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Originally Posted by JimmyS1985
I got back from the funeral just now.
"Well, I can assure you, without a doubt, that the way to stimulate job growth is NOT to dis-incentivize work by offering generous gov't support programs to anyone who wants them."
I'm not really a history buff. I know a "little" bit. But I do know that most social programs in place today, did not exist in 1932.
In 1932, you had no SNAP, Welfare, EITC, SCHIP, TANF, Meals On Wheels, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Pell Grants, GI Bill, Public Housing, and so on and so forth.
If you didn't work, you risked starving, or as today would put it "Food Insecurity" which is short of starvation, but still very bad. If you lost your job? You lost all your possessions, assuming you had loans out on them which most citizens did. You lost your car, your house, if you were a farmer you lost your farm. Upon getting fired, it didn't take long for you to find yourself out on the street.
With all these "incentives" to work in place, I don't know much about history, but I assume, 1932, was a golden economic boom year for the United States, because it's basically your ideal economy in action.
So, again, I don't know much about history, but I will look up 1932 and see what the economic conditions, just a quick google search...
Hmm...
Well, what can I say. This is "odd". I'm sorry, I have to plead ignorance, I assumed with so many of your ideal economic forces in action, and a total lack of a safety net, that 1932, would have been one of the greatest years in the history of the US Economy.
Has anyone here ever heard of "The Great Depression"? I haven't. Lets see, we got 25% unemployment despite massive survival instincts to find "work". We have massive shanty towns called "Hoovervilles" where the homeless live outside of every major US City in wood shacks and cardboard boxes, without things as basic as heating, plumbing or electricity. Massive bank foreclosures on peoples houses, farms, and property. Bread lines and soup lines were the only means of obtaining food if you had no income in the day, and these had massive lines around the block. Actually, I hate to say it, but this sounds like, economically speaking, one of the WORST times in US History.
I just don't understand how the economy could have so much of your economic ideals in place, and then turn out mass homelessness. Fluke? I got no idea. It just stuns me, that your ideal economy, actually heralded the worst economic times in US History, for the ordinary American at least.
The Great Depression was a result of the country's favorite monopoly (the Federal Reserve) conducting monetary policy that collapsed the price level and created instability. There is not a thing in the world anybody can do when the condition of money doesn't allow them. You can have perfect fiscal and regulatory policy in every imaginable way, but if the money monopoly fucks up, havoc will ensue.
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