Upside to Depression

[salinen]

Don't start yelling at me yet. Times are really tough, no doubt. I'll not go into my own state of affairs because they are numerous and common to many of us.

Most of the "Greatest Depressions" were preceded by massive fraud and Oligarchs sucking the commoners resources down to subsistence levels. My formula is that the people who control the state and have lavished themselves for generations, have contempt for the masses, or at best, complete indifference. There are exceptions. Ted and Robert Kennedy Jr. are 2.

Finally, the system collapses from the shear weight of corruption, and the masses have nothing. When we cannot afford to live, the government must reluctantly give up some of it's accumulated wealth. In other world states, it will be really ugly. Remember, they have recently pushed civil unrest ahead of Al Queda as a world wide danger.

So now, that we have no other place to turn except to beg our government for life, they must act. Isn't now the precise moment for Universal Health care? Non predatory lending institutions? Affordable college tuitions? Serious reduction to the insanity that is the Military Industrial Complex? The unholy Prison System?

When the system is running along as usual, the wealth created is ALWAYS stolen. A Depression is the time for radical change. It's now or never.

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Sure, the shock doctrine can work for good or ill

Sadly, FDR was an anomaly. The shock doctrine usually ends badly.

[NMDemDist2]

2. Joe Kennedy was the powerful one of the family in the 20s and 30s

and he was no angel, be assured...


Born to a political family in Boston, Massachusetts, Joseph Kennedy was educated at Boston Latin and Harvard University, and embarked on a career in finance, making a large fortune as a stock market and commodity speculator and by investing in real estate and a wide range of industries, including bootlegging, the illegal importation of alcohol into the United States during Prohibition. During World War I, he was an assistant general-manager of Bethlehem Steel and developed a friendship with Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Kennedy made huge profits from reorganizing and refinancing several Hollywood studios, ultimately merging several acquisitions into Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) studios. After Prohibition ended in 1933, Kennedy consolidated an even larger fortune when his company, Somerset Importers, became the exclusive American agent for Gordon's Gin and Dewar's Scotch. He owned the largest office building in the country, Chicago's Merchandise Mart, giving his family an important base in that city and an alliance with the Irish-American political leadership there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy,_Sr.

[salinen]

3. I find it interesting too

That Joe Kennedy was basically a gangster, and all his sons turned out to be extraordinary people. Sins of the father and all that.

[rrneck]

4. Sure, but we ain't begging.

We're using our government to take back what's ours. If those rich assholes don't like it, they should be reminded that if this doesn't work, we'll be showing up at their doors to collect personally. And don't think you can just get on a plane and run either because the entire planet is in the same fix.

[lurky]

5. We got FDR, Germany got Hitler.

Depressions are times of extreme unrest and instability. There is great possibility but also great peril. I think a shakeup is long overdue, but we have let things get so out of kilter for so long that there will be a lot of pain as we adjust.