the Run of the mill, business cycle Recession. Demo'Rat, "D", for the once in a lifetime, Devestating, Demoralizing, Depressing, Depression.
DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz:‘We own the economy’ - June 15, 2011
FUBO GTFO 2012 !
Is your friend suggesting Obama start WWIII? After all, WWII put everyone back to work and fighting it was worth a GDP’s worth of taxpayer dollars.
All true. Another factor to consider is that the 1930’s marked our first sustained experiment with relentless government propagandizing of the American people. Two prominent examples are the writers project and the FSA/OWI photography project. Other than historians, no one much reads the writers any more, but the FSA photos, because they are accessible, have become the visual record of Depression era America. The problem is, the photographers were on a mission. They were told to go out and document hardship, and that’s what they did. They didn’t produce a balanced portrait of America; they produced a portrait of out-of-work America, and the glorious redemption being wrought by New Deal makework programs. This still heavily colors ideas about the 30’s today.
Yes, times were tough in macroeconomic terms and for the long term unemployed. But even in the Depression, most people didn’t lose their jobs, and life went on. It wasn’t bad at all for those who had some money. Not unlike today. The gap isn’t as great as the skewed recollection of that decade can suggest.
You need to explain to your friends that FDR expanded a philosophy started by Hoover: Intervention.
Hoover:http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/pandering-to-labor-caused-great-91447.aspx
FDR:http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
They both made things worse. I’m not sure how you can put EVERYONE to work when unemployment never got below double digits until the military sucked men out of the work force and sent to war...
It just blows my mind; people like that think they’re so much smarter than conservatives. I feel for you— I know a few myself.
I go along with the theory that the rest of the world was destroyed after WW2, and is the reason we EVER made a recovery.
And we've all been eating an FDR sh*t sandwich ever since.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the depression of the 1930s was world wide. Just like this one is going to be.
“Is your friend suggesting Obama start WWIII?”
Our dear leader has a liking to starting wars while on vacation....maybe we will attack another non-enemy to make the Martha’s Vineyard experience a little more interesting.
>>>Yes, times were tough in macroeconomic terms and for the long term unemployed. But even in the Depression, most people didn’t lose their jobs, and life went on. It wasn’t bad at all for those who had some money. Not unlike today. The gap isn’t as great as the skewed recollection of that decade can suggest.<<<
Excellent points. I’ve been thinking about the same thing talking about the Depression with my son about his great-grandfathers.
Great-grandfather one worked at Western Electric, at a time when the telephone company was a monopoly. His pay was cut a little, but he had a job throughout the Depression, and great-grandmother one told me about buying string beans for 5 cents per pound while great-grandfather one went out to Sheepshead Bay and brought home fish.
Great-grandfather two was a salesman. He earned enough to purchase a nice suburban home in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.
Up here in the Alaskan Bush, I heard an elder talk about his time in World War II. The elder was from Huslia, a tiny village up the Koyukuk River in a place about as remote as you can get in North America. One of his fellow soldiers asked him what he did during the Depression. He asked what a Depression was. Apparently in Huslia folks went about their business and were almost untouched.
Now having said that... we’ve just been through 70 years of government welfare. Food stamps, student loans, unemployment compensation, and, up here, things like free Housing and Urban Development housing for Native people. My son’s great-grandparents (and that elder) took responsibility for their lives. I don’t see a lot of that around me, and I’m living in a place that prides itself on taking care of yourself. God help us.
See Post 7. There’s no way that it didn’t extend the depression, along with Hoover.
They did NOTHING in the depression/panic of 1892 and it was over in 6 years.
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