9 Signs That We May Be Living Through Another Depression

[Better Believe It]

9 Signs That We May Be Living Through Another Depression
Three in 10 Americans say we're living through another depression -- are they right?
AlterNet / By Joshua Holland
June 1, 2011

A poll released this week found that a majority of Americans are experiencing so much anxiety over the state of the economy that they're losing sleep, experiencing relationship issues and getting angry. Two-thirds of those polled by Newsweek and the Daily Beast even said they were “angry at God.” Pollster Douglas Schoen concluded that “reality is beginning to break down Americans' normally optimistic attitude.”

Yet the reality that's breaking down Americans' sunny optimism is obscured by reports that the economy is in recovery, and has been since June 2009. That's a technical determination that does absolutely nothing for tens of millions of people living through the worst economic pain since the 1930s.

Depressions don't always unfold in the same way. The bleak period following the 1929 stock market crash has come to be known as the Great Depression, but it was not the first brutal downturn to be characterized as such. Between 1873 and 1896, the big industrial powers went through what was then called the Great Depression, and has since become known as the Long Depression.

The Long Depression never reached the grinding severity of the 1930s downturn; in fact, it was actually two severe recessions that bookended a period of rapid growth in the 1880s. Today, having “lost” much of the past decade, and with the economy looking like it may well head into a second period of recession – or at best a gradual, drawn-out road to economic health – historians may well come to view this period as another kind of Long Depression.

Read the full article at:

http://www.alternet.org/economy/151170/9_signs_that_we_may_be_living_through_another_depression/?page=entire

[yourout]

1. May be?

Way past that.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. It's not a depression for the country as a whole

It's only a depression for the least-wealthy 99%. The top 1% are raking in so much cash that it makes up for the rest of us.

"Who the &$%@ else ya gonna vote for, chumps?"

[RKP5637]

3. Depressions are relative to an individual IMO. Some people have been

living in a depression since all of this crap started, and others will say "what depression?" When the banksters and wall streeters start jumping out windows, then we will know something might improve as they crash.

[AndyTiedye]

9. The Windows on Those Buildings Don't Open Anymore

Kind of hard to jump out the window in most modern office buildings.

[RKP5637]

13. Yeah, I've worked in them. Guess we need some of the old types back labeled "Jump Here!" LOL n/t

[Vanje]

4. K&R nt

[msongs]

5. so where's the jobs program? repubs don't have one and dems don't either nt

[Better Believe It]

7. Here's President Obama's Jobs Program

Obama's Economic Advisor Mr. Goolsbee Sounded Like A Typical GOP Presidential Advisor Today
Scarecrow’s Nightmare: Austan Goolsbee Defends President Romney’s Economic Plan
By: Scarecrow
June 5, 2011

If I’d been asleep for the last decade and woke up to ABC This Week’s interview of Presidential economic advisor Austan Goolsbee, I would assume that Mitt Romney won the 2008 election, that he was predictably following Republican dogma about how to recover from a severe financial collapse and recession and that intelligent media folks like Christiane Amanpour were realizing those standard GOP policies aren’t working.

Goolsbee correctly told us that a smart economist wouldn’t get overly excited about one month’s jobs and growth numbers but would instead look at the overall trend. Of course what he wouldn’t want to concede is that GDP grew at a meager annual rate of 1.8 percent over the first three months of 2011 and so far was predicted to grow at only 2.8 percent for the next three. And the overall trend for job growth was still not enough to make a serious dent in unemployment unless you believe taking 5-10 years to get back to full employment is okay.

So Goolsbee was in denial from the opening moment because he didn’t have a decent story to tell even in his own framework. When Amanpour asked him what the Administration could or should be doing to improve conditions, he ticked off items you’d expect to hear from a typical GOP Presidential adviser: we’ve got to get the debt under control; we have a White House effort to identify and get rid of governmental regulations that are preventing the private sector from growing the economy; we should pass “free trade” agreements backed by the Chamber of Commerce; and we should leverage limited public dollars to release billions in private funding for investments.

No, that couldn’t be real, so when I really wake up, I’ll let you know what the adviser for the actual Democratic President said today about the sagging economy and the undefensible unemployment numbers.

Read the full article at:

http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/06/05/austan-g...

[RKP5637]

16. And then announces he's leaving. Frankly, IMO, he knows how F'ed up it all is and

he doesn't want to go down with the Titanic, so heading back for dry land. We need visionary leadership, but we do the SOS hoping for results. Meanwhile, IMO, we're just digging the hole deeper and it's going to bury the majority of citizens down the road. Congress couldn't get their act together enough to even drive a car down the street.

[RKP5637]

14. It amazes me. All of the failing infrastructure in this country, decaying cities

that could be rebuilt, etc. These things require all types of skill levels and types of jobs.

Yet we spend money on endless wars, MIC and trickle down voodoo economics. I have to admit, I've just about given up hope. This nation is so F'ed up. People worry more about gay marriage and abortion than where we are headed as a nation.

Frankly, it's a recipe for disaster. The SH** is really going to hit the fan down the road when the domino effect really kicks in even more than now.

[dionysus]

6. if it takes 9 different signs to confirm a depression for you, you'd have to be either stupid,

or it's not much of a depression.

the economy isn't so great. we all know this. exaggerating doesn't accomplish anything.

keep tryin', i know you can do better.

[gkhouston]

11. It doesn't take 9 signs. Open your eyes.

Most of the people around me are either unemployed, underemployed, or shit-scared of losing their jobs, however crappy they may be. If that hasn't been your personal experience, enjoy living in your bubble while it lasts.

[DevonRex]

15. I'm waiting for the 9 signs we're living through another dustbowl thread.

:hi:

[Newest Reality]

8. We could easily

subscribe to common, economic parlance. Yet, in a time like this, so much is different that perhaps we could also speak in Biblical terms and try to make sense of it. Using ideas like recession and depression seem to fall under the magical spell of words that apply to life and our experience from only one sector: the people who make a living by espousing and supporting the ideas that support the economics.

With the idea of a class war in mind, we are in a dis-empowerment. I say that emphatically because one could consider not just the causes and factors behind what is purportedly going on, but by the tremendous shift of wealth and power from the people to a few. The actual impact, aside from money supplies and how it changes it hands, is that there are fewer people with the means to do as they choose while a very small fraction of the World's population has achieved an unparalleled amount of power and influence over the rest of us.

So, if we were to reframe this realistically, it would not be as vague or uncertain. If we were to look at our own, personal happiness and our ability to exercise our part in the whole to a degree where we do not feel frustrated, overwhelmed, dis-empowered, suicidal or without a satisfying degree of personal options when any problem comes along and we need to solve it, then, regardless of our personal preferences or desire to have more, we could find a place or index where we are either living well, or in a depression, recession or what have you.

We can go with older terms that may only have minor relevance to where we are now, or we can reconsider what is most important and valuable and come to terms with a new way to estimate our place in and relationship to this current system.

There are now curiously odd ideas, like "enough" that come to mind and are worth considering. Just what is "enough" and how does it relate to comfort and security for a person or a family? Well, you would have to sort through all the impetus from advertising, and its impact, about the deliberate manufacture of dissatisfaction in order to understand that. The current system feeds "growth" in a way that impacts our culture in order to foment an artificial unhappiness and discontent that demands the purchase of a fix. That's a Hegelian problem and the core basis of the system we are all now in and supporting as if it were the only, true way to live. It is NOT.

[pitohui]

10. there is no way to earn 'enough' through honest work

to be secure, you would have to know that if a family member became seriously ill or injured, you wouldn't be beggared, you would have to know that if YOU became seriously ill or injured, you wouldn't beggar your family and destroy all of their hopes and dreams

any illness lasting any period of time quickly goes into the 6 figures and wipes out more than your before tax lifetime of work...it is impossible to correct for this by working or saving

we need a public health care system, and we really need to have insurance execs arrested and/or executed for their crimes against humanity

there is no way to get security by just educating yourself and working hard, it's all gone in a few days because the hospitals/doctors etc are allowed to make up any price they like, to get everything you have and everything you could ever hope to have thru legal work

of course we feel disempowered if we are SANE, we have no power to fix this, no amount of working hard for $6 an hour or $20 an hour will get us to a place where we can pay six figure hospital bills -- and that's only our 20 percent share!

there needs to be strict price limits set on the cost of care

otherwise all this other stuff is just hand waving and metaphysics, save a few pennies by eating beans your whole life, everything you saved doing that is gone in the first hour you're in hospital

you call your post "we could easily" the fact is "WE could easily" do fuck all, WE have no power whatsoever because THEY set the prices to live and the price means that if one family member becomes seriously ill or injured, the entire family is destroyed and will never have any hopes or dreams or disposable income or choices, and god help the spouse who dies second if they don't die quickly

i was born ill, w. a lingering genetic illness, i know what it is to be hated because my very existence and the price of providing for me was so destructive to my family

[area51]

17. +1

Your post should be on the front page on this website. The health insurance companies are mafiosi cartels which decide whether people live or die. I have a friend on permanent disability because he couldn't afford to see a doctor and became very sick. Why do people think this country is civilized?

Each day, 273 people die due to lack of health care in the U.S.; that's 100,000 preventable deaths per year. This is not only a moral issue, but a national security issue that we're so vulnerable given that our health care delivery system is so fragmented and dysfunctional.

We need single-payer health care, not a welfare bailout for the serial-killer insurance agencies.

We don't need the GingrichCare of mandated, unregulated, for-profit insurance that is still too expensive, only pays parts of medical bills, denies claims, bankrupts and kills people.

Republinazi '93 plan:

"Subtitle F: Universal Coverage - Requires each citizen or lawful permanent resident to be covered under a qualified health plan or equivalent health care program by January 1, 2005."

"We will never have real reform until people's health stops being treated as a financial opportunity for corporations."

"Employer-based health insurance has always been a bad idea. Your life should not depend on who you work for." -- T. McKeon

"Any proposal that sticks with our current dependence on for-profit private insurers ... will not be sustainable. And the new law will not get us to universal coverage ...." -- T.R. Reid, The Healing of America

"Despite the present hyperbole by its supporters, this latest effort will end up as just another failed reform effort littering the landscape of the last century." --John Geyman, M.D., Hijacked! The Road to Single Payer in the Aftermath of Stolen Health Care Reform

[RKP5637]

18. This country is not really civilized in the big picture. It's a head game wherein we

envision ourselves as civilized, but if one climbs out of the box and looks in, it is, in fact, quite uncivilized compared to what we profess to be. We are a usury nation wherein today many suffer at the hands of a few, but the brainwashing is so pervasive that some think they are the best in the world.

True, it's far better than many of the hell holes on earth, but we could certainly do far better by stopping the parasites sucking off the less advantaged.

[Starry Messenger]

12. k&r