Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Just a note the US went into severe debt to fight WWII. The Debt to GDP ratio was over 100%. We are approaching that but we aren't there yet. If our GDP dropped to 9 trillion we would be closer to the GD like times.
One reason I wanted to ask this question is because Barack has been compared to FDR with the thinking that he will adopt some New Deal policies to get us out of this current financial crisis. Many people are under the impression that FDR's New Deal ended the Depression. But if that's not the case then wouldn't Barack be going in the wrong direction thinking that some new version of FDR's policies will solve this current financial crisis?
I guess the answer to that is, that the depression would have ended eventually, it did everywhere (except Albania). There were a number of factors that caused the depression, some preventalbe and some not. And there were a number of things that brought us out of the depression, some by design and some by accident. And probably some remedies that were tried and made it worse, that we don't hear much about.
In the "seem to think" category, yuu seem to think we would still be in the depression if there had been no war.
That would be a counterfactual argument, something that I rarely engage in.
Quote:
While folk tales of themselves are of limited value, the observations of people who experiences historical events are considered more useful by historians than the opinions of people who were not there.
Narrative history has its place, but the question while historical in nature clearly falls under the heading of economics. A depression is by definition is an economic evaluation marked by a sustained downturn of the GDP by 10 points or more. There were at least two severe downturns during the period 1929 to 1940. The first was marked by the crash of 1929 and the second from 1936 to 1938. As I pointed out above, unemployment remained in the double digits until rapidly declining to full employment during the war not prior to it.
Earlier, I mentioned that I tend not to engage in counterfactual arguments. There is no way of telling if the growth sustained after the downturn of 1937 would have been long term or if it would have been interrupted by another collapse. But what we do know is that government expenditures for WWII began in 1940 and we can correlate growth in GDP and a decline in unemployment to those dates. Those are the facts that both historians and economist look at when evaluating when the Great Depression ended.
In the "seem to think" category, yuu seem to think we would still be in the depression if there had been no war.
While folk tales of themselves are of limited value, the observations of people who experienced historical events are considered more useful by historians than the opinions of people who were not there.
Speaking of seem to think... old timer native WV'ns insist the depression never ended in WV. Everything is relative and if history were strictly statistics we could break all of life down into binary code values of 0 and 1.
I think depression era knew tremendous suffering, knew how far from abject poverty they were, knew what was needful and knew gratitude. I think subsequent generations who haven't gone through those times have a hard time relating. Most americans have no concept of 3rd world conditions. My grandmothers taught me make do. My mother handed me the frugal gourmet. Hopefully I got the lessons right.
How should we measure economic success? Monetary prosperity that applies to percentages of population at various rates or a nation of self sufficient individuals?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
