Why do they call it "The Great Depression" and not just "The Depression"?

[Fumesucker]

Because from the time the USA became a capitalist-industrialist nation until about 1930 or so we had a depression on the average about once a decade at which point we decided some regulation was in order and the up-til-then normal depression per decade smoothed out a lot.

We repealed all the 1930's era regulations starting around 1980 or so and now we are back to your regularly scheduled depression.

Unregulated capitalism is subject to severe boom-and-bust cycles that we know as depressions, it's a feature not a bug. We either reregulate capitalism or suffer the depressing consequences.

[anonymous171]

1. The difference is that it fucked Wall Street over and lasted more than ten years.

[Fumesucker]

3. The current one would have fucked Wall Street too..

Except the taxpayers in their infinite generosity for the obscenely wealthy decided to bail out the major players.

[anonymous171]

8. Sad but true. nt

[Oregone]

2. Capitalism produces a bipolar economy

And, just like bipolar people, its not easy to convince it to take its meds--the highs are just too good and to those in charge, the lows are all about trimming the fat.

[anigbrowl]

21. Please supply an example of a unipolar or consistently balanced economy.

I'm unsure whether such a thing exists.

[Cleita]

32. Tribal societies that emphasize sharing and not

accumulation of goods? I understand that the Bushmen of Africa had such a society until we civilized white folks eff'd it up.

[anigbrowl]

36. Don't be naive

tribal societies have employed slash-and-burn agriculture and nomadism to deal with local resource depletion. the canonical example is Easter Island, where the population assured their on extinction by cutting down all the trees, and then not having any more wood to build boats with to go fishing.

Are you seriously proposing an African bush society as an alternative model? Really? You think those people never went hungry, were never at a disadvantage due to illiteracy, etc? No, sorry, I am not joining you in going back to the pre-agriculural age and abandoning all technology beyond arrowheads and domesticated fire. FFS.

[Cleita]

37. It's just one example. The world is full of them.

I think with our scientific knowledge we can borrow what's good from those societies and not have to implement the whole primitive, illiteracy thing. I'm surprised this has to be explained. btw the pre-Columbian Andean societies, of which the Incas were the most well known employed a system of sharing crops and of community cooperation that enabled them to do public works and building projects. My history teachers in Chile said that even the lowest on the social rung got shelter and enough to eat before the Spaniards upending their social structure. That doesn't mean that we have to adopt their systems of god kings and human sacrifice. My own ancestral people, the Mapuche of Southern Chile (I have about a sixteenth share in the genome) still practice tribal sharing in their villages. But I guess brown people can't teach us a thing or two.

[anigbrowl]

38. Get back to us when you have some actual numbers

In a question about economics, it's reasonably to supply an answer based on some objective measure like GDP, not a bunch of feel-good handwaving. Anecdotal evidence is a waste of both our times.

[prairierose]

4. This is one of those ideas that we need to talk about more...

without regulation, capitalism leads to regular depressions or recessions as they were renamed after the Great Depression of the thirties. After banks were regulated, we had a more stable economy without severe depressions for more than 50 years until the oligarchs began dismantling those regulations in the eighties culminating with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999. And sure enough, the economy crashed on schedule following the release of the robber barons from reasonable regulation.

[Fumesucker]

5. That's why I posted the thread.. Thanks for commenting and reinforcing my point.. n/t

[anigbrowl]

6. *all* economies are subject to boom and bust cycles

You might like to read up on Nikolai Krondatieff, a soviet economist who discovered the long-term variation in commodity pricing independent of political system, for which he ended up being imprisoned and then shot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave

I'm in favor of more regulation and putting Glass-Steagall back in place...but bear in mind that European capitalism is much more tightly regulated in the US, but that that has not immunized it from severe recessions, any more than Marxist economic theory immunizes current or former communist countries from recessions..

[Fumesucker]

11. Then why did we not have this level of recession/depression from 1940 or so til just recently..

I've familiar with Krondatiev cycles, I never claimed that regulation *eliminated* them, just that it ameliorated them.

[anigbrowl]

20. We did.

This is not the worst since the great depression. To me it looks a lot more like the recession of the early 80s or the mid-70s (but minus the massive inflation). The 1970s sucked which is not Carter's fault, but which he ended up carrying the can for, to a large extent. The world is more globalized than it used to be, so in the case of this recession there's been less elasticity because more economies have been moving in sync than was historically the case.

Like I said, I'm in favor of bringing back stricter regulation, rather than laissez-faire capitalism. But there are going to be economic ups and downs no matter what regulatory framework we use, and it's just a fact about human beings that they tend to romanticize the past a bit, when in fact the past often sucked just as much as the present, just with a different flavor. It's not a specifically capitalist problem, or communist economies would have been enviably stable.

You might like the perspective offered in this article: http://www.ecotao.com/holism/chaosb.htm There is no definite answer for the existence of business cycles in economic theory, but arguably they are an inevitable consequence of population growth and the resulting pressures for economic growth, not unlike a snake that must shed its skin as it grows.

[Fumesucker]

22. I lived through the 70's and had a job the whole time..

Now I haven't had a job in well over a year despite being far more skilled than I was then, and despite living in multiple states in the meantime I'm only a few miles from where I was through most of the 70's.

Not to mention that in constant dollars I was making a lot more in the 70's..

[anigbrowl]

25. Sorry to hear that, but one person's experience is hardly a trend .nt

[Fumesucker]

27. It's not just one person...

It's practically everyone I know.. The only counterexample I can think of is my son in law who has a union job with a major defense contractor, he is doing quite well. But then he's one of those people who can fall in a septic tank and come out smelling like Chanel #5 somehow.. :)

Edited to add: In fact there has been no net job creation since 1999..

[anigbrowl]

30. yes, but where, what industry?

No offense, but anecdotes are not statistics. I am not suggesting that this has been a good decade for jobs, but on the other hand I kind of like the fact that prices are not rising by 20-30% a year.

[Fumesucker]

31. Most of them..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101196.html?hpid=topnews

There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 -- and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.

And the net worth of American households -- the value of their houses, retirement funds and other assets minus debts -- has also declined when adjusted for inflation, compared with sharp gains in every previous decade since data were initially collected in the 1950s.

[rucky]

7. We're trying to make the Depression feel better about itself. n/t

[Festivito]

9. And every two of them, a president would be killed.

.. according to an indian chief over a hundred years ago.

Perhaps he realized that every twenty years, just a census would start, a president would try to curb the banks.

[cornermouse]

10. It uprooted families and tore them apart.

My mother's idea of Christmas was one orange and one toy.

[hayu_lol]

13. Called a 'Great Depression' because...

it ultimately affected almost every person in the world to some degree.

[Fumesucker]

16. My parents lived through it too.. n/t

[Jackpine Radical]

12. To distinguish it from

the Pretty Good Depression of the 1890's?

[Kaleva]

14. It's shorter then calling it "The Depression That Sucked Major Ass".

[kirby]

15. Because there has been more than one.

There was the Panic of 1837 which sparked a five year Depression. From 1873 to 1896 there was a Depression also (people called it the Great Depression, but now it is referred to as the Long Depression).

The Great Depression between 1929 and 1933 was not only really bad, but it was world-wide. It seems to have been the worse of the Depressions to date.

[Fumesucker]

17. Thank you for reiterating my point with more details. n/t

[asdjrocky]

18. Because if your name was JohnBoy or MaryEllen-

Things were pretty great.

'Night Mama...

[Kaleva]

19. And Mary Ellen grew up to pose nude in Playboy.

Showing everyone that living the healthy life at Walton's Mountain can give a girl a very hairy bush.

[asdjrocky]

26. Do people pretend to not know you sometimes.

You know, in social situations?

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[anonymous171]

24. No, you just need regulations with teeth and a complete disregard for the elites' wellbeing. nt

[OHdem10]

28. World Wide Depression-- Capitalism failed. FDR saved Capitalism

and saved Democracy.

[malletgirl02]

29. FDR

It is kind of scary how easily the USA could have fell to fascism during the Great Depression.

[OHdem10]

34. It takes a smart Liberal to be a great president. His Liberalism

guided him--thus he would be quickly able to identify any sign
of fascism.

[ljm2002]

33. I believe it was called the Great Depression...

...because it was a worldwide phenomenon, just like WWI which was called the Great War until World War II came around.

[KharmaTrain]

35. And The Impact It Had On People...

My parents were depression children...while times are tough today, it doesn't compare to the stories I heard them tell. Clothes were always hand-me downs, meat was a luxuary for special occasions and a new book was a rare pleasure. Yet they endured and thrived.