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Read other letters about this article
The more than a few letters that say "don't worry" are disappointing. While we may not get another great depression, there is little evidence to claim we aren't headed in that direction (as Leonard points out, if we want to get there, let's stay on our current path).
Richer than we were in 1929:
This is bullshit. Advanced degrees are a dime a dozen around the world and whole swaths of the planet that were not industrialized back then are now. The GDP portion garnered by our current steel production -- and just about everything else -- is a) overvalued; and b) not going to count for squat when global growth grinds to a halt. The US produces nothing the world needs and can't produce on their own, cheaper (do you think any country is going to pay us royalties on movies, software and drugs once the shit hits the fan?).
Social safety nets causing the problem:
Bullshit. Social Security pays for itself and is the only reason grandparents don't rely on their kids to house and feed them like they did in 1929, 1829, or any other time before WWII. It's a lot more cost effective in staving off starvation than possibly any other government program.
People seem to think that their own life experience (one in which there was no great depression) is somehow evidence that it won't happen -- no different than the optimism of a tadpole hatched into a puddle after the rainy season has ended.
Economists muse about whether this will be a long or a short recession (in large part to kick the falling dominoes down the road), but the real question is: what's going to turn things around?
Short of a radical shift in how we live (all move to city centers, ride bikes, develop local economies of food and other necessities), there is no magic bullet. Everything we have exists on borrowed money and time (from the poor people's flat-screen tv's to all of our corporations). As another poster pointed out, once oil is switched from dollars to euros (one of the more plausible reasons for Iraq's Hussein falling out of favor with the US -- he wanted to switch off dollars), it will spell the death knell for the dollar, which is already on life support.
There is no big safety net. Our whole economy is built on a house of cards. We produce nothing that sustains large employment -- and nothing at all that will last after the dollar collapses.
Consider this: the dollar collapses and interest rates skyrocket. Most people have no access to credit. No one eats out anymore (millions of shit jobs gone). No one buys electronics (shipping and retail businesses gone). No one travels (hotels and airlines go under). Banks start collapsing and cash money people thought they had just disappears. Inflation runs rampant even while no one has money because goods and services are so scarce. This is not new. It's happened before. Just because we can't remember it doesn't make it fanciful.
To those who say this is unwarranted fearmongering, I ask you: what will turn this around? What will the US start producing that a collapsing global economy will buy?
