This Is 1930. What Are You Going to Do?

[McCamy Taylor]

This is 1930. Unemployment has just shot up to 8.7. A massive failure of banks has lead to a contraction in the nation’s money supply. The Fed keep dropping interest rates to compensate. Democrats have some gains in Congress but they do not control enough seats to be effective, so no legislation can get passed. Hoover is president. That means a whole lot of nothing will be done. By 1932, unemployment is 23.6 percent.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Timeline.htm

This is 2009. Unemployment has just risen to 7.6. This is the biggest jump in unemployment the nation has seen since the post Vietnam recession of the early 1970s. The Feds have already bottomed out interest rates and bailed out the nations failing banks with billions of taxpayers’ dollars, but that has done little to increase the nation’s money supply. Democrats have made gains in Congress, but Republicans are blocking all legislation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR2009020601156.html?hpid%3Dtopnews⊂=AR

You do the math.

This page charts the Misery Index aka the US unemployment rate since the days after WWII. Note how the rate goes down under Democratic Presidents and how Republican Presidents’ economic policies cause it to rise. The Reagan-Bush years were especially bad, but they are nothing compared to the economic disaster which Bush-Cheney have created.

Americans have been accused of having no interest in their own history. Europeans portray us as naïve souls who cast off the past and live each day as if the world just began anew. However, the Great Depression changed the lives of everyone who lived through it, and the experience colored the way that those people raised their own families. We saw this in people like Brother Malcolm, Martin Luther King Jr., Walter Cronkite, LBJ, Bill Moyer and a host of other populist, progressive figures who came out of that era. And now we feel that effect again in a second wave of people who came of age in the 1960s and who were influenced by the young adults of the Depression. People like Keith Olbermann and…

Barack Obama.

This is 1930 again. This time we will not repeat history. This time we will act before unemployment rises to 23, and our lives and those of our children and grandchildren are irrevocably changed.

[Zywiec]

1. I guess in 1930 a full frontal nude of a little boy was allowed

Now a days, I am ready to clear my cache before the police come running in.

:hi:

[Jamastiene]

4. That's just so wrong.

Is there any way to edit that picture?

[OneBlueSky]

45. why edit it? . . . that's a classic photo, I believe by Dorothea Lange . . .

a highly respected photojournalist who documented the depression in this country . . . what she depicted was life as it really was, as in this photo . . . editing it would diminish both the impact of the photo and the integrity of her art . . .

[ogneopasno]

59. It's not, it's Walker Evans, from "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," and while it is a Depression-era

photo, one could make the argument that a sharecropper family looked like this in the roaring 20s, too.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

5. In modern days, there are too many perverts around - in olden days tho, perverts got

chased down and beaten to death by a mob, so showing a little boy or girl in undress was pretty safe.

[hay rick]

35. same number of perverts

What has changed is the media fascination with such stories- IMHO. Get people worked up about pedophile priests instead of wars of choice and a looting plutocracy.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

48. You think? I think the spread of porn in magazines, online, movies, etc. has caused all....

.. criminal sexual perversions to skyrocket.

[TheWraith]

50. You'd be wrong.

Porn isn't a new invention, no matter what the moralizers will tell you. And it's the magnifying glass of the modern media that makes people look for a sex offender under every rock. The fact is that today as in years past children are by far at the most risk from family members.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

63. I don't know what porn there was in the days of the pilgrims...

as for "porn" as modern as the 1920s, it consisted of woman and men naked or engaging in acts, or two men. I've seen a couple of postcards. They're antiques which go for a lot of money.

[TheWraith]

65. Porn goes back as far as we've been able to draw on walls.

The fact that some societies attempted to surpress it, with varying degrees of success, doesn't change that. In fact historically the more repressive the society the more likely sex crimes are to go unchecked because it's a "taboo" subject.

As for "naked or engaging in acts," what do you think modern porn is?

[Romulox]

56. Actually, the crime numbers tell exactly the OPPOSITE story. nt

[Sarah Ibarruri]

64. What do you mean? nt

[WI_DEM]

10. Well, I think that tells how bad the times were for many people.

[cobalt1999]

12. Here is another.

This picture shows a group of children at Christmas Dinner in 1936. The children are eating cabbage and turnips.

[lumberjack_jeff]

26. Serves 'em right for having more than two kids, huh? n/t

[Tsiyu]

53. lol n't

[lonestarnot]

46. I hate turnips!

[McCamy Taylor]

39. OK, for people who can not identify with family problems like can't afford diapers

and no indoor plumbing and kids that have to "go" in the yard and get hook worms from no shoes, how about this one....



The Chambers of Commerce of 1930 and the Chambers of Commerce of today have not changed their tune. Just walk on by. They do not want you or need you unless you are rolling in cash.

[alfredo]

58. I didn't even notice it until you mentioned it.

[HereSince1628]

2. Pay the taxes on the farm so the man doesn't come and take it away.

Biggest mistake my dad's family made...one that I'll not repeat.

[SergeyDovlatov]

20. and make sure that you don't exceed your quota, or else ...

The AAA used a system of "domestic allotments," setting total output of corn, cotton, dairy products, hogs, rice, tobacco, and wheat. The farmers themselves had a voice in the process of using government to benefit their incomes. ... To meet 1933 goals some growing cotton was plowed up, and little pigs killed. The idea was that the less produced, the higher the price, and the farmer would benefit. Farm incomes increased significantly in the first three years of the New Deal, as prices for commodities rose.<21> One historian said that consumers bore the brunt of higher food prices and were "horrified with its policy of enforced scarcity."<22> A Gallup Poll printed in the Washington Post revealed that a majority of the American public opposed the AAA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Farm_and_rural_programs

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. I read our current rate of unemployment is more than twice 8.2%....

As I understand it, once someone has not been able to find a job and unemployment runs out, they are dropped from the statistics completely. So mass quantities of unemployed are not being counted.

[leveymg]

6. And then there are the other 13 million "underemployed", people who want and need full-time

work but can't find it.

That raises the 2009 un(der)employment rate to about 20 percent.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

7. Exactly! Our country is in serious trouble and these Repukes are playing Repuke games nt

[leveymg]

9. "Time wounds all heels"

They'll get theirs.

[Skidmore]

29. Our spokespeople need to reference unemployment stats using this type

of data.

[Tsiyu]

54. The last administration didn't want the true numbers known

There may be 20% unemployment here in Appalachia. It may be worse. I know so many out of work people.

I couldn't file because I was doing contract work, helping restore a mansion for an old liberal (scraping paint off windows, basically, since I'm a klutz at other construction.) My son was also working for her, but his work has also ended there.

So we are not counted, but we still need to eat.

[Tumbulu]

11. and all the self employed and small business owners

who are not getting contracts or sales.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

15. Exactly - wonder if anyone could put together stats including all these? nt

[Dr.Phool]

16. Or going out of business, because all their customers got laid off.

Like my pizza shop.

[robinlynne]

31. That includes most of us (small business owners.)

[Lorien]

52. I'm one of those. We don't show up on the unemployment roles because

we can't apply for unemployment. Most of my friends are self employed, and half or more are now unemployed or down to a few hours of work a week.

[hay rick]

36. U6

Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains at least 6 measures of unemployment rates. The most comprehensive of these is U6, defined as : "Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers." Link here: http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab12.htm

January readings: 15.4% (13.9% seasonally adjusted). Don't hold your breath waiting for the media to report those numbers.

[Lucky Luciano]

49. Was reported on CNBC yesterday and also published

in a Merrill Lynch note.

[wolfgangmo]

41. It's already approaching 20%

Look at this site where they use real metrics to interpret the data, not the BS ones adopted by right wing ideologues.

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data - scroll down about 3/4 page to see the unemployment data.

[davekriss]

61. That's wrong, Sarah

The unemployment figure we customarily hear bandied about in the press is based on a household survey (a sampling poll, in effect). You have to be looking for work (in the previous 4 weeks) to count as "unemployed". If you answer, in the survey, that ypu are jobless and haven't looked for work in this period, you are counted as dropped out of the labor force and thus don't contribute to the unemployment figure. There are many, many people, frustrated after looking for work for months and not finding anything, who "drop out of the labor force" in this way, aren't counted in the unemployment figure, but should indeed be counted.

I've read that the real figure -- the percent including the unemployed actively seeking work and the unemployed who want a job but have given up looking in frustration -- is around 13% right now. I don't have a cite, but you can google it up.

On edit I see several have responded. The U6 number cited in post 36 is most relevant, showing a seasonally adjusted number of 13.8% right now.

[mdmc]

8. drop the internet and read more at the library

:shrug:

[roguevalley]

13. I'm not leaving my house no matter what. They can come and

shoot me there. :)

[jxnmsdemguy65]

17. have some balls and shoot back

no one is evicting me from my home no matter what. they'll have to look at the wrong end of a gun barrel first!

[roguevalley]

19. I will be shooting back. By the time they find me there won't be anyone

left. part of the goodness of living in the boonies. :)

[wolfgangmo]

42. Beware of strong drink.

It clouds your judgement and can make you shoot at the guy trying to foreclose on you.


And miss.

[glitch]

27. The libraries are closed. Funding cuts, nobody w/money to tax dontcha know. nt

[DemReadingDU]

28. at my house, the Internet will be the last to go, n/t

[mdmc]

33. that how it is for me now

...

[Tsiyu]

57. Mountain libraries - except for the one 30 miles away in Sewanee

are pretty sparse. The gas would cost more than my internet bill.

I have a package - phone, voice mail, unlimited dialup (lol) for $58 a month through my co-op. It's a bargain.

[defendandprotect]

14. Vote for FDR and the New Deal --- !!!

And Democrats who know what end is up and how to fight the Repugs ---!!!

[jmg257]

18. Fly to Germany and personally shoot that paper-hanging son of a bitch.

[SergeyDovlatov]

21. good plan!

[Lance_Boyle]

22. Invest in IBM.

And possibly assassinate Hearst.

[martymar64]

23. Join the Communist Party

Or become a Teamster and kick some capitalist ass in the streets with my union borthers.

[santamargarita]

24. Let's make sure we all call this what it really is:

The 2nd "Great Republican Depression"

[jberryhill]

25. Give a sports almanac to my dad....

...and tell him to stay away from the McFly family.

[Wednesdays]

32. The McFlys are all right

It's the Tannens he should steer clear from. ;)

[jberryhill]

38. My Dad IS Biff Tannen

Now make like a tree and get out of here.

[JVS]

44. That's about as funny as a screen door on an aircraft carrier!

:rofl:

[Kaleva]

30. Converting to judaism and moving to Germany

would not be top of the list.

[hunter]

34. Kidnap Hitler and check him into a mental hospital...

... where he can spend the rest of his life quietly painting.

[Motown_Johnny]

37. Hoover Republicans, say it loud and say it often

[roamer65]

40. This depression will be very unique, unlike any others we've endured.

It is going to be a hyperinflationary depression. Those make deflationary ones look like a picnic.

[natrat]

43. also less of an agrarian society so even harder to feed yourself and family

[Sirveri]

47. I will start by annexing my resource rich neighbors!

Nobody will mind since I'm just fixing the economy and uniting my ethnic kin.

[JVS]

51. Nice post, Hitler

;-)

[Sandrine for you]

55. I am going to kill my big neighbour and to make a barbecue.

[valerief]

60. I think they counted unemployment differently in 1930. I think back then

they counted the actual unemployed, unlike the fuzzy 'rithmetic done today.

[Writer]

62. Holy Olive Gardens - is that woman BREASTFEEDING in the picture???

:nuke: