English Class

Though there are many differences between the economy now and the economy during the Great Depression, there are still many similarities that link the two together in comparison. First, during the Great Depression, unemployment rates were at an all time high, 25 percent, and now during out Repression, we having been climbing to 9 percent. 9 percent doesn’t seem as bad, but that is about 8 and a half million jobs that have been lost now, the same problem that occurred in the Great Depression. Also during the Great Depression, something that occurred was inflation, which is too many dollars and too little supply of goods. Inflation was so high in the Great Depression that money was losing some of its value. Although we aren’t exactly seeing that now, we are going in the opposite, and seeing deflation, which is too little money and too many goods. During the Great Depression you would think that due to these problems that were occurring that taxes would have been lowered, to help families have money and circulate the money, but it was the opposite, taxes during the Great Depression were some of the highest the United States has seen. Even now we don’t have taxes as high as they were then, although ours are also on the rise now.  In the era of the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, who has a lot of say in money, did not act. They didn’t add money into the circulation of the economy to keep us going, so that just made everything drop for longer, and in our Repression currently the Federal Reserve DID act, they added about 600 billion dollars, doing the opposite of what was done in the Great Depression, trying to avoid the same outcome. The world around us also played a lot into the Great Depression, as a lot of the world around us was in the same situation, and we were pulled into the Great Depression, our Repression now is not the same case. We are capable of pulling out of it if we find the middle ground, and work with the rest of the world, whose economy is doing better off. If we don’t we may be repeating history and go into another Great Depression, expanding the already huge gap between the rich and the poor. If that gap continues to expand, the unemployment rates might also go back up, the same as back then, because people won’t be able to afford the education that is necessary to get a good paying job here. Education is a link to unemployment, which is in turn a link to our economy. Everything is interrelated. The only thing we can hope for is the best, and that we can pull out of our Repression before we fall into a Depression once again, because as of now the similarities are quite eerie. We are always connected to our past, but we must learn from it, not become it.

Watch: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7120553n