01-05-2017, 08:03 AM
(01-04-2017, 10:58 AM)SomeGuy Wrote:(01-04-2017, 08:35 AM)Odin Wrote: The main reason the Great Depression got as bad as it did was because the Fed stupidly tightened the money supply right as the economy was slumping, and then Congress passed a huge set of tariffs. Had those things not have happened and the Depression just been a less severe downturn it still would have started the 4T.
As a (partial) example of this, Britain never experienced the same boom during the '20s, and had a somewhat more developed social safety net as the result of Liberal reforms during and prior to WWI. While the industrial regions in the north and west experienced horrendous deprivation, the Home Counties actually grew during the 1930s and for the middle class, the 1930s were not too bad. The Tories were dominant during most of this interwar period, and the big social programs that are a part and parcel of Britain's domestic life today were not instituted until after WWII. Since I have long maintained that the (very rough) equivalent to WWI in this saeculum was the collapse of the Soviet Union, you could imagine the US' position today as being similar to a counterfactual scenario where tensions on the Continent led not to a general war (at least not one that Britain let itself get dragged into), but a wide-ranging collapse of entities like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and/or the Russian Empire from internal tensions, while Britain contented itself with further Liberal reforms (hotly contested by the Conservatives) and a more heavy-handed embroilment in Ireland and the rest of the Empire. With, of course, the fundamental question of Germany and Japan's place in the international order still open.
Food for thought.
That's a good analogy.
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