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The standard of living in the early 20th century during the Great Depression was totally different than today.
Cars were a rare and new luxury that only the Astors could afford.
Most people still lived in the horse and buggy and 40 acre farm stage.
Imagine people today losing everything compared to those back then that didn't have much anyway.
Good Luck!
1 out of 10 Americans owning cars back then compared to everyone owning cars today, some with several cars, is not the same.
24kgold, i think you are wrong.
In 1920, one in three households in the United States owned an automobile.
By 1930, four out of five household owned an automobile.
The Great Depression was 1930 to 1940 (roughly).
In 2006, there were about 250,000,000 registered vehicles in the United States. At that time there were about 116,000,000 households. While roughly 2 cars per household in 2006 is a greater ratio than in 1930, at least 80% of the American households owned at least one car in 1930. That's a far cry from "1 out of 10 Americans owning cars".
While roughly 2 cars per household in 2006 is a greater ratio than in 1930, at least 80% of the American households owned at least one car in 1930. That's a far cry from "1 out of 10 Americans owning cars".
Your math is completely flawed because it assumes a household is the same size now as it was during the depression and that simply isn't true. You also did not give your numbers for the 1930s which are needed to draw that conclusion.
Your math is completely flawed because it assumes a household is the same size now as it was during the depression and that simply isn't true. You also did not give your numbers for the 1930s which are needed to draw that conclusion.
The numbers for 1920 and 1930 were taken directly from sources available on the web. I don't have the sources here at work, but you can certainly look them up yourself.
The numbers for 2006 were taken from government sources - 250 million registered vehicles from the US Department of Transportation, 116 million households from the US Census Bureau.
My only arithmetic was dividing 250 million vehicles by 116 million households to obtain an average of 2 vehicles per household. I never estimated the size of a current household. I will concede that there are some households in the United States that don't own any automobiles.
Lumbollo, your assumptions as to my "flawed math" are, well, flawed.
Actually if you count unemployment as they did years ago, then the number is running around 22% of those they know about. I don't know about you, but 1 out 5 people who want to work full time, that are not, is a pretty bad statistic IMO.
That's a bunch of baloney. The true unemployment rate is always lower than the stated rate. Always has been. Nothing new here.
Not a recession, a depression. But even in the depths of the Great Depression life still went on. The whole world doesn't stop.
It was NOT a depression. A serious recession, yes. Depression, no. Very few of us were alive during the Great Depression. That was a real depression. 10% unemployment is not. 25% unemployment like they had during the Great Depression is. And as I said in another post, the true unemployment rate is always higher than the official rate. It was as true in the 1930s as it is now.
The government bailout of the banks averted a true Depression. However, I once read an interesting analogy....the financial crisis presented us with a choice between a car crash and cancer. We opted for cancer.
All we really did was push the problem forward a few more years....We're all going find out what a real depression looks and feels like soon enough.
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