Eerie Parallels to the Great Depression…

Things could get much worse not only for the United States but for the rest of the world:

The International Monetary Fund has warned of “worrisome parallels” between the current global crisis and the Great Depression, despite the unprecedented steps already taken by central banks and governments worldwide.

This recession is likely to be “unusually long and severe, and the recovery sluggish,” said the Fund, releasing two advance chapters from its World Economic Outlook. However, it warned there is a risk that it could spiral down into a full-blown slump unless further action is taken to stop “feedback effects” gathering force.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, said millions of people risk being pushed back into poverty as the economic storm ravages the most vulnerable countries. “The human consequences could be absolutely devastating. This is a truly global crisis, and nobody is escaping,” he said.

Synchronised world recessions striking all major regions are “historically rare” events, the Fund said. They last one and a half times as long typical downturns, and are followed by painfully slow recoveries.

William Graham Sumner, an economics professor at Yale University, wrote in 1883 about the Forgotten Man.  His synopsis is one of the best I have heard and it was played out during the Great Depression as FDR took the reigns and tried to make a Utopian, collectivist society to raise up the poor, but step all over the middle class.  Those who lived through the Great Depression and who made up the middle class, such as my grandmother, can speak passionately and clearly to this day about the policies of FDR and against those who believe in progressive, socialistic societies.  Sumner wrote:

A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.

For once let us look him up and consider his case, for the characteristic of all social doctors is that they fix their minds on some man or group of men whose case appeals to the sympathies and the imagination, and they plan remedies addressed to the particular trouble; they do not understand that all the parts of society hold together, and that forces which are set in action act and react throughout the whole organism, until an equilibrium is produced by a readjustment of all interests and rights.

They therefore ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government, and, forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social discussion — that the state cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man.

There always are two parties. The second one is always the Forgotten Man, and any one who wants to truly understand the matter in question must go and search for the Forgotten Man. He will be found to be worthy, industrious, independent, and self-supporting. He is not, technically, “poor” or “weak”; he minds his own business, and makes no complaint. Consequently the philanthropists never think of him, and trample on him.

[...]

For our present purpose it is most important to notice that if we lift any man up we must have a fulcrum, or point of reaction. In society that means that to lift one man up we push another down. The schemes for improving the condition of the working classes interfere in the competition of workmen with each other. The beneficiaries are selected by favoritism, and are apt to be those who have recommended themselves to the friends of humanity by language or conduct which does not betoken independence and energy. Those who suffer a corresponding depression by the interference are the independent and self-reliant, who once more are forgotten or passed over; and the friends of humanity once more appear, in their zeal to help somebody, to be trampling on those who are trying to help themselves.

[...]

The question then arises, Who is C? He is the man who wants alcoholic liquors for any honest purpose whatsoever, who would use his liberty without abusing it, who would occasion no public question, and trouble nobody at all. He is the Forgotten Man again, and as soon as he is drawn from his obscurity we see that he is just what each one of us ought to be.

No truer words were ever spoken and how prophetic his analysis is today.  It amazes me how so many in the past, whether it was our founding fathers or men like William Graham Sumner, knew the very essence of the issues that continue to stifle us today.  The true condition of what it means to be American and those Forgotten Men and Women that really do make up this great nation.

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