the 30s all over again

[mom'sfolly]

A few other facts about the Great Depression...

It happened at the same time as the Dust Bowl, a major drought and loss of agricultural production. Millions of acres of farmland literally blew away, black rain fell as far away as the east coast. 500,000 people were left homeless. This was a disaster on a scale that makes Hurricane Katrina look like a rainy day. It went on for a decade! Millions of people were displaced. Today, to equal Dust Bowl numbers, over six million people would have to be permanently displaced. During Hurricane Katrina, less than 500,000 people were displaced, and a majority have since returned. This whole situation, including the bank foreclosures, created a situation that is unlikely to be duplicated in this country.

All of this was a huge contributing factor to the Great Depression. It was not merely the stock market and bank failures, it was an ecological and agricultural disaster that helped drive the Great Depression.

 

[WhiteMountainsRanch]

Quote:
X2

 

[bkreugar]

mom'sfolly :

A few other facts about the Great Depression...

It happened at the same time as the Dust Bowl, a major drought and loss of agricultural production. Millions of acres of farmland literally blew away, black rain fell as far away as the east coast. 500,000 people were left homeless. This was a disaster on a scale that makes Hurricane Katrina look like a rainy day. It went on for a decade! Millions of people were displaced. Today, to equal Dust Bowl numbers, over six million people would have to be permanently displaced. During Hurricane Katrina, less than 500,000 people were displaced, and a majority have since returned. This whole situation, including the bank foreclosures, created a situation that is unlikely to be duplicated in this country.

All of this was a huge contributing factor to the Great Depression. It was not merely the stock market and bank failures, it was an ecological and agricultural disaster that helped drive the Great Depression.

Was totally going to bring this up. At that time a large part of the population lived on farms, and survived from living OFF the far. So then the dust bowl, and a large portion of these people are suddenly unemployed.

For something similiar to happen now, we'd have to have a MUCH larger unemployment rate.

I think many people say "we are going into a depression" because they are SO unhappy with the current state of THEIR affairs. Because they are in a bad way it must be catastrophic.

I'm only 40 but something happened in the last 20 years to really move the goalpost of middle class to encompass :2 big new cars , a much larger house, and plenty of dinners out. What we seem to consider normal middle class has really moved UP the financial scale.​

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

Quote:
The problem is that the people who create jobs - middle sized businesses - do not benefit in the same way as do massive multinationals. And those massive multinationals are using mid size businesses and their beleaguered owners to push an agenda which helps only them and in most cases has actually HURT the businesses which are job creators and economic drivers.

The "free market" is anything but free these days and is BADLY skewed by the interest of multinationals who are beholden to no one.

Read Warren Buffet these days.

 

[mom'sfolly]

You might also want to look at some other changes in our world since 1930

1930 2011

average home size under 1000 sq. ft. 2700 sq ft (2009)
average family size 4 2.6
running water about 60% had running water 99+%
electricity (rural) <25% 99+%
unemployment about 20% 9%

The average American family would have to fall unimaginably far for conditions to look like the Great Depression. The world has changed. I very much doubt that the country is headed for conditions like the Great Depression.

Most Americans have gotten used to the world we live in. TV and the Internet are a way of life, but so are electricity, refrigeration, tomatoes in December and restaurants on a weekly basis. Most of us could do an alarming amount of belt tightening and still be better off than people were 80 years ago.

 

[Q9]

mom'sfolly :

You might also want to look at some other changes in our world since 1930

1930 2011

average home size under 1000 sq. ft. 2700 sq ft (2009)
average family size 4 2.6
running water about 60% had running water 99+%
electricity (rural) <25% 99+%
unemployment about 20% 9%

The average American family would have to fall unimaginably far for conditions to look like the Great Depression. The world has changed. I very much doubt that the country is headed for conditions like the Great Depression.

Most Americans have gotten used to the world we live in. TV and the Internet are a way of life, but so are electricity, refrigeration, tomatoes in December and restaurants on a weekly basis. Most of us could do an alarming amount of belt tightening and still be better off than people were 80 years ago.

Those unemployment statistics are BS. The government is very clever with the way they calculate it - this video explains it well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA

Also, check out the changes in percentage of rural population vs urban population. Urban areas are deathtraps if anything bad happens, be it riots, martial law, or what-have-you.​

 

[michickenwrangler]

mom'sfolly :

You might also want to look at some other changes in our world since 1930

1930 2011

average home size under 1000 sq. ft. 2700 sq ft (2009)
average family size 4 2.6
running water about 60% had running water 99+%
electricity (rural) <25% 99+%
unemployment about 20% 9%

The average American family would have to fall unimaginably far for conditions to look like the Great Depression. The world has changed. I very much doubt that the country is headed for conditions like the Great Depression.

Most Americans have gotten used to the world we live in. TV and the Internet are a way of life, but so are electricity, refrigeration, tomatoes in December and restaurants on a weekly basis. Most of us could do an alarming amount of belt tightening and still be better off than people were 80 years ago.

Hah!

My house is 700 sq. feet,

between me and DBF, my daughter and his daughter there are 4 of us

We have running water but water the garden and chickens the old fashioned way by getting buckets of it out of the pond

We do have electric but could easily heat our home with a small woodburner (for cooking too) and we have lots of wood

Uh, my area of Michigan has the highest regional unemployment at 18% or something like that (which means it's really 36%)

This house also used to belong to the parents of my late, departed husband and is FULL of stuff from the 1930s: tobacco cans full of nails, old woodworking tools from then, Depression glass, an old chrome toaster, cookbooks from then, hand-written recipes from then, old photos, etc...​

 

[welsummerchicks]

That's why 'averages' are not indicative of exactly how specific people live.

When you calculate an average, you get a very, very skewed view of the United States. It's skewed rather markedly upward, so the average makes it look like a whole lot of people are a whole lot more comfortable than they really are.

In the case of the United States, the statistics are very deceptive. And depending on what sort of point of view you want to promote, you can make a case for almost anything if you have the gift of the gab - which is what we call 'Politics'.

When I did volunteer work in the big city, we loved to laugh about that 'every house has an air conditioner'.

Most of our client's homes had air conditioners.

Most of them were over 30 years old, and none of them worked.

But they sure were bouying up those statistics, LOL.

In reality, there are plenty of people in this country who really are rather uncomfortably poor. Working in the emergency department of a hospital, I saw every day, that people went without medical care, because they couldn't pay for it. And not because of the payments they made on their Escalade every month. They really were poor.

I can't count how many times I heard a doctor say, 'if you don't get this treated, you'll die', and people would say, 'Yes, that's right', and they'd leave the hospital. Because they could not afford medical care.

And yeah. I've seen people who died of the cold, who died of malnutrition, who died of starvation, right here in the US of A. It happens. It's a baldfaced lie that it does not. The old and the young are especially vulnerable. Children with scurvy and rickets. Old folks with ulcers that get infected and kill them because they are malnourished.

Things ain't really quite as great for everybody as some groups would have us believe. There really is a very substantial number of poor people in the United States, and only slightly above them, a much larger group of the not exactly comfortable.

And that is something that hasn't changed in many, many decades and many different presidents.

Yeah, I was shocked too, but when I worked down in Hillsdale county in Michigan, I got a real eyeful. And a total rethinking of everything I had been told.

By politicians.

 

[chickened]

All one has to do is look around you to see what kind of shape we are in. For some it is good and some it is bad. We will always have the poor with us and to think we will not is living in some utopian state of mind.

People die from a lot of things some just from stupidity and if you worked in an emergency room you would know that. Things happen. If someone dies from lack of medical care in this country they are... well lets just say there is a reason they are poor and it is not the economy.

There are a substantial # of poor people that choose to live that way also they work enough to just get by and leave the tab of medical bills for instance for the "rich" hospitals. I see them all the time usually hitch hiking with their dreadlocks and unneutered dog.

I do agree with what you said about averages I think it is more about geographics and living/growing up in socially depressed areas and the influences thereof.

 

[cupman]

Quote:
You seem like you'd be happier if you moved out of Oregon and went somewhere like Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, etc.