Life as we know it - is it all over but the shouting?

There's a lively discussion going on over on another blog about inflation and the money supply and whether or not the sky is falling or if we're about to fall off the edge of the world, or just what really is happening. Comparisons are being made to the 'Great Depression'.

First of all, let me clear one thing up - the 'Great Depression' wasn't so damned great at all. My father was out of work for nearly 3 years, and pounding the pavement daily trying to find someone who might hire him. We'd have been in Big Trouble if my mother hadn't had a few dollars saved up from her school teaching job. She made most of my clothes out of others' hand-me-downs until I was around ten. It was not a 'fun time' for anyone to be here, and that's for damned sure.

However, comparing that so-called Great Depression to what's happening now is incorrect on several levels, because for starters, there are now three times as many people on the planet as there were back then. And those three times as many people have at least three times as many different problems. Back in the beginning of the 1930s, we didn't have television to show us the latest events. We had radio, and in bigger centers the daily newspaper. We also had Newsreels at the movie theater, preceding the main show. Those weren't up to the minute, but they were usually fairly recent events being show. That was as close as we came to being well informed on what was going on. Both news and people travelled slower back then, and that wasn't all bad. Incidently, the cars of the 1930s gave us just as good gas milage as today's creampuffs offer us, even if they were less well equipped. And there was nothing quite like riding in the rumble seat on a nice summer's evening, which we can't do now.

Back then, almost every week brought fresh promises of 'Happy Days Are Here Again' or some 'Good News' that never quite resulted in getting things back to normal. There was hope everywhere, but little or no improvements in the general situation - until Hitler invaded Poland, and the Second World War began in September, 1939. I was not quite seven, and I remember it. Very soon, rationing came in, and things like gasoline and sugar were obtained with coupons in a ration book, without which, you made do without them. Car tires and batteries were difficult or impossible to replace, and even tires for a bicycle were hard to get. The Depression was replaced by something even less attractive - wartime, and its various sacrifices and shortages and family members going off and sometimes not returning. I hope we manage this downturn in the economy with a little more intelligence and foresight than we did then.

With the tools and technology at our disposal now, I can't understand why our leaders are once more reverting to the same old gimicks that mostly served to prolong the agony in the famous Dirty Thirties. Surely, we're smarter than that. Unfortunately, I don't see much proof of it.