Question: Isn't a "recession" the same thing as a "depression?"

[Sarah Ibarruri]

Isn't it true that economists are staying away from the word, "depression" to avoid riots and altogether chaos and nastiness, but the truth is, we're entering a depression?

Lastly, isn't it true that in depressions (recessions), it's the poor and middle class that suffer the most, but that the higher classes still live well?

[tekisui]

1. I've heard it like this: A recession is when your neighbor doesn't have a job.

A depression is when you don't have a job.

[Hardrada]

2. In a recession you can't buy anything at the mall.

In a depression you can't buy anything.

[debbierlus]

13. That is a nice summing up!

:)

[Hardrada]

17. I remember my grandparents and my older in-laws

talking about the Thirties. Many people had to barter things to obtain services or food.

[Jim__]

3. A depression is a severe or long recession.

According to wikipedia

[frankenforpres]

4. severity is the difference nt

[bitchkitty]

5. I googled it!

What's a recession? How do we know if we're in one?

There’s an old joke among economists that states:

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.

A depression is when you lose your job.

http://economics.about.com/cs/businesscycles/a/depressions.htm">Link

[shraby]

6. It's only a depression when there are no

welfare benefits, medicaid, unemployment checks, social security and medicare. If those were not in existence the "recession" would be a full blown depression no holds barred.

[sandnsea]

15. We'd have always been in a depression

If it weren't for those benefits, seems to me. Food stamps are in the ag budget for a reason. Although social security doesn't belong there because we support that program directly.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

18. Interesting! You're right.

What saves us from depression is social programs.

On the other hand, what gets us into depression is the free market.

[Taverner]

20. Yes. Any economist well versed in Keynes knows that social programs help the economy

It is money moving around - which is always good for the economy.

[B Calm]

7. If you are the one who's unemployed, then yes it's a depression!

[ThomWV]

8. I believe its called a Depression if the trend continues for some number of quarters

I think it might be three quarters of negative growth, but I'm not positive on the exact definition.

[Adsos Letter]

9. I think it depends upon where the higher classes have their money...

but, yeah, I would expect the middle and lower classes to bear the brunt; in the short run if their money is in the market or tied up servicing debt, and in the long run for everyone else as the effects spread throughout the economy.

I wonder if this generation will find the political will to address this tsunami without resorting to demagoguery? Those elements were plenty present during the Great Depression, and are now, but FDR had the character and wisdom to take another path...

This is where the make-up of the SCOTUS can be a make-or-break issue...

[Sarah Ibarruri]

19. Makes me think... FDR saved future generations from the depressions caused by the rich. nt

[WI_DEM]

10. I don't think the Great Depression was quite the same as a recession

and thanks to the New Deal reforms and other reforms since that time most downturns don't affect as many (not as widespread)and not as long lasting (the economy made steady progress under FDR but it really took the Second World War to finally end the depression). Still it doesn't matter even with unemployment insurance today and banks not failing if you lose your job or your home it can feel like a depression especially if you can't easily find another job or a job which pays as well.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

21. True. Again, we must thank FDR for protecting future generations from the horror of depressions nt

[Djinn]

26. thank him for saving capitalism

that is why he did what he did, the New Deal was not instituted to save working people, it was to save capitalism, the very system that caused the depression in the first place.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

27. It was an emergency measure, and what would you have done instead? nt

[Djinn]

28. I wouldn't have attempted to protect

the profits of those who grow rich off the work of those actually producing. I'd have supported the growth in independent unionism and restructed the economy to be considerably more equitable.

I would have used the momemtum to establish a progressive economic system not to bolster an unfair one.

Either way - my original comment was not a criticism of the New Deal at all simply pointing out that it was enacted in order to save capitalism and the ability to make profit from others labor.

It was enacted to stop the growth of militant left wing unions and Communism in the US.

No need to get all humpfy - it is simply history

[Sarah Ibarruri]

29. I'm not getting humpfy. I agree with you. However, he did more than any Repuke would've done.

Tell me what this president would've done for the starving if he'd been the president during the Great Depression. I shudder to think about it. He'd have set up a department to pick up and dispose of the dead, period.

[Djinn]

31. no he didn't

he did EXACTLY what the Republicans would have done. A lefty Prez would have assisted in the nation's move to the left, not bolster and protect the right.

Your view of what would have happened to starving people under a Republican is naive to say the least. Republicans (like Democrats and all capitalists) REQUIRE the working poor. They certainly don't want them all dead and they sure as shit don't want them flirting with unions which is what they do when things get too bad.

The New Deal would have been instigated by a Republican in much the same form.

Just as, had Democrats been in the White House when Sadddam started selling Iraqi oil in Euro's there would have been US military intervention in Iraq. It may not have been an all out war, and it probably would have involved fewer mercenaries however the main goal - preventing the thrashing of the US economy - would have remained the same and to fulfill it Iraqi self determination HAD to be avoided.

Democrats and Republicans have both been on board with the US Empire for a long long time.

The preservation of that Empire neccesitated social prograns in the 30's so you can bet your bottom dollar that Republicans would have done something very similar.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

32. You think the village idiot and his masters we have in office now would've helped the poor?

Hell no. Without social programs in place, this village idiot would have hired 4 times as many police to stop the poor from stealing, and had the bodies of the starved carried to mass graves. He'd have drafted people, attacked Iran, and that, as they say, would be that. Who would be there to protest? It would've given this asshole all the chance he would need for his masters to order such a military takeover.

[Djinn]

34. do you understand capitalism at all

do you understand that it requires a large pool of pliant underpaid workers? do you understand that the rich can't actually BE rich without the prol's?

The economic analysis on DU is really woeful

[Sarah Ibarruri]

35. I'm sure you're quite brilliant and are about to educate me and everyone else on the topic. nt

[Djinn]

40. actually quite dim when it comes to economics

but based on your abject inability to provide any reasoning to your assertions I'm happy to agree with you that I'm demonstrably more cluey than you.

If you don't like it when people debate your opinion (and it's not like I just said "you're wrong - I explained why I believed that) perhaps a political discussion board isn't the best place for you?

[Art_from_Ark]

39. Exactly

All you have to do is compare him to his predecessor, a man who made a valiant effort to save starving Russians but wouldn't do the same for his own countrymen.

[mitchum]

36. Exactly...FDR wasn't a "traitor to his class", but actually saved their necks...

necks that needed some serious stretching

[RuleOfNah]

38. You misspelled Keynes.

I was going to do a New Deal thread but this seems like a good a place as any to unload the draft. :)

From the book Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, page 251

Keynesianism was always an expression of that need for capitalism to compete. President Roosevelt brought in the New Deal not only to address the desperation of the Great Depression but to undercut a powerful movement of U.S. citizens who, having been dealt a savage blow by the unregulated free market, were demanding a different economic model. Some wanted a radically different one: in the 1932 presidential elections, one million Americans voted for Socialist or Communist candidates.

From the book Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, page 252

Sachs admired Keynes, but he seems uninterested in what made Keynesianism finally possible in his own country: the messy, militant demands of trade unionists and socialists whose growing strength turned a more radical solution into a credible threat, which in turn made the New Deal look like an acceptable compromise. This unwillingness to recognize the role of mass movements in pressuring reluctant governments to embrace the very ideas he advocates has had serious ramifications. For one, it meant that Sachs could not see the most glaring political reality confronting him in Russia: there was never going to be a Marshall Plan for Russia because there was only ever a Marshall Plan because of Russia.

http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/art/keynes.htm
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uJDhS4oUm0M
http://newdeal.feri.org/

[Sarah Ibarruri]

41. LOVE Naomi Klein! I hear her latest book is definitely worth owning. nt

[CountAllVotes]

11. read this link here:

This is only the part about 1929. This time line covers the period 1920-1945.

>>

TIMELINES OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION:

1929

* Recession begins in August, two months before the stock market crash. During this two month period, production will decline at an annual rate of 20 percent, wholesale prices at 7.5 percent, and personal income at 5 percent.

* Stock market crash begins October 24. Investors call October 29 "Black Tuesday." Losses for the month will total $16 billion, an astronomical sum in those days.

1930

* By February, the Federal Reserve has cut the prime interest rate from 6 to 4 percent. Expands the money supply with a major purchase of U.S. securities. However, for the next year and a half, the Fed will add very little money to the shrinking economy. (At no time will it actually pull money out of the system.) Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon announces that the Fed will stand by as the market works itself out: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate real estate… values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wreck from less-competent people." (More) <<<


http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Timeline.htm

See any similarities? I sure do!!! :scared:

[Sarah Ibarruri]

22. Yes, I do see huge similarities!! Scary isn't it? GOPers seem to get us into depressions. nt

[jkshaw]

12. According to Wikipedia ...

A depression is a severe or prolonged recession. From things I've read in the past, I got the impression that calling any economic slowdown a "depression" is a definite no-no for economists since it evokes visions of the Great Depression of the 1930s. And perhaps that's part of why economic slowdowns are always called recessions these last few decades.

I think the people who suffered the most during the Great Depression were those of the working class, like my father, a shipyard worker. I remember mentioning the suffering my parents went through during the early thirties to a neighbor -- this was in the sixties -- and she looked at me, surprised, and said "But the Stock Market fell in 1929!" In other words, the next year everything was fine, according to her thinking. This young mother had grown up in an upper middle class household. I think her father was a doctor.

So you're certainly right about the poor suffering the most, and certainly the working class who lost jobs left and right; but perhaps any more suffering is probably confined to the lower middle classes. The upper middle classes lost investments and jobs, but not many of them were on the breadlines or collecting relief checks.

With the Dow plunging, though, who knows when this recession will graduate into a full-blown depression?

[Sarah Ibarruri]

23. You've got a point. And I do think economists lie to make the suffering of the population seem less

I think economists lie a great deal to protect those who never are affected because they own so much of what is really ours.

[Zynx]

14. Economists used to call all economic downturns "Depressions" or "Panics"

However, now a recession is characterized as a period of two or more quarters of contracting GDP. A Depression, in the modern sense, is a longer recessionary period with deflation instead of inflation as wages and prices fall in a protracted manner.

[earth mom]

16. The corporate bastards & media are afraid to use the word "Depression".

It'll make them look bad plus the few people that do have a few bucks or some room on their credit cards will stop buying all that useless crap from China. They can't have that happen or all hell will break loose.

:grr:

[Sarah Ibarruri]

24. Bravo! Well said. nt

[CK_John]

25. When the unemployment rate hits 12.5% we go from recession to depression. Just my own definition. nt

[knitter4democracy]

30. We're in a depression in Michigan.

Longest job loss streak since the Great Depression, one of the highest in foreclosures, losing population in addition (and because of) jobs. Just come up here and take a look around. It's bad.

[doc03]

33. A recession is when your neighbor is out of

work a depression is when you are out of work.

[bdamomma]

37. kick