Will people remmeber this like they remembered the Great Depression?

[RandySF]

I grew up in a very blue Michigan neighborhood and out elderly neighbors pointed to the Grear Depression as the reason for voting Democratic. Do you think Republican failure to contain the pandemic will have the same effect?

[JI7]

1. Support for Republicans right now is mainly about white resentment of others

Maybe it might take lives lost in people's own families to change.

There is that case of the Man who went on a cruise because Trump said the virus was a hoax and ended up dying. I don't know what the politics of his children (who are adults) was but they did try to get him not to go.

I'm guessing people like that would be turned off by the current republican party.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Or not. When the Spanish Flu pandemic was finally over

it was hardly mentioned by writers - hardly a word from major authors like Fitzgerald or Hemingway. It seemed like people just wanted to forget about it.

[Squinch]

10. This. I could never understand that. But many acted shamefully then, too.

I used to think the silence about it might be because it was too traumatic.

Now I think maybe a large percentage of people might have been ashamed if how horribly they acted and how willing they had been to endanger others and kill them.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

3. Total abandoning Science, CDC, WHO and the Gas-lighting of this admniistration...

... is it at comparable to the Great Depression?

[Igel]

4. Not so far.

Mostly because it's not a big economic problem yet, except in anticipation. We're worried. As opposed to starving.

That's part of the problem. It's one thing to live in the present and plan for the future. It's another thing to do all the suffering in advance for the future in the present, because when the future comes it'll still involve the same amount of suffering.

No confidence, no faith, and more fear than hope (or hope in one's own perfection finally being implemented).

That's many of my high schoolers. Either they must dictate or they're convinced all the sh*theads will control things and mess it up. You can't run a democracy that way.

[Eyeball_Kid]

5. More so.

The Great Depression had a relatively stable government to see the nation through.

Our current situation is very unstable. We have both economic and political instability. This would be worrisome were we to just suffer though an economic catastrophe. But we have a political implosion as well. And it could convert to an explosion. The economic dirge has just begun. Trump can be defeated if both parties were to unite to boot him out of office. But that's about it. He doesn't have to suffer through another election. He can just cancel the next one and he's home free.

[Initech]

6. Yeah probably.

And this will sink us into Great Depression II: Depression Harder.

[duforsure]

9. The trump deppression is coming

From his and the GOP dragging their feet getting help to the people directly, and small businesses. trump's too busy trying to skim money from this pandemic's stimulus funding for himself.

[Initech]

11. And of course the democrats will get stuck cleaning up his mess.

[roamer65]

7. I think it will be called the Greater Recession.

A bigger recession than the Great Recession, obviously.

In 1930, the recession became a depression because of the lack of expansionary fiscal and monetary policy. Also due to the Smoot-Hawley tariffs and a gold standard that was hamstringing expansion of the money supply.

We now have extremely expansionary monetary policy, including negative interest rates on the way.

[Raine]

8. Probably not, things move faster now

and get buried under "breaking news".

[Buckeye_Democrat]

12. It will probably be remembered like the 1918 pandemic.

Not discussed very much in public, but individuals remembering the people they lost.

My grandfather's older brother died from the Spanish flu. A scout from the Cincinnati Reds approached him after seeing him pitch, not long before he became ill and died, according to Grandpa.

Pic of him (left) with two of his friends.


So he's still "remembered" in my family, despite how none of us personally met him.

The regular, daily hardships of the Great Depression were discussed more frequently by my older family members.