I read the following argument that we are experiencing the second Great Depression but it didn’t convince me:
But that doesn’t mean we’re not in another Great Depression, either. As you know, I think we are, based on the misery visited on the vast majority of the population since the recession began in 2007. What I’m thinking about are the following: the high level and long duration of unemployment (and the length of time over which both have persisted), the extraordinary number of home foreclosures, the difficulty in obtaining adequate medical care, the unprecedented rise in student debt, the growing ranks of poor people (and near-poor people), and so on. So, in my view, while there’s been a recovery for a tiny minority of the population (based on the return to record profits for U.S. corporations, the resurgence of the stock market, and the high salaries and growing wealth of those at the top), the best characterization for the situation in which the working classes find themselves is the Second Great Depression.
I’m always bothered by the tendency that many people have to stretch analogies way too far. This always leads to the complete erosion of significant concepts. As a result, we end up in a situation where “Nazi” is synonymous with “bad person” and “Holocaust” is a description of a dieting choice.
What do you think? Do you see the current economic crisis as the Second Great Depression?
P.S. I just read the Wikipedia article on the Great Depression and found the following insulting statement in it:
The fall of communism in the Soviet Union led to a severe economic crisis and catastrophic fall in the standards of living in the 1990s in the former Eastern Bloc, most notably, in post-Soviet states, that was almost twice as intense as the Great Depression had been in the countries of Western Europe and the U.S. in the 1930s.
The idea that the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a fall in the standards of living is just too bizarre. Every person who has even remotely been around during the 1990ies has to know that living standards soared after the Soviet empire broke down. And the comparison between the post-Soviet transition to capitalism and the Great Depression? The author of this article has no shame. This will now be one more example that I will use to teach my students about why using Wikipedia makes no sense.
Clarissa's Blog 
My granny and grandfather used to tell me stories about living during the Great Depression. The stories instilled a great respect in me for my grandparents and their ability to survive and thrive under incredibly difficult circumstances, especially in a poor, rural area where food was limited to what you could grow or kill yourself.
I look around at the world these days, and while I do see pockets of absolute dire poverty, especially on reservations, small rural towns, and urban ghettos, it’s not quite like my grandparents described. My grandma says that people seem a lot less community-oriented in this recession, but that could just be in her neighbourhood.
LikeLike
For my family the standard of living did fall, as for most in our town. It depends.
LikeLike
Before 1991, there were no means of hygiene for menstruation and no methods of contraception. After 1991, there were all kinds of tampons, sanitary pads, condoms and pills. This is already a dramatic improvement of living standards for everybody.
LikeLike
Standards have living have fallen in the past few years, and my parents (who are very much working class people) can’t afford all of the things that they were buying at the start of the millennium. That isn’t to say that they lived the high life until the recession, but at the same time they are hardly total paupers now either.
People who have lost their jobs are always going to suffer an awful lot, especially if that unemployment lasts for many years, and seeing any family losing their home upsets me greatly.
Despite that, I find it extremely uncomfortable to compare this recession to the Great Depression in any real way. The suffering of the working classes during that time really was incomparable to today. In the 20s and 30s there was very little Government intervention in unemployment and homelessness and state benefits were (by the by) unheard of.
Since 1945 (at least on this side of the pond) and Attlee’s government, there really hasn’t been that sort of mass suffering. No matter what happens to your job in Britain, there is always going to be free healthcare, greatly improved national insurance polices and state benefits.
I don’t want to diminish the suffering of an awful lot of families since 2007, but at the same time, calling this ‘The Second Great Depression’ diminishes the suffering of the people who literally starved in the Great Depression.
So, at least by British standards, it is impossible to compare a recession pre-Welfare State to a recession that happened post-Welfare State in any meaningful way.
LikeLike
“I don’t want to diminish the suffering of an awful lot of families since 2007, but at the same time, calling this ‘The Second Great Depression’ diminishes the suffering of the people who literally starved in the Great Depression.”
– That’s exactly what I’m saying!
LikeLike
I know, I was agreeing with you.
LikeLike
“I know, I was agreeing with you.”
– And I was agreeing with you. 🙂
LikeLike
No we most surely are not. Between 1931 and 1933 real GDP fell by almost 30 per cent. Unemployment ran at 25 per cent. The CPI fell by almost 25 percent. It is simply ludicrous to call the recent recession a depression. The reason for house foreclosures in the Great Depression was very different from now. In the 1930s households that could well afford their mortgages when they took them out were caught by falling price levels and bank collapses. Their mortgages were repayable in pre-depression dollars, which became impossible for many. Today households in foreclosure largely created their own problem by purchasing houses that they could never remotely afford.
Clarissa is absolutely correct to be skeptical of such statements.
LikeLike