The depression created certain visuals that have no parallel today, but the experiences of ordinary people might not be so different. The depression was not bad at all if you still had your job, which over 3/4ths of people did. (Government favored wage supports over full employment.) Only a minority of people really suffered.
The depression was an era of luxury supercars and massive new estates. Large numbers of business elite made fortunes or still had great wealth from the 20s.
Today may look much more like 1930 than you realize.
> The 1930s show the consequences of inflation, speculation and credit expansion […]
The 1930s were nothing special when it comes to wild swings in prices (as the article show), speculation was not new (see canal mania, railroad mania, etc)
What is special is the post-WW2 era (where there was no deflationary bust, especially after a major war), and the decades that followed (when there was no gold standard to handcuff monetary policy, and when Keynesian economics allowed for fiscal flexibility).
> And it brings up a good point which no one answers satisfyingly: why shouldn't the average person just enjoy price savings produced by technology?
There's a difference between deflation through innovation, and deflation through economic turmoil (e.g., mass unemployment, collapse of aggregate demand).
One of my favourite examples of 'invisible deflation' that no one notices (often while they're complaining about inflation) is a 1991 Radio Shack ad:
"I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this.""
I'm sorry, but in what way does the current financial turmoil even approach the Great Depression?
As much as the media likes to say 'worst X since Great Depression', that doesn't mean X is actually anywhere near as bad as the Great Depression. And before you start digging up obscure values of X that actually are statistically worse in some way, point me to the 25% unemployment and millions of middle class folk turning into migrant workers and living in their cars.
> The great depression was largely the result of massive numbers of everyman speculators entering the markets with reckless amounts of leverage.
The Great Depression is a lot more complicated than Black Thursday... (inflationary monetary policy during most of the roaring 20's, contractionary policy during the market crash causing bank runs).
Psychology is malleable, and consumption patterns beyond food and shelter are driven largely by psychology. In the great depression, consumption behavior of an entire generation was permanently changed, no matter how much better the economy got. Those mental scars lasted forever.
What percentage of the population will watch a parent, spouse, best friend, or grandparent slowly asphyxiate to death and develop a lifetime aversion to casual dining, tourism, mall shopping, non-business air travel, fast food, staying in hotels, visiting family for holidays, casino gambling, meeting with potential clients, going to class, etc?
And then what are the second order effects of not needing the suits/ties/dresses, jetliner inventory, commercial real estate, gasoline, cruise ships, university buildings, casinos, etc required for the above activities?
Which of the economic sectors predicated on those activities will "bounce back"? What is the current high-yield debt load associated with these sectors?
> pushed it into an inflationary debt crisis and eventually created Nazism
The hyperinflation of the early 20s has a lot of sticking power in the mind, but it was the severe deflationary crisis of 1929-32 that immediately preceded the rise of Nazism.
I can't help but s/1930s/Great Depression/ and wonder what this even means.
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