When Things Fall Apart

Take a look at this: Lesson Learned by gonzalolira or the Coming Middle Class Anarchy

The natural state of things is change.  Change in climate. Change in technology. Change in behavior. Yet humans often fall into the trap of thinking that things will remain as they are for the foreseeable future, that the way things are is the way things should be and should always be.  When economic and political policies prevent change from occurring in the normal course, disaster always follows.  Think of it like water building up behind an old obsolete dam, finally one ounce too much water builds up and then the dam breaks.  When the dam breaks, many are caught up in an explosion of energy that would not have happened if the water, or rather the change, had been allowed to happen in the normal course. 

Such is the case with the couple described at the above link.  They played by rules their whole life, and then the rules changed.  Such is the case with our economy.  Obsolete, misguided policies lead to an explosion of energy which knocked down the dam and have created turmoil and loss downstream.

Over the next few weeks I will return to this subject, but first this:  I believe we are living through a depression.  When economists and historians look back at 2008-201x twenty years from now, they will conclude we were in a depression. 

Here is something I remember of the depression. No, I didn’t live through it, I am not that old, but my grandfather told me many stories about the depression on summer afternoons while sitting in a porch swing.  Here is one story I remember well.

I had made some point about tobacco price supports and papaw said, oh I wish we had had those back in them days.  There were times when we burned the tobacco right out of the barn since it wasn’t worth the effort to strip it and take it to market.  I asked papaw how could that be and how did he make it without the cash from tobacco.  He said, for two or three years I had bad crops.  Prices weren’t very good, but I made a few dollars. Then I had a great crop. Rain fell at the right time.  We put the arsenic on at the right time, we topped and suckered at the right time, everything went well.  The crop was beautiful in the field.  I would go out and look at the leaves and they were perfect. In the fall we cut it and hung it in the barn. Watching it dry I realized I had the most perfect burley I had ever seen.  A rich dark brown, no hail or insect holes, no dirt on it, it was beautiful. Then the market fell.  We left the tobacco in the barn as long as we could, but finally gave up.  Took it down and burned it.  Oh I kept some to chew and smoke, but mostly burned it. It broke my heart.

I said, so how did you make it? He looked at me and said, we didn’t make it. We packed up, moved to town, went on relief and looked for work. Finally found some with the WPA.

Your grandfather ever look at you and tell you, we didn’t make it?  The rules had changed and his dreams were shattered.  

Just like the folks at the link.