TOPIC>>>> Internal Causes – America at Home did bank failures, reduction of purchasing power and the drought cause the depression?
Introduction:
One of the great mysteries of the twentieth century is how the U.S. economy could have gone from a state of unprecedented prosperity in the 1920s to one of unprecedented failure in the 1930s. In the 1920s, jobs were plentiful, the economy was growing and the standard of living was rising. Between 1920 and 1929, home ownership had doubled, and most home-owning families enjoyed amenities, including electric lights and flush toilets, once regarded as luxuries. Sixty percent of all households had automobiles, up from 26 percent in 1920. More teenagers were attending high school; fewer were working full time. Leading political and economic figures of the day said that the United States appeared to have reached “a permanent plateau of peace and prosperity.”
But by 1933 at least one fourth of the U.S. labor force was unemployed, and about the same percentage was working shorter hours, which reduced their incomes. Families were losing their homes, and many were going hungry. Adolescents who should have been in high school were riding around the country in freight cars, looking for work. Although 1933 marked the low point of what came to be called the Great Depression, the unemployment rate never dropped below 14 percent until 1941. A decade of hope had been succeeded by a decade of hopelessness. What happened? The United States possessed the same productive resources in the 1930s as it had in the 1920s. The great factories and productive machinery that had raised living standards in the 1920s were still present in the 1930s.Workers still had the same skills and were willing to work just as hard as before, and farmers were producing more food than ever. How could life have become so miserable for so many Americans in such a short period of time?
A murder mystery is often called a “whodunnit” because we want to know who committed the crime. The mystery of the Great Depression is a “whatdunnit” — what caused the Great Depression and that made it last so long? Many people who are neither historians nor economists care about the answer because they fear that such a depression could happen again in our country and they want to know whether such a recurrence can be prevented.
{Above section taken entirely from FOCUS: UNDERSTANDING ECONOMICS IN UNITED STATES HISTORY ©NATIONAL COUNCIL ON ECONOMIC EDUCATION, NEW YORK, NY page 360. }
This forum will provide you with an opportunity to explore the causes of the Great Depression.
The Prompt:
This forum will analyze the causes of the Great Depression internally and externally and compare them to modern situations. You will need to complete a four paragraph analysis detailing why your assigned cause was the primary cause for the Great Depression. This post should include multiple citations. You will also need to respond to a minimum of two classmates who were assigned the opposite topic and use current events (events happening since 1980) to illustrate that even today your topic remains a primary cause for US economic fluctuations. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph of 5 to 10 sentences with citations.
Resources: (Please note you will need additional sources)
What caused the Great Depression Insider – https://www.businessinsider.com/what-caused-the-great-depression#:~:text=While%20the%20October%201929%20stock,contributed%20to%20the%20Great%20Depression.
Great Depression – https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression