Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

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Wat?

Are people like, forgetting the great Dust Bowl or something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

An entire generation of Americans left the Farms and went for the cities, only to learn that the Cities have entered the Great Depression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

And the cities had no help for the entire generation of farmers who lost everything. This time stands in contrast to the "Roaring Twenties", a time of plenty and a booming economy that the US has almost never seen before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties

Someone here has been drinking too much of that Rubio Kool-aid. Americans have had plenty of generation-defining tough times in our history. We are strong because of surviving through it, learning about the problems, and working to make the country better afterwards. But that "economical reset" button has been pushed several times in our history.

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In "Game of Thrones" terms, the Baby Boomers were born in the "great long spring", and have only known prosperity their whole life. They were born in a great time, a world rebuilt by the Greatest Generation (who grew up through the Dust Bowl AND Great Depression, then left to fight WW2 and then set the economic conditions for the post-war economic miracle).

But now fall is upon us, and the historians are remembering that yes, Winter is coming. And it is the millennials who have to now work through the winter that our parents don't remember ever existing... but our grandparents may remember the tougher times they had.

The missing piece is "learning about the problems and working to make the country better". It's hard not to feel that a significant number of elected officials often have the opposite approach - ignore the facts/research and work to line the pockets of their benefactors.

The main issue is that the two primary factions of US Politicians have grossly different ideas of what will and what won't make the country better.

Then 2008 happens and everyone is right AND everyone is wrong. A unique blend of too-much regulation AND not-enough regulation hits the nation and everything goes to crap. Republicans continue to point at the too much regulation (US Government encouraging loans, which helped fuel the sub-crime mortgages which created the bubble in the first place), while Democrats continue to point at too little regulation (AIG creating Credit Default Swaps on the "dark market", hidden away from regulators, which insured CDOs of CDOs of Mortgaged backed securities which fueled the housing bubble).

When in fact, both Republicans and Democrats are correct here. Government probably shouldn't have been doing some things, and the government probably should have been doing other things instead. But the parties are so locked into the mindset of "Government should do things" vs "Government shouldn't do things" that its hard to actually get any agreement anymore.

Anyway, that's how I see things: the two factions of US Politics are focused on creating arguments for the two primary stances on virtually any issue that occurs in politics: whether government should do something about a particular issue, or whether government should NOT do something about a particular issue.

That's good, and in fact, its great that people disagree because that's how we learn as a country. The problem is now the political wheels and deals have died off, because people have lost faith in the system. People need to start agreeing and creating consensus across the aisle so that the government can start doing stuff (be it rolling back poorly-implemented government programs, or pushing forward key beneficial government programs)

No ones forgetting about the Great Depression nor implying that there haven't also been other tough times. But the point remains that from a perspective of lifetime earnings today we are worse off than we have ever been. The Great Depression wiped away billions if not trillions of dollars of worth but from an economic perspective those dollars were already earned. We can debate all day whether having gained and lost a million dollars is better than having never gained that money to begin with.

Also the Great Depression only lasted 10 years to begin with meaning that it didn't even affect a majority of that generations prime earning years. Coupled with the fact that it was immediately preceded and succeeded by periods of incredible growth and you see why you're point isn't really accurate.

> But the point remains that from a perspective of lifetime earnings today we are worse off than we have ever been. The Great Depression wiped away billions if not trillions of dollars of worth but from an economic perspective those dollars were already earned.

Did you not read my post? I started with the Great Dust Bowl, which completely eradicated an entire generation of farmers. Eight years of drought was a natural disaster on an unfathomable scale.

Look, if you were born in 1915, you'd have finished high school right in time for the Dust Bowl. Your entire family's profession of "Farming" or "Ranching" is utterly destroyed. Then, you'd move to the city to look for a job, only to learn that the Great Depression started and there was no hope for you here.

You're 20 years old who only knows how to farm. Its 1935. Current networth: $0. Good luck finding a job during the Great Depression.

If you're not a farmer and were a city-folk for those years... well now its 1935 and all these dumb homeless, jobless farmers are taking the jobs in the city, leaving no jobs for you. Of course, its the Great Depression and nobody has a job, so maybe you shouldn't be blaming the farmers.

In either case, you'd now spend several years homeless, moving between Hoover-villes and shanty towns across the nation, until Pearl Harbor happened and everyone was drafted into the military. You were then forced to fight against either Hitler or the Japs in the bloodiest war the world has ever known.

You're now 30 years old, and its 1945. Current networth: $0. That's if you're a lucky one and you weren't killed or maimed during WW2.

Now you've come home from the war, and the postwar economic boom is beginning to start finally, but the country now raises taxes all the way to 90%+ to pay off the WW2 Debt. Good luck building a networth with that kind of tax.

You're now 35 years old and its 1950. Taxes are high, but you finally have a networth. You finally feel what prosperity feels like, after a pretty tough life, and then father a naive generation that we now call "The Baby Boomers". A group of kids who are so naive that even today in their 60s, they believe in "Get a college education, you'll get a job" and ideals like "children always grow up in better times than their parents".

Facts which are pretty much exclusively true for only the Boomers.... and only because the Greatest Generation planted the seeds for their prosperity.

I like your comment about the boomers. They are very naive in deed. Work hard and everythings fine...sure...I will get and burn what is left of oil, coal and gas and leave tons of debt to the next generation and when im old, ill tell them, they "dont work hard enough".

No ones forgetting about the Great Depression...

Anyone who ever recommended or used consumer credit forgot everything important about it.

Nah man. Just the people who hate on Fractional-reserve banking.

Nothing is wrong with consumers using credit. But when banks use credit (far above and beyond the arbitrary 20% number that the Fed has set), then a failure at one bank can cascade against the rest of the banks in the country.

People have forgotten that the massive decentralization and massive deflation of the 1930s created the conditions of the Great Depression. Tiny banks were far more correlated with each other due to shoddy lending practices.

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People calling for the Gold Standard have forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression. Banning Gold from US Citizens was a major step towards curing the Great Depression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Once Gold was no longer in circulation, the Fed was able to expand the money supply by printing more dollars than there was Gold to back it. In the coming years, the US would start pulling itself out of the depression caused by Gold Hoarding and loose fiscal policy.

Honestly, it was a similar strategy as QE or dropping interest rates that was employed in 2008: the goal was to expand the monetary supply to pump us out of a potential Depression.

If anything, its credit that allows us to get out of economic shocks like that. All the Libertarian Gold Bugs seem to forget the lesson of the 1930s however...

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