[The Duchess of Mint]

Dear Musicals.Net Posters,

Do you think that The Great Depression was worse than our current Millennial Great Depression, or that our Millennial Great Depression is worse than The Great Depression was?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

[fjays]

DUCHESS!!

Where have you been?

[jfmillet]

Hmmm...I'm not sure about which is worse...but I don't like the name "Millennial Great Depression."

I prefer "The GoldenPalace.com This Ain't Your Grandmama's Depression! sponsored by AIG"

[Dax]

If this "depression" was anything resembling the Great Depression no one would have the internet. And I mean no one.

[Patch]

Well we were in a serious recession...I don't know if what we recently experienced qualfies as an actual "depression".

A depression is most commonly defined as when the Gross Domestic Product takes a downturn of 10% or more over a series of consecutive years. Oddly enough...despite all the economic troubles...the GDP actually increased between 2000 and 2008. While only dipping for a small moment in 2002. The GDP increased from 35000 to 40000 between 2000 and 2008.

I don't know what to credit this to and how it correlates to the increased unemployment and crdit freezes...but according to most economists we have been in a severe recession but not a depression.

[jfmillet]

[Dax]

The only numbers that mean anything are the number of people that lost everything. Not some. Not just their retirement. Not just their jobs. But everything.

[Patch]

[Dax]

How many Hoovervilles do we have today?
I like this: "Hoover blanket" (old newspaper used as blanketing) and "Hoover flag" (an empty pocket turned inside out). "Hoover leather" was cardboard used to line a shoe with the sole worn through.

[Patch]

[Dax]

*shrugs*
My contention is the idea that today's "depression" compares to the Great Depression. Which it really doesn't by much.

Facts and Figures


I remember "the Depression"
by vaughn davis bornet on October 17, 2008

A year was just as long then as it is now.

It took time for that unemployment to form and for things to slow to a halt.

I'm not lecturing the learned specialist on Economic Trends, but I do rather think the few of us that remember should comment a bit on what it was like.

In the 1920s my Father Vaughn Taylor Bornet had 44 engineers in his Philadelphia firm. In 1931 the Philadelphia Post Office construction had gone belly up for the prime contractor, and my subcontractor (steel) Father was hanging out to dry.

In late 1931 and early 1932 my Father was totally unempoyable; there was no construction. Our two homes had been sold by the sheriff, representing the savings and loan mortgage holder; our cars were gone, also my toys and our furnishngs. I lived for a year with my aunt; my parents clear across the city with my sister.

In spring, 1932, my Father sold a piece of a last asset and moved to Florida, getting reemployed at No Salary for two months, when a small hotel began construction on Miami Beach.

I supported the family for nearly two months with a large AM paper route at 20 cents for a one week subscription. I would collect in the evening from two or three and we would eat on a Friday for 20-25 cents a dinner.

That's Depression. We had been evicted in the Philadelphia suburbs three times for inability to pay. Our lives were effectively gone. Friends could not help. Total humiliation for affected former wage earners, professional or not.

My point? Just that you had to be there. Nothing was happening in the economy, at least nothing affecting us!

That savings and loan went bankrupt and seized my newspaper savings of $14.50. Its motto had been "A penny saved is a good example for the other $.99." My Father's Manufacturers' Club on Broadway was long gone. Only twenty years later would my Father return to the Philadelphia area on a visit. He never talked of The Past.
He was 54, and starting over. No matter that he was certainly among the best in his profession.

I don't think he had the slightest idea why the country had gotten into such a mess. He knew He had built giant structures in the 1920s, anyway.
And he had toured Europe in 1927, high on the hog (as they said then).

I saw my parents maybe seven times in 1931-32, taking a streetcar, walking, taking a bus, walking; reversing it a day later. It took all day. We spent nothing. Nothing (except that carfare).

Vaughn Davis Bornet, Ph.D. age 91
(Swiped from the History News Network)
.

[Beagle On Stage]