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If this is the Depression again, we’ll be alright
When the economic pundits tell us that today's financial worries are not nearly so serious as the inter-war 'great slump', our reaction tends to be: 'I should bloody well hope not.'
As it happened, however, the great inter-war slump was not nearly as bad as legend would have us believe. Indeed, if the world economy recovers as quickly in this instance as it did all those years ago, then our present fears about doom and disaster are greatly exaggerated.
Let the facts speak for themselves. By 1939 most people in Britain were better off than they had been in 1929 when the slump began. It was in those years, according to the historian Robert Skidelsky, that the transformation from a 19th century economy based on cotton, coal, shipbuilding and railway construction to an economy based on home-building, mass consumption and service industries was largely accomplished. Even the notorious 'hunger marches' attracted only tiny numbers.
None of this accords with socialist mythology, which likes to portray the great slump as a humanitarian disaster comparable to the Great War: prolonged unemployment, complete economic stagnation, virtual insurrection.
By 1933, as it happened, unemployment was falling from 22.8 per cent to 9.5 per cent, and output, real wages, and the real value of social services (including unemployment benefits) rose above their pre-slump level. Yes, the slump was a terrible shock, but the speed of the recovery was little short of a miracle.
In other words, comparing now and then should arouse hope rather than dread, since what the great slump demonstrated was not so much the weakness of capitalism as its astonishing strength. The rest is socialist mythology. ·
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Peregrine belongs to the privileged class who never suffer recessions in the way the poor do, so of course he thinks it wasn't so bad. Recessions are pretty awful when you lose your job and your kids are hungry.
And the big difference this time is the environmental meltdown which is staring us in the face, putting all thought of a 'recovery' and a return to uncontrolled capitalist consumption and debt unlikely. Some joined up thinking needed.
I assume Mr Worsthorne is kidding... Because soon after capitalism gloriously resurected in 1939 we got the worst war ever, largely fueled by the misery and ideological turmoils induced by the great slump.
What exactly is good news in that (highly questionable) comparison between past and present crisis?
My dear Mr. Worsthorne, in fact for the people affected by the "Great Depression" it was and is still to this day a humanitarian disaster. Many people were out of work, the economy was in tatters and the availability of food and basic care was almost non-existent. To say that this was not, is to liken the sinking of the Titanic to the loss of a toy sailboat. You are sadly mistaken in you think that this did not affect the common man and women. I, am appalled at the light-hearted way in which you describe the effects of almost 30% of the people of your nation as out of work, also the effect of this economic disaster on the world's economy was nothing short of ruinous. Normally, you make and explain very salient and cogent points of interest, yet in this case you are way off the mark and have no idea of true cost in the lives of people of the Great Depression.