Tuesday, November 30, 2010
The Great Depression
I had a question about the depression. In class today Mr. Greary mentioned how you only ever see pictures of poverty but that is not all that's going on. This is kind of dumb, but what else was really happening? I mean, we never really focus on anything other than how bad it was for everyone, so how was it for the people who weren't as poor or in debt, etc. Were there people who actually maybe benifited from the great depression? Or was it just simply that some people were so rich that they were able to keep living normally despite the bad economy?
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Interesting post. The answer to all of your questions is essentially yes. There were still wealthy, middle class, and there were people who surely made money off of the Great Depression (I support the New Deal, but I am know millions of government dollars were stolen by people with connections). The reason we don't talk about that in high school is that much of the above is a constant in history, but the dramatic changes of the time period was the unemployment rate (24%), the Dust Bowl, failure of the banks, the duration of the Depression, over 10 years, and more. Certainly from the perspective of studying 1930's history in high school within a limited timeframe, this is more important in shaping our understanding of the economy, the rise of totalitarianism, etc.
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