During the Great Depression everything was black and white and everyone wore funny hats. Now when I see one of those hats (I don’t mean the fedoras, I mean the sort of flat hats) it’s usually a really old guy in a car in front of me driving really really slow.
I don’t think we’re going to have another depression, and if we do I doubt everyone will start wearing those hats. I know I won’t. But when I read articles like this one from Reuters, I get a little worried. It claims that it’s really not that much a stretch to think we might approach unemployment levels seen back then and that if you look at the statistics in a different way we might be well on our way. Here’s an excerpt.
Figures collected for Reuters by John Williams, from the electronic newsletter Shadowstats.com, suggest that, while we are not there yet, the comparison is not as outlandish as it might initially seem.
By his count, if unemployment were still tallied the way it was in the 1930s, today’s jobless rate would be closer to 16.5 percent — more than double the stated rate.
