(09-09-2019, 05:04 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:(09-07-2019, 06:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What others might have the proclivity to do at times is stopped by the old people able to convince younger adults that it is a bad idea (I think of the GI Generation) to have a corrupt and irresponsible speculative boom.
The GI Generation was too young to understand the Great Depression. You mean the Lost Generation.
The GI Generation was too young to participate in the bad behavior that created the Great Depression. Even a child of five years old (but not much younger) can understand that adults are investing heavily in securities on the assumption of easy money and can catch onto the fact that the markets implode in the Crash. Such is one divide between the GI and Silent generations. The GI generation had some recognition of the corrupt speculative boom, and the Silent knew only the Depression without knowing its cause first-hand. Children of a certain age have some perception, however flawed, of events that scare them in childhood -- and the GI Generation found the Market Crash scary. They may hone their knowledge over time, but childhood memories set one up for life.
Can you imagine such late-surviving GI figures as Bob Dole and Lee Iacocca promoting a speculative boom to create easy money fast for a few only for others to get stuck with the consequences of a financial panic? Well, they were off the scene in the Double-Zero decade. The cat is away, and the mice will play.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.