History Shmistory

To be fair, in 1930 people had little education and no internet. Today you don’t need to remember to understand what’s wrong with tariffs.

This makes the assumption that Internet usage makes one more intelligent. I am pretty sure there are plenty of counter-examples.

Let me tell you a little something about ✨declining media literacy✨

There were radio, televisions, and books. And while people had overall poor quality of education back then because of lack of access, Noam Chomsky mentioned people still try to educate themselves through reading.

The problem then and now is that mass communication is used by bad faith actors to emotionally manipulate the public into voting against their own interests. Back then, yellow journalism riled up jingoism. Goebbels and the Nazis saw potential use of radio for mass indoctrination, and made conscious effort to make radio cheaper and widely available in Germany.

There's always a logical point where making more money becomes less efficient than making other people poorer.

$s never decrease - they just circulate… if nobody you know has any, and the tv is saying nobody like you has any, someone else has them

(kinda)

But that would be... an academic pursuit!!! Oh the horror!! Can't have the unwashed masses being all 'edumacated' and questioning authority!

Yeah unregulated capitalist economy did that. Good thing we didn't deregulate the economy since then though.

/s

That's a misunderstanding of the causes. Now, admittedly there's a debate on this so what I will say is an opinion, but one that shows how the tariffs did cause the great depression.

The problem people have in understanding the great depression is the initial shock isn't the cause so much as the trigger to the cause which is the tariffs.

Had the tariffs not come into play, the stock sell off and subsequent deflation could have been resolved with simple monetary easing, which is what we do today. This would have simply been a recession and we would move on. However, the tariffs following the stock sell off is why it's the great depression and not just a simple recession.

In fairness, monetary easing policy didn't really come into play until after Brenton wood agreement. That said, it would have been the right solution during the onset of the great depression.

So you can't actually say that tariffs didn't cause the great depression as again had it not been for tariffs we would have pulled through.

I would say that the Tarrifs are a further attack on the working class as they were back then. Another tool to consolidate capital.

The largest difference today is the financialization of our economy (basically meaning every company runs like a bank). This had been a method of consistently allowing the contradictions of capitalism to be delayed and passed off through layoffs and stock buybacks to further sustain the bubble of this system.

It's almost impressive at how well capitalism has adapted throughout the centuries to suck more and more away from the working class before it has to deal with a potential revolutionary "breaking point". It's definitely something Marx could have never predicted.

TLDR: I would not say that tarrifs are the cause of either of these events. I would say they are a tool of the ruling class to be used in times that capitalism hits a crisis. The cause is capitalisms contradictions itself. These extreme tarrifs are just a tool to attempt to deal with those contradictions.

So old Billy Clinton was the only president to balance the budget without causing a depression? Interesting.

If there is a WWIII, I doubt America will be left alone as much as it was the last two times, especially since that led to America becoming the economic powerhouse it became.