I became a Dad a couple of years ago, and was sitting in my Living Room on top of a pile of baby stuff. I mean, it looked like the grandparents went to Babies R Us and bought two of everything...Mrs WBill and I were having a problem finding places to put it all, and simultaneously wondering if we had enough stuff.
Meantime, my Dad brought over some letters that he discovered from my Great-Grandmother, to my Grandmother. They were written during the war (WW II) just before Dad was born. So...we're sitting atop this massive pile of stuff reading the letters, and one of them mentions a "Need to save Safety Pins, because they're expensive and hard to find due to rationing." Ironic? Sure.
Things aren't that bad right now. While I won't deny that they can get worse....they're not that bad.
You said — “Things aren’t that bad right now. While I won’t deny that they can get worse....they’re not that bad.”
True, but we’re still not several years on yet... there’s still time for this to “play out”...
I remember hearing all about the Great Depression from my grandparents and parents. I had hoped I wouldn’t ever see such a thing in my time. But, there was always a nagging suspicion that it would come around again. I think this is it...
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My dad and mom were born just a few years after Oklahoma became a state from being Indian Territory. My grandparents lived outside of Indian Territory and moved into it as it became a state (one set from the south and the other from the north and east. One grandparent got caught over in America (from England) during World War 1 and couldn’t return (and never did). I was born in Oklahoma a mere few decades after it was Indian Territory and became a state.
And so it goes...
Wartime rationing wasn’t really part of the Depression. Metal of all sorts became scarce during the war what with scrap drives sopping up all sorts of common items. Even pennies lost their copper and became zinc.
All the same our current state of affairs isn’t anywhere close to the desperate circumstances of the Depression, so my octogenarian father assures me. But the causes of this current downturn are eerily similar to what led to the Depression. Recessions don’t usually threaten the banking system the way this one has, but the Depression did.