In the months and years leading up to the Great Depression, production was already on a decline and unemployment was starting to rise, causing stocks to be priced higher than their actual value. Drought and falling food prices caused excess of large loans by farmers that could not be liquidated. In the summer of 1929, consumer spending had slowed down and factory production slowed. Bank failure caused Americans to panic and withdraw their money from banks. On October 29, 1929, the Stock Market crashed and caused one of the worst periods of economic disparity in American history. Unemployment rates that were at 3.2% in the beginning of 1929 dropped to record low rates in the 30’s with 1932 showing 24.1% of Americans unemployed. The GDP that had been at $103.6 billion in 1929 reached at low of $56.4 billion in 1933. Millions were laid off and the number of people homeless and on government support skyrocketed. The Great Depression impacted all aspects of life in the 1930’s. Fertility rates dropped from 94% in 1928 to 76% in 1936 because of the inability of many Americans to support bigger families; divorce rates also dropped to .0014% from 1930 to 1933 as many stayed in unhappy relationships in fear of economic ruin and returned quickly to .0028% in 1940 to 1946; suicide rates spiked in 1929, the year of the Great Crash, from 12.1 to 18.1 per 100,000. The Great Depression might have been disastrous for the lives of millions of Americans, but this same economic downfall also caused in increase in public awareness and involvement in government. In 1920, only 43% of eligible voters cast ballots in general elections, but twenty years later that number had shot up to almost 60%. In 1935, a little after the height of the Great Depression, 25 millions Americans signed Townsend Plan petitions. During this time, with radio becoming larger, more Americans were tuning in to listen to political figures speak, but also radical figures as these times prompted an increase in Nazi sympathizers and those supporting communism.
The United States saw another huge economic recession dubbed the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009. It was the longest and worst recession since the Great Depression. In some ways though, its severity was lessened because a lot of the mistakes made in the Great Depression were learned from and the government was better prepared to handle the challenges presented to them. The Financial Stabilization bill and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act were passed in 2009 to save existing jobs and create new ones so unemployment rates wouldn’t drop to the same disastrous levels as in the Great Depression. The hope was that these jobs, even if temporarily supported by the government, would allow Americans to continue working and bringing in money so they in turn can support the economy to the point where it functions on its own again. Over of a third of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, 3.2 million jobs, were jobs that had been supported by consumer spending, so that when people saw money stop coming in, they spent less and this had a domino effect on the company's supported by that. A total of 8.4 million jobs (6.1% of the country’s employment) were lost over the course of the Great Recession. The amount of jobs lost combined with the painfully slow recovery rate of these lost employment opportunities made for a detrimental employment situation in the United States.
Mika, Henry, Corinne
No comments:
Post a Comment