Comments on: Modern Depressions

By: Hal Finney

Hal Finney — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:52:26 +0000

It may be that this picture of an upcoming Depression_2 will be right in many ways, but that doesn’t mean it is how things will be perceived. The media seems to be determined to present the economic slowdown using the narratives of the past. I can hardly open a paper these days without finding a story about a food bank running out, or a free meal offer being overrun with former members of the middle class. Maybe it’s something of an artifact of the holidays, but if we think of these reports as the “first draft of history” then maybe this slowdown will be perceived not so differently from the Great Depression, if things gets bad enough.

By: Phil Goetz

Phil Goetz — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:12:45 +0000

I thought that the recovery was generally attributed to the massive government spending and regulation of industry brought on by WWII.

Sure, America was brought out of the depression by massive government spending… by Britain.

By: Tyrrell McAllister

Tyrrell McAllister — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 08:57:23 +0000

Thanks, Robin. Would you say that there’s anything like a mainstream consensus view among experts on how we got out of the Great Depression? Or are we non-experts in the position of having to contradict a significant number of experts if we want to give more credence to any one view?

By: John Maxwell

John Maxwell — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:28:40 +0000

>We might see more former lawyers wearing knockoffs, doing their back-to-school shopping at Target or Wal-Mart rather than Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch

Gee, sounds awful.

Also, I give you my official permission to delete sentences from a document without replacing them with ellipses.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:55:43 +0000

burger, yes, it is good to be in a rich society.

Ian and Tyrrell, Marginal Revolution has had lots of posts lately on causes of entry and exit for the Great Depression.

By: burger flipper

burger flipper — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:23:36 +0000

So we’d get that 50% cut in medicine, Whole Foods and Forever 21 would go belly up, and we’d stash Grampa on the hide-a-bed instead of the retirement home?

Doesn’t sound so bad to me. Guess I’ll have to dig in to Global Catastrophic Risk, which finally came into the library, to get my gloom and doom on.

By: Tyrrell McAllister

Tyrrell McAllister — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:06:21 +0000

Is it really possible to describe how we got out of the original Great Depression with such a narrative? I thought that the recovery was generally attributed to the massive government spending and regulation of industry brought on by WWII.

By: Ian C.

Ian C. — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:55:51 +0000

What an awful, bleak picture. I am no economist, but every economic downturn I have seen has been gotten out of the same way, by lowering taxes and deregulating business. It’s no mystery.