- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
While I'm not advocating a depression, there were to me a lot of good things that came out of the (capital D) Depression: the many programs of the New Deal, including the CCC, which put my father to work building trails, cabins, rock walls, and many other improvements that last to this day, and the WPA, which put a lot of really talented people to work who would otherwise have advocated solutions that probably sounded good at the time. The federal government instituted a number of regulatory reforms and make-work programs that made the difference between mass starvation and a slow crawl back to stability. In addition, there were millions of people who learned a lot more about waste, efficiency, and the basics of life, lessons forgotten by legions of middle-class people who thought that someone else would pick up the trash and pay the bill. Depression is ugly and avoidable, but it may not be the end of the world....
