US: Do you personally feel like you're in the worst financial crisis since the Depression?

Question

From this Yahoo headline article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080827/pl_bloomberg/a7ogrdxkxse

"The U.S. is facing the worst financial crisis since the Depression. You would never know that from the Democrats' platform in Denver or its Republican counterpart, or from listening to Barack Obama or John McCain."

I think the reason they aren't saying it is because IT ISN'T TRUE.

Have you had to...

Sell your house?

Sell all your car(s)?

Cancel your Cable TV subscription?

Cancel your cell phone plan, and do away with cell phone altogether?

Sell your microwave oven?

Stop eating fast food or any food not made and prepared at home?

Re-stitch new clothes from the cut-up rags of your old ones?

Stand on long lines for a job?

Stand on long lines just for a cup of soup?

Send your kids out on the streets to beg for a dollar or change?

Pack up your family and move to other states where there are jobs?

(etc., etc.)

Probably not. But THAT'S what people do during the "worst financial crisis since the Depression!"

As it is, most people are still living a really good life. It's hard to feel like you're in a financial crisis when you're willing to pay $50 a month to cover your cell phone, just so you can text message your friends. Or pay $100 a month for cable TV (and of course, gotta have HD!) And you just bought an HD LCD or Plasma TV for $2500-3500. And you still have your job. And your kids aren't going hungry. And you're able to buy them nice new clothes for the new school year.

Sure, there are investors and greedy people who got pinched by buying more than they could afford in real estate. But they knew the risks. Tears flow for them like tears for a guy who's lost everything at the roulette table.

How about you personally? Are you on a soup line each morning? Are you wearing clothes that you had to stitch together from rags? Are your kids cutting school so that they can beg for loose change at the local market?

Can anyone really say -- with a straight face -- that this is the "worst financial crisis since the Depression?"

Answer 1

I don't think FOOD is a "luxury." And I don't think medical care is a "luxury."

*********************

"Poverty and hunger are rapidly becoming a workplace issue... if for no other reason than the fact that an employee who is worried about where his or her next meal will come from is not going to be very productive," said John Challenger, company CEO, in a statement.

But that's just the job placement firm's assessment. Aside from wage laws, there are no other rules telling businesses what they must give their employees.

"There is no mandate for corporations except for the minimum wage, which is set at $5.15 an hour. After that, the issue's up to the ethicists," said William Dickens, a labor economist with the Brookings Institution.

Several economists, labor activists and legal analysts also agreed that placing the welfare of American workers at the mercy of corporate largesse is dangerous for employees because of what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has dubbed Wall Street's "infectious greed."

http://money.cnn.com/2004/12/16/news/eco...

"...the steady growth of poverty has left millions of American families afraid they won't have enough money to put food on the table.

According to the most recent Census Bureau statistics, nearly 36 million Americans lived in poverty in 2003, an increase of 1.3 million from 2002. And since 2000, 4.4 million more people in this country are living in poverty. The Census Bureau defines poverty as an individual earning $9,393 or less and $14,680 or less for a family of three.

And American families are faring worse than they have in years. Last year 7.6 million American families -- or 10 percent of all families -- lived in poverty, a big jump from 2000.

The rich get richer ...

http://money.cnn.com/2004/12/22/news/eco...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Even though Maribeth Jones works at a hospital, the Kansas City woman doesn't have health insurance.

"I can't afford it," explained the nurse assistant, who would have to pay $36 a week for coverage.

Jones's situation is not unusual. An estimated 45 million Americans, or 15.6 percent of the population, was uninsured in 2003, up from 15.2 percent in 2002, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's most recent data.

"The number of uninsured has been growing the last several years," said Catherine Hoffman, senior researcher and associate director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

She blamed, among other things, the sluggish economy and growing cost of health care for the decrease in coverage. As the cost of health insurance has escalated, companies have opted to pass those higher premiums on to employees or to not provide coverage.

"We are in the midst of a weak economy," said Paul Fronstin, director of health research, at the Employee Benefit Research Institute. "That means fewer jobs and fewer people with coverage."

Job-based coverage -- one of the major sources of health insurance in the United States -- dropped from 61.5 percent in 2002 to 60.4 percent in 2003, according to the US Census Bureau. “

http://money.cnn.com/2004/12/22/news/eco...

Answer 2

Yes, I have done most of things.

Answer 3

It just cracks me up to have people squealing "Recession!  Recession!!" after all-time record highs in the market in the last seven years.

If (in simple terms) President Bush started his first term with the market at "10" and it went up to all time record highs, say "20" and late in his last term, it drops to "18", to call it a recession is idiotic.  But the left preys on the ill- or non-informed to stir up the pot.

Answer 4

You really can't compare the two since the standard of living changes so drastically in the United States from each generation to the next.

Answer 5

I haven't been able to find a job in 2 years, there are  thousands of Americans, and still counting, who have lost their homes, but you haven't got a reply from them simply because they don't have a computer. Currently we have an economy that is being held together with bailing wire and glue until after the November election, then you'll see how much worse than the great depression things are. Even CNBC's Cramer, a capitalist if there ever was one, now says that the American stock market is so rigged that the average person needs to get out NOW (link to a video with him talking about this is http://www.breakthematrix.com/content/Cr...

States-the-Obvious-Markets-are-Rigged)...

  

We have just seen the early stages of systemic problems in the American economy and the global economy with the fallout from the subprime mortgage problems. The real problem is that the "policemen" of the American economy, and to a lessor extent the entire global economy, have "been asleep" at their jobs; and this has not been an accident. Laws have been changed overturning the post-Great Depression rules designed to save the banking industry from itself.

  

We have had a massive host of new investment vehicles created over the last few years, and in many cases even the people pushing the vehicles do not understand how they work because they have been designed to be so complex as to confuse even the experts. We have $1.2 quadrillion invested in derivates, trillions in collateralized debt obligations and structured investment vehicles ~ and many of these new forms of financial paper are shady in the extreme.

  

The American economy, and with it the global economy, is being deliberately set up to collapse. One can look to the traditional sources of war, economic crisis, and revolution to find the cause behind the demise of America. The global international banking families fingerprints are all over the programmed fall of America. While they had their hands in the War of 1812, and the Civil War, blackmailed Wilson to get the US into the First World War, placed their puppet FDR in the White House to control (to their designs) the Great Depression and then to bate the Japanese to attack us to get American in the Second World War, the deliberate high treason committed on 9/11 by senior Bush/Cheney administration officials was a new low. We have now experienced almost seven years of wars based on this false flag operation and we are being led into yet another war with Iran (a nation with advanced biological strategic weapons of mass destruction that can kill a third of the world). Additionally the satanic US Vice-President is in Georgia preparing to push the Russians into the coming Third World War; a world war that with current 21st Century weapons will kill most of us.

Answer 6

Personally, no. I have been a bit more careful just because the price of groceries is killing me, but other than that I am not personally feeling the crunch. We haven't had to change anything in our everyday lives to compensate for the recession so to speak. I feel lucky that this is the case.

Answer 7

No, the Carter era was worse.

Answer 8

The media are playing into people's fear of recession foremost. Secondly, most people alive today aren't aware of the Depression. Do you know how much the population has grown since then, or even since the Carter era others mention? The financial system is different, the statistics are different, it just doesn't hold up, this comparison to the Great Depression. Besides, I'm still doing pretty well myself, not having to cut back too much except on luxuries of course.

Answer 9

I know, right?  We should all stop "whining" and "imagining" the worst, like the McCain camp says we are.

Answer 10

No, we haven't even had a recession.  Besides we had a huge recession during Carter's administration.  Runaway inflation, huge unemployment, even gas rationing.  We grew the economy last quarter by 1.9% so this isn't even in that same ball park.

Answer 11

Only libs are depressed...

Answer 12

No. Have we tighten our belt a bit?  Yes... but that's what you do when the economy goes down a little bit.

Answer 13

I had to get a more basic cable

Put my kids in public school instead of private

I had to start car pooling to work

I got cheaper car insurance

Get a cheaper cell phone

and sell some designer bags

I don't think it's a depression right now and you can't deny that if things keep going the way they are, it won't potentially be a depression next year. Top economists and Warren Buffet says things will be getting worse.  

Answer 14

I've not changed my lifestyle.  I've been frugal all along.  Having a marketable skill also helps.

Answer 15

It's an election year. The Dems, and their willing accomplices in the media, have to make it seem like its the end of the world in order to persuade people to vote for the Democrats so that they will save us all from doom....it's all bullshit.

Answer 16

I wasn't around during the depression, but I was around during the Carter admin.  Things are so much better now than they were then.  It's just more doom & gloom reporting.  That kind of c**p really sells.

lol.  Reality has done most of those things, yet he's still talking to us on his computer.  Yeah, right.

Answer 17

Totally agree.  I'm actually doing very well.  Just bought a house earlier this year, right before my husband and I got married - great time to be snatching up real estate deals!  We're actually saving up money so we can buy another piece of property before things start to go back up.

As for cable tv, I've never had it.  I don't throw money away on frivolous stuff like that when I'm trying to save up for my future.  This is definitely no crisis.