Obviously, I was not around during the Wall Street Crash of 1929 or during the Great Depression, but, as everyone has, I have read a lot about it through the years. From what I am seeing at this point in all of our lives, the difference between now and then (in a large part) is this:
In 1929, when Wall Street Crashed, EVERYONE suffered. The rich became poor and the poor became more poor. Not everyone, of course, but many.
In 2008, the economy has hit a downhill slope and the brakes have gone out, but it seems to me only the poor (becoming more poor) and the middle class (becoming poor) are having a hard time. The poor spend their days trying to decide between food and gas. The middle class job market is drying up. The rich are concerned about which house they will be staying in this weekend. Or which middle class person's house they will be able to pick up for a song after foreclosure.
I don't need to be rich to be happy. And I won't ever be rich, unless I win the Lottery, and that isn't likely, since I don't buy tickets. But I am sick to death of the rich taking my slice of the pie, running this country into the ground so that my 401K sits practically empty, and, yet, they come out smelling like a rose.
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4 comments:
No way, no how, no gifts to
Richistan.
Don't we wish?
Actually, the rich did very well in the deflationary cycle during 1930-1932. Not all of them, of course. The "new rich" who were rich with Wall Street wealth lost it all. But the old-skool robber baron types picked up the assets of those who could no longer pay their debts for a song.
Go look at the background of Huey Long's "Share the Wealth" program and you'll get a real picture of what the economic situation was like when FDR was elected. You had the filthy rich who owned like 90% of all assets in America, then you had the poor. The middle class had pretty much been wiped out. It is only because FDR proved to be such a scrapper that the USA avoided going down the Communist or fascist path...
- Badtux the History Penguin
Badtux,
Thank you! I will look into that. I probably should know more about it, especially in today's economic world.
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