Random Acts of Living


Saturday, February 27, 2010

What Pulled Us Up Out of the Depression?

Our economy is a hot topic right now. People are hurting. No jobs, no money. The thing is, the majority of people out there that are asking their government to help them through this would really rather be working. They REALLY don't want everyone else to pay their way, but they simply can NOT find a job that will pay the bills, even after they've walked away from their dream home and sold everything they have that anyone might want to buy. And people aren't buying, so who are they suppose to sell their things too? And then we get senators like this, "Senator blocks federal aid bill." He wants to know who is going to pay for this. I would like to point out that this senator is not running again, he doesn't care what anyone else thinks/feels, he is running his own agenda. To answer his question I think one needs to go back and find out what pulled us out of the Great Depression. I think this graph says a lot...

You can read more about this at, "How We Get Out of the Great Depression II" that states... "Unfortunately, as in the Great Depression, the extreme conservatives would rather trash the country than have our government succeed." And I tend to agree with this. Another interesting resource is "National debt by U.S. presidential terms" in Wikipedia.

I've found two popular answers to my question. One says that it was Roosevelt and the work programs that pulled America up out of the Depression, the other is the war effort. I would further like to ask, either way, where did the money come from to fund it? I don't think either option is as different as some people would like you to believe. They were both funded by 'the government' (read tax dollars). Look at our national debt on the chart. The only difference is that during war time much stricter options were available. The government tightened the screws on distribution of many products and production (read jobs) swung into high gear. How can that be translated into today's language. I don't think it would read 'tax cuts for the rich'. How do YOU think it would translate?

3 comments:

Peter said...

Hi! We would all like to know where our Goverments get the money to bolster our respective economies. They must have some secret stash hidden away somewhere in case of emergences just like the GFC.

Heaven help us if we ever see soup kitchens and food vouches on the scale of the depression years!

Who is to blame for our poor economies? Heaven knows the correct answer but easy money and greed must have something to do with it.

Take Care,
Peter

Bob Johnson said...

Don't get me going on governments and their spending habits...oh wait you did,lol, all about priorities and politics, there is money out there, just so much waste and misinformation about where it is and how it is actually being distributed.

Moonshadow said...

Peter & Bob - I'm surprised that the only 'rise' I get from this post come from outside the U.S.

Peter - nobody would like to see the depression years again, though there are fewer every day that actually lived through it. Something needs to be done to free up the flow of money. Everybody, from the banks on down, are hanging on to theirs and the 'fearmongers' aren't helping any.

Bob - I agree that there's way to much misinformation out there and it's difficult to discern who's telling the truth a lot of times.