The fact that we can imagine something good about widespread deflation doesn't mean it will ever happen or that we should act like it's going to happen next time. What we know for sure is that we've suffered horribly from substantial drops in general price levels even though there have also been other times when we've benefited from occasional price drops in specific goods or services.
The Great Depression was directly caused by the Fed and fiscal policy...
Interesting, we were just talking about that here, the way some folks say "the '29 crash caused the Depression", or "Smoot-Hawley tariffs caused the Depression", or "Hoover's fault" etc. etc. Life would be a lot simpler if big historical changes were totally due so some easy blame target, but its always good to watch out for other things going on. What we're talk about is deflation though, and off hand my take is that the Fed being bad doesn't make deflation good.
We have to make comparisons to draw conclusions. The Long Depression happened pre-Fed. We can then look to post-Fed deflations and compare. You’re an expert at grabbing data, Pete. Let’s take a look. I’m interested in the truth.