It’s undeniable that we’re heading into an economic crisis, but how bad are things really? Pundits are making comparisons to the Great Depression based on unemployment numbers, looming evictions, and unprecedented lines at food banks. But does our situation actually compare to the worst economic downturn in the industrialized world?
This video analysis by Brian Duff compares our current-day crisis and the one that began in 1929 and the similarities are pretty alarming. Also, this is a new YouTube channel I strongly recommend. It’s going to have some incredible information – trust me when I tell you that you’re going to want to subscribe and give him a “like.”
(Don’t forget to subscribe to this channel. You won’t regret it.)
The biggest difference I see between these two eras – and this is the thing that will be our downfall – is that we are now a nation of consumers instead of producers. Back in the 1920s and 1930s, people had the skills required to do things like producing food, preserving their harvests, and building structures, to name a few. In our current time, skills like this are few and far between outside the preparedness and homesteading world.
This lack of skills will carry over into a much more dependent populace in our current day and age. Our government will not be able to continue providing for people as this crisis snowballs. We’ve already seen widespread shortages that began as the pandemic began to become a reality here, and those really haven’t resolved themselves. Essentials from China have remained limited, as predicted.
I think we can all imagine what will happen once the access to food, resources, shelter, and money becomes even more limited.
How do you think these eras compare?
When you look at these two eras, do you see similarities? What are your thoughts on the current crisis and what do you suggest for those who want to be better prepared?
Some numbers I’ve seen over the years I think are relevant. Around 1880 the percentage of American families on farms was about 80%. By 1930 that figure had dropped to about 30%. Still, that was a lot of families with gardening and food preservation skills — in contrast with today. Today the percentage on farms is down to 1-2% — largely because small farmers have been run out of business by the mega-corporation competition. My own father saw this coming by 1950 and switched over to the feeder cattle business because simple crop production wasn’t going to pay all the bills.
By 1933, while families kept their battery-powered radios (which were already paid for), about 25% of those families gave up their telephone service because that came with a monthly bill. In that era, Rural Electrification hadn’t yet been introduced, so most farms were long accustomed to operating without any local power company. That meant kerosene lamps in the evening, ice boxes for food in the basement, and foot-treadle powered sewing machines for making or repairing clothes. The Kelly’s Famous flour company of that day even included different decorative patterns on their flour sacks so that at-home ladies could have some artistic choices for making clothes.
Today with phone companies bailing out of supporting phone landlines and switching customers (often forcibly or by deceit) over to internet-based VOIP connections, the classic backup of a working landline in case of power outages has largely gone away. Today a simple EMP from some unidentified source is a legitimate concern.
In the 1930s the incredibly stupid Smoot-Hawley act killed overseas markets for US farmers. Today an even more stupid trade war with China is killing much of the “just-in-time” source of all kinds of goods — foods, machinery, parts, you name it.
In contrast, the 1921 depression (never mentioned in your government public school history books) was allowed to fix itself in quick order because the US president at the time absolutely refused to interfere — unlike the intervening obsessions of Hoover and FDR. See this title on Amazon
The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself by James Grant
and then chase it down via interlibrary loan to decide whether you want to buy a copy or not.
Today the oligarchs meet yearly in Davos, Switzerland to plan their next global assault on local and regional decision-making (including how best to benefit from the Covid-19 disruption to permanently entrench the various tyrannies introduced by panic).
See this video:
THE GREAT RESET: Davos & the Plot to Cancel Trump
in this 25:18 minute video, from TheRemnantVideo on 6 Aug 2020:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9jRqgDOJ8
From the Editor’s Desk, Michael Matt takes a look at some good news regarding the Covid recovery rate before exploring what’s really going on with the global pandemic.
To understand this, he takes us to Switzerland—to the World Economic Forum—where the movers and shakers of the world have been meeting on a regular basis, especially since January 2020, to plan ‘The Great Reset’ at the Davos 2021 Summit in January.
Using multiple video clips, Michael shows how everyone from Soros, to Gates, to Schwab, to Al Gore and the Secretary-General of the United Nations are only too eager to admit that Covid offers them a rare opportunity to reset the world economy, population control, global commerce, climate change regulation, education and the UN Sustainable Development Goals in order to “reorder,” “reimagine” and fundamentally transform every aspect of life as we know it.
Is this the rest of the story behind the Russia hoax, Ukraine, the phony impeachment and all the other deep state attempts to cripple Trump’s efforts to ‘make America great again”?
The folks at Davos want a new world order, and the only thing standing in their way at the moment is US. And if they get their New Normal, nothing will be the same ever again.
–Lewis
I was born during the last year of the Depression, into a family that didn’t have it that easy. We weren’t really poor but we had to hustle to avoid becoming poor. Brian Duff’s video was quite realistic. “Use it up, wear it out” became everyone’s mantra.
Unintentionally, that period played a major part in our victory in WWII. When war production began and paid work was readily available, men and women alike flooded into the defense plants. Many people worked all the overtime they could get for the sheer joy of it. The depression had robbed us of our pride; we got it back in the shipyards and defense plants.
I posted this in another site that made the comparison:
It compares to the 30s but isn’t as bad. I know there’s some without jobs that are wanting to chop off my head for that statement and I feel for you but the numbers of those unable to buy food per capita aren’t as bad. I was always at some point able to buy stuff even if it meant going to different stores. I had to actually “gasp” shop for things. Makes me feel spoiled again which is something I hadn’t felt in many years since leaving the Army.
It wasn’t dire it was just inconvenient. In Oklahoma the deer and turkey were almost wiped out. The elk were. It took 35 yrs to regain populations. It was in the 60s before western Oklahoma saw deer again and now they have a larger allowed harvest than eastern Oklahoma. This is due to agriculture, increased ponds and lakes as well as conservation. Fast forward to 2020 and most poaching is still for trophies or meaningless.
Cattle rustling hasn’t risen to a higher percentage that I’m aware of either. Food was still available. Suicides haven’t reached the 30s level either because of hope. We still have it. Regardless of the politics the relief money seriously helped people too.
I’ve lived in multiple places overseas and even with this stuff we didn’t ever go past what I refer to as second level countries. This is still by far the best place in the world.
Rough patches can be good as they give you the opportunity for re-evaluate, planning and preparedness.
Don’t waste it.
Thanks Matt in Oklahoma for your positive comment shinning a little light on a gloomy subject.
Yup just saying how I feel. I’m thankful it wasn’t worse
unemployment numbers are based on comparison to the number of adult would-be employees, not a comparison to the total population. with full employment, that number would be closer to 60% of the total population. kids aren’t counted. adults not looking for work aren’t counted (whether they don’t want to work, or because they have given up looking). so, the real numbers would be much, much higher.
There are several differences. Our economic downturn was self-inflicted for altruistic purposes, keeping the hospitals and its workers from being overwhelmed from a pandemic. We were told that it would have an end, but the goalposts keep getting moved by the media, government bureaucrats, and politicians.
Back in the 30s, we were a society of a large majority of believing and practicing Christians, a religion of hope. In this downturn, the believing Christians are being separated from their churches and the fellowship of their brothers and sisters in Christ.
This also goes for the children, who have been denied their classroom learning experience and extra curricular activities along with the contact with their friends and teachers.
Millions of people have been denied diagnostic testing and treatment for other diseases and ailments due to this situation.
I believe that these things have contributed to the levels of anxiety and depression in all age groups, with the numbers for opioid overdoses, suicides and violence having gone up drastically during this period.
It seems the most important similarity is that the level of government intervention was ramped up. Formerly, the government took a more conservative, laissez-faire attitude toward markets. We can rightly pin a whole lot of blame on the Fed’s manipulations in both cases. We also have an unprecedented amount of bloating government overreach than has ever been seen before.
There was a question that kept popping up in my mind in terms of the percentage out of work. If our total population is ~330,000,000, what percentage is in the actual labor force? What percentage represents children who are not in the workforce? What is the percentage of retired people ? Shouldn’t we be using the actual labor force to calculate the percentage of people “out of work”?
Or, maybe I didn’t hear it right.
Either way, the previous Depression took a few years to reach maximum impact before government stimulus back to recovery. The real recovery then, as someone has mentioned, was WW2.
I agree that the previous Depression generation had more survival skills. That’s what makes this present situation much doomier and gloomier. We have a very spoiled set of people that make up America. Even the “poor” blacks are not poor.
By contrast, the government didn’t just hand out money. The Public Works Administration (PWA) provided jobs, where we all benefitted from a better return for our money. Infrastructure works that are still being used today put food on the table and roofs over heads. Now we are just carte blanche giving something without any return. That’s economic insanity. Eaters need to give back! Can’t we get some help with out crumbling infrastructure for our money?
You pretty much nailed it in the third paragraph. We are no longer a nation of producers. Sad but true.
.
If what people see around them doesn’t motivate them to get busy, then there is no hope for them, and maybe the rest of us too.
.
Am I ready? Not even close, but I will continue to do what I can.
Will it be enough? Probably not. But, who knows. All I can do is try, try, try.
.
And pray. That’s actually the most important thing we can do.
This time it seems even more nefarious with obvious medical tyranny and communist agendas being pushed to the max.
But we are indeed seeing the latest planned actions being taken in order to destroy liberty worldwide and achieve the dream of eugenecists for a long time now, which is eradicating most of the world’s population and fully enslaving those who remain. Those our political rulers believe are less worthy of life than they are.
This will be the latest disaster to befall a society that believes in giving so much power to arrogant entitled rulers, and not allowing anyone to opt out of their plans. Hopefully someday we’ll learn and the cult of statism will once and for all be overthrown.
Future voluntaryist generations will look back at the gullibility of people living in these times, falling so easily for the lies of sociopaths when they say what the people want to hear and feign benevolent motives, with horror much like how we currently look back at Nazi Germany.
In order to figure the unemployment rate you don’t use the total number of sign-ups in the last 4 months. You use the continuing claims number…which is the number of people still collecting the dole from last week .
That continuing claims number is down to around 15 million, so this would get you closer to the 10% government figure.
regards
post script…you also don’t use total population numbers to figure unemployment rate. You use the labor force numbers which, if 15million is equal to 10 percent, would give you a figure of around 150 million in the labor force. Sounds about right.
The author has fallen for a common fallacy. We don’t have more consumers than producers. It’s an over simplification of a complex supply chain. A farmer is both a producer and consumer. He grows food, uses some for him/herself and sells the excess. He cannot consume without producing. No one can consume without producing. It is true that you can’t have consumption without production, but we don’t have more consumption than production. It’s confused with the evolution from a agrarian to industrial to service economy. A software developer or marketer is still a producer. We moved up the supply chain. Just because we move more manufacturing over seas doesn’t mean we are producing less. We just evolved up the supply chain to a different type of production, namely services. Also, many have gone into more debt and borrowed against their future work which is another dynamic that has nothing to do with production/consumption. A person works (produces), spends (depreciates or consumes) or lends (invests). In order to consume you have to produce or borrow. They go hand in hand and can’t just say they are two separate things. They are related. There is no consumption without production. This article is just reiterating a common myth.
@ Michael
Really? Please tell me how a Dollar Store clerk is “producing”? Just because someone “works” and gets paid, doesn’t mean they are actually producing anything. The service economy, which has become by far the largest employment category, isn’t producing much. We haven’t “evolved”. We’ve just given up producing much of value here in the US and decided to let others do it cheaper or because it was hard dirty work.
And most farmers, of which I was one, are in the farming business to grow crops or produce livestock for sale. They may in fact keep some of the leftover veggies for themselves, or an occasional gallon of milk but that’s not why they are farming. You are confusing subsistence “farmers”/homesteaders with those who farm for a living and produce the vast majority of the food sold in this country. They aren’t selling the “excess”. They are selling nearly all that they produce and in some cases such as grains or hay, all they produce. This article is sound and based on our current economic system.
Well my name is pretty common but this is a different Michael. This article is saying the truth, parsing fancy words doesn’t change that in the Great Depression our population was far more hands on building and growing things. Today far too many “Service Industry” and HR-Computer-SJW specialists that cannot figure out how to change their oil. A Use it up society that routinely FIXED things Vs a Throw it away current society.
Has anybody noticed that the cheap Chinese (Asia in general) replacement gadgets are a little *thin* lately? Have you noticed that underwear is getting pretty thin on the shelves?
Also the population of the USA in 1929 was around 120 million today not including illegal’s we have 330 million. Why 120 million, not for lack of large families but the limits of food production and distribution of that time. Massive electricity and oil use allows us to have almost triple the population of the last great Depression.
Between the USDA selling off the last of our National Grain-Soybeans reserve in 2009, the 2019 Floods that destroyed much of our crops AND the reserves of the farmers silos destroyed, 2020 Manpower shortage due to COVID and last weeks Derecho that flattened a large part of Iowa’s corn and soybean crops.
Food shortages are already showing up, WE NEEDED a good crop this year. Our reserves are essentially gone.
All this before we add in a Socialist-Democrat revolution to steal our Republic in November.
Bad times are coming. In some 70 days we will look at today as the “good ole days”.
“Back in the 1920s and 1930s, people had the skills required to do things like producing food, preserving their harvests, and building structures, to name a few. In our current time, skills like this are few and far between outside the preparedness and homesteading world.”
Or is it that those who have those skills tend toward the preparedness and homesteading world? After all, those who have such skills tend towards more self-sufficiency and confidence that they can thrive no matter what.
I have laid foundations to shingling roofs and everything between. I lack the physical strength to do this professionally, but the knowledge of how to do it gives me the confidence that I can put a roof over my head.
I learned from my father, who grew up during the Depression. We used to joke that he never bought a home, rather a project. He even got an electrician’s license so he could legally work on his wiring. The only thing he did not succeed at was sweating pipes, so he had me do that for him.
I also have several other skills—sewing, machining, designing, and so forth, so I find that my prepping is for the long haul, not just a few months.
So based on my own background, I wonder how many others may find that their pre-existing skill set makes them tend towards prepping?