How Will Daily Life Change During This Slow-Depression?
Even in the Great Depression, most people had jobs, most people had homes, most people did not experience severe suffering. The government is unlikely to let this one be as bad. Services provided by the government are going to be worse and/or cost more. Or the government may use providing services as a way to prop up the economy. I sure hope the Obama administration chooses to fund education as a way of fueling the economy while investing in our human/intellectual infrastructure. If unemployment keeps rising, to, say, 12%, then 3 out of 25 people you know are likely to be unemployed. Some people that you know may lose their home to foreclosure. Already, many of us have had our retirement savings badly reduced. (Ouch) People will have to work harder and sacrifice some comforts. Some wealthy people won’t need to change their lifestyle, but many people will see reduction in hours or pay, and will adjust accordingly. Certainly, raises and bonuses are becoming scarce (except some
dinger: “Please excuse me for asking a rhetorical question, but how old are you? The older you get, the more you will realize that every recession is the “worst since the Great Depression”, that the same hacks and fear mongers come out of the woodwork, that the best-seller lists get crowded with doomsday tomes, and that…a few months later it all goes away.” I’m old enough to know that the Jonas Brothers aren’t a novel musical concept. And while there were freakout books published during the last recession, no one in the government or media was making any references to the Great Depression. [Not unless a joke from Bart Simpson counts.] And we sure as hell didn’t see Lehman Brothers sold off for peanuts like it was a toaster in a yard sale. The national debt is twice what it was then, the first Boomers are now starting to collect Social Security, and even the professional optimist
Just an aside, but is there evidence that certain people start tooling up for the apocalypse every time there’s an economic slump? Or is it just that this one is combining in some pathological way with anxiety about climate change and ‘peak oil’? It’s true that people are being very cautious right now about purchasing high-value items (houses, cars) and that that is having a knock-on effect on the construction and auto industries (and the many, many industries that depend on them), but overall, we’re just experiencing a correction – as a society we’ve been living on artifically high levels of credit, and we need to adjust to living more within our means. For some of us, that really just means life as usual, but there are a lot of people whose spending and borrowing were way beyond their means, and the banking system was encouraging that without much concern about whether it was sustainable. Once property prices fall to a more sustainable level (where I live, property prices have more t
Please excuse me for asking a rhetorical question, but how old are you? The older you get, the more you will realize that every recession is the “worst since the Great Depression”, that the same hacks and fear mongers come out of the woodwork, that the best-seller lists get crowded with doomsday tomes, and that…a few months later it all goes away. Remember this: a vibrant ecomomy has a kind of conga line life to it. It will have fits and starts, surge ahead at times, and get jammed up at others. But it keeps going.
