Mike, you may be younger, or never had the opportunity to talk to folks who lived the '30s depression. No problem, not a fault. I remember my mother (younger sister to my uncle who joined the 101 airborne), telling me of "hobos" who would knock on the back door of her mother's house. My mother's house was near the steamtrains, and the back of the house faced the tracks. Her mother (a grandmother I never met) would put some kind of signal in the windows (I forget what it was). anyway, the hoboes would knock on the back door (only the back, and never the front), and offer to do manual chores (painting, raking leaves, etc) in echange for food. The group that were called hobos, were grown men. Some had families in other locations. This is true. There is not one person in the U.S. today who is asked to do any work at all to get food. To compare today's economy with 1930's is poorly advised, perhaps insane.
I'd have to disagree. Many people have lost their jobs and there are no similar paying jobs on the horizon for them. They have kids that they have to tell will be going to a different school, they wil lose heir houses.... We have more amenities than did the people during the Great Depression - but we have farther to fall as well. More people are leveraged with mortgages compared to the great depression. And those homes are priced in the boom times. Those boom times salaries and jobs are eroding. Families are getting devasted and one in ten Americans are on foodstamps. A black friend of mine was at the supermarket recently. A well dressed white gentleman in his 40s was in front of him in the checkout lane. He told my friend to go first, my friend said no rush... to please go ahead. Turns out the well dressed gentleman was buying food that a family with kids would need.... and get this: he paid with a food stamp card, or whatever they call it nowadays. My friend told me he understood why the genteman asked him to go first - he saw the pained look on his face, using a food stamp card in front of an African American. Many of us are not that far off from that man's experience. All it takes is a trashed 401K, a near underwater house, and a layoff. then wammo - you are no longer upper middle class.... savings buffer birned through and you are poor and it's 2009. During the great depression many people (20-25%) lived on family farms. Now it's 2-3%. We will be feeding a lot of people for quite some time.
Yeah, I don't understand it. Obama got all the stimulus money, but nothing is happening. Drive down the highways here, they are full of garbage, grass needs mowing etc. The money is there. But nobody is doing anything. What's wrong with Washington? Is everybody there on quaaludes (sp?)
I don't think you have a clue my son. In the depression there was no food stamps for that man to use. No unemployment or SSI either. Today society has a safety net. I'm not saying thats a bad thing either. But todays victims of this recession live like kings compared to those effected in the 30's.
My grandfater was born in 1899. My dad 1923 and mom 1924. They made it through unscathed thankfully. My mom who is still alive and quite active gets very mad whenever she hears someone compare todays situation to the depression. She was there so I'll take her word for it.
'Stop obsessing about economy, you're scaring the children.' Ha! A psy op ad to sell twinkies. "There, there, now don't be afraid, have a twinkie and everything will be okay" bada bing bada boom, I see a twinkie bubble on the horizon.
My example does not illustrate the hardships felt by many during the great depression - I'll give you that. My example shows the emotional and psychological blow that people are feeling - which is usually the first phase of a great depression. You say they live like Kings? They feel like failures. Let's see how this could play out, as we are in the early stages. I think that we either muddle through, or experience something worse than the GD. Now I can't argue with you over things that have not transpired yet, so I'll just make some observations: During the Great Depression the United States (up until the 1950s) was the Saudi Arabia of oil. It was the world's largest oil exporter. The US was the world's largest creditor (not debtor) nation as well. As I said before, during the GD, 20-25% of the population lived on farms - close to food. Today, food travels farther, relies more on imported oil for fertilizers and transport, and only 2-3% are in farming. We had a lot more wiggle room during the GD for stimulus spending. Total US debt, public and private, peaked at about 200% of GDP during the during the middle of the GD. Today? We are in the early stages of stimulus and we have already breached 370% of gdp. Today's safety net? Yes, it is better than it was during the GD - but let's keep an eye on Treasury sales and see how long we can afford a safety net. And how far those safety net dollars will go in a couple of years. I think it's still premature to get into a generational pissing contest over which era is worse. We can only debate the underlying and contributing factors that have and will continue to influence this economic crisis.
Under estimating people's able to be creative is a big mistake as is refering to a recession as a crisis. Personally I don't think this is any worse than the early 80's and maybe not even that bad. It might get worse though. no one can say for sure. What I do know is tomorrow I have to go back to our family construction (commercial, not housing)related company and start working again because they are overwhelmed with all the new business that's come in the past two months. Last year this time we were laying people off. So from where I sit things seem to be improving at a rather brisk pace as all this new business is a result of corporations spending money to improve their facilities. I assume that means they don't plan on shutting down these plants and factories, bwdik.
I still don't understand why the banks were bailed out in the first place. IF the homeowners were bailed out instead the assets would have never turned toxic to begin with, the market wouldn't have been flooded with foreclosed homes and things wouldn't have ever even gotten this bad. The reason the stimulus plan has worked yet is that most of the money it set aside isn't even going to get spent until 2011-2012. Add to that the bailout money that went to GM was used to open a plant in Brazil instead of the US and you start seeing why nothing good has happened with all the money that has been spent. Not to mention you can never spend your way out of debt anyway.
There is still too much of a widespread perception that consumerism (impulse spending on stupid crap products that generally depreciate rapidly) will dig us out of this hole. Before the economy really starts to improve, we will have to see more wealth change hands to a more intelligent investor class, who are better at putting their money to work for themselves. This will inevitably happen through market forces. But it is difficult to say how long it will take. I don't see this happening soon.