Column: Has the great depression of this century begun?
Born in 1958, near the last of the boomer generation’s progeny, I’ve never seen the world in a crisis like this.
In 1859, Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair … ”
It feels a bit like that now and I wonder if we will soon experience despair en masse in a new scary world not seen in my lifetime.
My parents were 13-years-old when the stock market crashed on Oct. 1929. Both of them had survived the 1918 influenza epidemic that killed more people worldwide than World War I.
For many, the crash signaled the start of ten years of hard times, lost fortunes and bank failures.
With the shock, people stopped buying things so people had to stop making things, resulting in high rates of unemployment, businesses failings, damaging protective foreign trade tariffs, charity breadlines and soup kitchens for people who had no other means to eat.
The worst economic disaster since then took place twelve years ago and became known worldwide as the Global Financial Crisis. With it, many lost their retirement funds, homeowners lost millions in home values, many lost their homes and unemployment peaked in the US at 10%.
Until very recently unemployment had dropped to 3.9%, but still many high paying jobs and retirement savings, especially for older citizens, were not recovered.
The wealth in our country is much more concentrated now than it was during the great depression. The peak unemployment rate was almost 25% in 1933.
According to the New York Times, the unemployment rate was near 13% at the end of March and then rising rapidly at a speed never seen before in US history. Jobs are now being lost daily at the same rate they were increasing annually for the past three years.
Anyone who has been out shopping lately has noticed the scarcity of goods on store shelves, the absence of open businesses and vehicles on the road. Whether you are going to work or not, you probably know someone who is recently out of work.
According to some surveys, prior to the pandemic, 50 to 75% of employees earning less than $50,000 annually are living paycheck to paycheck and near three out of ten adults have no emergency savings at all.
When credit runs out and they become hungry what could happen? Who’s been stocking up on guns and ammo?
