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America's Great Depression: People
built 628 days ago
In the Great Depression, the American dream had become a nightmare. What was once the land of opportunity was now the land of desperation. What was once the land of hope and optimism had become the land of despair.The American people were questioning all the basics on which they had based their lives - democracy, capitalism, individualism. The best hope for a better life, for many, was California. Many Dust Bowl farmers packed their families into cars, tied their few possessions on the back, and sought work in the agricultural fields or cities of the West - their role as independent land owners gone forever. Between 1929 and 1932 the income of the average American family was reduced by 40%, from $2,300 to $1,500.
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Macroeconomists, such as Ben Bernanke, have revived the debt-deflation view of the Great Depression originated by Arthur Cecil Pigou and Irving Fisher. In the 1920s, widespread use of the home mortgage and credit purchases of automobiles and furniture in the U.S. boosted spending, but created consumer debt. People who were deeply in debt when a price deflation occurred were in serious trouble — even if they kept their jobs — and risked default. They drastically cut current spending to keep payments on time... lowering demand for new products. Furthermore, the debts grew when prices and incomes fell 20-50%, but the debts remained at the same dollar amount. With future profits looking poor, capital investment slowed drastically.
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Andrew Solomon seems to want to win more and more people over to antidepressant therapy ("America's great depression," Views, Nov. 18). The only way to achieve that aim is to convince people that they are depressed - and what better method than the network of depression centers he proposes?
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During the desperate years of the great depression, a new blueprint of education evolved in the U.S. that showed considerable promise for assisting the young people who were among its victims. This is its story.
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