The economy today is as bad as the 1930's

I just talked to my neighbor boy from across the street. He cannot find a job since he retired from the Marine Corp. He is considering re-enlistment into the Air-Force. He is only 23 years old and the environment today is so rough on kids his age, not unlike the 1930's when my Father lost the farm in North Dakota. Even at my age of four I was aware of the depression and the impact that it had on our family. I am retired at this point in my life and with a fixed income I am not as affected by the economy as the younger people in this country. Hopefully Obama and the Democratic party can find a way to recover.

Income disparity, lack of labour laws, bank diddling......it's all the same. We never damn well learn.

In the 1940s we almost turned the corner away from this.
In the 60s, there was some hope with the Great Society.
And then Ronald Reagan sold the American public the idea that the poor deserved to be that way.
He shut down the power of unions after it had been waning after 1947. Read: Taft-Hartley Act.
Glass-Steagall undone.
Unions undone.
Regulation undone.
Welcome back to the Gilded Age and the Great Depression.
And this time, the Democrats mostly fall in line with the reactionaries who say "cut, cut, cut!"

were both Republican while striking the first blows against their oligarchy, while Cleveland, the democratic President before them, was a great supporter.

The inertia is moving toward change again. Will the Democrats go back to what they used to say they stood for, or will the republiks change again, or perhaps the republiks will go up in puff of Whig powder and be replaced by the next changers?

Roosevelt understood that there was a serious crisis of bad faith among the classes at hand.
He instituted progressive reforms, reforms from which we still benefit today, because of the crisis.
I see very little of that kind of insight now. The less stake Americans have in the country, the less they receive from it, the less loyal they will be to it.
Teddy & FDR were aware of this reality: you've got to give to get.

When I read some of the other responses on this thread, it assures me that we will continue to close our eyes and pretend that everything is just fine and we will be "turning that corner" any day now, until we smash right into the wall we are heading for.

The last post on the thread describing a father's experience in the Great Depression is happening thousands of times a day, with the same reactions from the victims, yet the poster uses it as some kind of argument that it isn't as bad as we think...
:eyes:

I'm curious what the Marines trained him to do.

But they may of also taught him what a wrench is. I will defer to the OP

He should have no difficulty in finding a similar position in the USAF, although he should have been able to find a job in a healthy economy.

n/t

The grass is always greener...

...as it turns out.

The grass needs some watering...

And Baby Bush outdid Papa Bush this time.

Welcome to DU though!

I just haven't posted until recently.

One cashier on duty... and a sense of doom lurking over the entire store. Our society (as a whole) is seriously depressed and shell-schocked.. no matter what part of the country you live in. Some better than others.. but not good, for sure.

Everyone knows our system is corrupt from Goldman Sachs on down to BP. We know we are getting screwed in triplicate... and yet there is no way out? CONgress screws the lid down tighther on Freedom and Free speech.. while we give BILLIONS to fucking Pakistan... no strings attached.. so they can buy arms and fight back.. against us.

But what we can do? We thought we were doing the right thing when we worked our ass off to get Obama elected...you know where that got us, right? Never mind.. hope and change.. water over the damm.

Life in America equals Insanity in Iraq and Afghanistan.. and no one can stop the madness. Billions spent on war lords and nation building.. $436 Million a day spent on War that no one wants or needs.... and our leaders claim that we can't afford to provide a job for those who want to work? WTF?

We are a nation who has lost its moral character... its moral compass. Since 1970 it has been OK to bash poor people and discriminate against the less fortunate in order that the wealthy Military Elite and Oligarchs flourish. Trickle down, Reaganomics..Supply Side, Offshoring, GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, Glass Steegal. We all lose... no matter how you spin it.

People... what are we doing? The stock market is a casino game and you will never benefit from it.. no matter what Fidelity Investments and Jim Cramer tell you. You will NEVER be part of the investor class.. its all a scam.

God help us... if there is a god...

That's why there are no jobs, the workers aren't needed. There's no need for construction workers; there is a glut of houses on the market that aren't selling and vacant commercial space everywhere you look. There's no need for factory workers, all the factories are in China. There's no need for laborers; automation lets one worker do the work of 30 from the '30s. Face it, the haves and have-mores have all the people they need to run the machines and do the paperwork and send them the profits. The rest of the population, well, you're on your own.

That's right. World War 2.

World War 3 IS coming...very soon. The bankers will see to it.

War requires massive investments in infrastructure.
We have not responded to these wars in the same way we responded to the World Crisis and ww2.
And because our response has not been the same, the outcome has not been the same.
ww3?
I don't know if it will make any difference at all.
It could impoverish the country even more, given what I've seen.

There are two kinds of measures for evaluating an economy. The first kind are intrinsic, having to do with how well an economy is working compared to how it could be working, given the population, resources, technology, etc. Unemployment is such a measure. And while things are tough now, they aren't as bad as the Great Depression. Not by any measure do we have 25% unemployment.

Perhaps more important, the second kind of measure is extrinsic, taking into account the kinds of things intrinsic measures take off the table. And there, we are much better off than most of a century past. Compare, as a simple example, rates of car ownership. Or hunger. Or something pedestrian: more people then had no change of clothes. If you suffered injury or disease, there was no ER to visit. If your people couldn't handle the problem, they would call in the local doctor. And if he couldn't handle it using common medicine of the time, as often was the case, you died. Or suffered permanent physical disability. Diptheria, measles, and mumps were all common. The vaccines we take for granted today did not then exist. There were no antibiotics. Many women died of pueperal fever. A large part of the population lived where there wasn't safe water. Typhoid and polio were frequent. Most of the older folks I knew who remember those times could name relatives who had died young of typoid. Don't underestimate the importance of basic infrastructure. There was no interstate highway system. There were no passenger flights. Getting anywhere took longer, cost more, and was far more trouble than today. Far more people lived where there was no residential electricity. Or utilities of any sort. Few in the middle class had a washing machine or air conditioner. Washing clothes generally meant using a tub and clothesline, and staying cool meant opening a window, turning on a fan, and draping a wet cloth over your forehead. Radios were a luxury. Print subscriptions were expensive. Paper towels were an expensive luxury that didn't exist before the 1930s. The common practice was to use rags for cleaning, nose blowing, oil checking, hand drying, and everything else, which of course, had to be washed. By hand, in the tub. Then dried and stored in a rag bag for use as needed. No one then had a TV, cell phone, internet access, or GPS. Ballpoint pens weren't yet a consumer item. When you had to sign in ink, you had to fuss with a fountain pen. There was no velcro or teflon. There was no dialysis. Burial was the only treatment for kidney failure.

Before saying that today is as hard as the early 30s, talk to a few people who were adult then and remember that time. I don't mean to diminish how severe the current recession is, nor dismiss the real pain it is causing for many. Just wanting to add some historical perspective.

:hippie:

in 1937 following the loss of the farm. My Father covered the bed of a chevrolet pickup with a canvas and loaded it with belongings and my five brothers, and myself. My Mother and an aunt road in front and we headed West for Washington state. I might add that my Father had no prospects for a job. My aunt told me years later, how embarrassed she was because her underwear were made from flower sacks. I am sure that an adult perspective of those days is much different then mine, however, I do feel that the young people of today feel the same anguish, as those at that time.

That's pretty sad. Did you call yourselves the Rough Riders? ;-)

materials was a common practice in America during the Gilded Age, clear up through the Great Depression.
Making clothing available to everyone, either as fabrics or as ready-made for the entire country was a difficult thing for the American economy and society to accomplish.
Flour sacks were even printed with specific patterns because the millers knew they would be used for the making of clothing.

My parents both experienced the Great Depression. My stepfather was born in 1919 to a "white trash" family in Georgia. He knew what real poverty was. In 1934 he was building trails for the California Conservation Corps when he contracted rheumatic fever and was placed in the Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. He'd always look down and shake his head when he described being fed at the hospital "...the best food I'd ever had in my life." He enlisted in the Navy that year, at age 15 by lying about his age, with the help of his mother.

I doubt that your former Marine friend has ever missed a meal.

Hopefully Obama and the Democratic party can find a way to recover.

Counting on politicians to bail yourself out of trouble is a bad bet.