(ThyBlackMan.com) First, you may be thinking, what do I mean a third depression? So let me rephrase it. We have had only one depression that we all know of, the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 through the late 1930s. I’ll discuss the other one later.
I fear that if all goes the way it could, with Biden as president and the Democrats taking the Senate, we will likely experience a third. And this one may be our worst.
I’m sure we’ve heard how the great President Franklin Roosevelt (he was a bad dude) ushered us out of the Great Depression by developing all those wonderful programs and spending all that money (we call it stimulus today).
But everything most have heard of FDR was a load of crap. It was Roosevelt’s policies that pushed us from a depression into a Great Depression, not the other way around, but I digress.
Still, as far as most people know, it was the only depression this country has experienced.
Surprise! There was another, but because progressives write the history books, you may know little, if anything about it. It was the depression of 1920.
In 1920, thanks to the policies of the other progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, America’s unemployment rate skyrocketed to 20%. Gross National Product had declined by 17%. It was a disaster.
Keep in mind, there was no welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, foodstamps, Social Security or any government assistance programs to speak of. That would only have exacerbated the economic collapse.
So what did the government do, you ask?
Surely, like today, it must have instituted massive government stimulus programs. They must have started a sweeping welfare program to save the people.
Well, no, quite the opposite. What America did in 1920 was to elect fiscally responsible adults, who took the reins in March of 1921 and made the hard decisions that most politicians would never have the courage to do.
The newly elected Warren G. Harding-Calvin Coolidge administration cut the federal government’s budget almost in half within two years.
Could you imagine even proposing anything remotely like that today? Leftists would hemorrhage. Heck, most of the Republican political class would do the same.
Anyway, back to history.
Taxes were cut for everyone. Even the Federal Reserve was remarkably restrained as it sat on its hands and, thankfully, did almost nothing.
And things were truly awful, but for only about a year.
But rather than whine and cry as many do today, Americans did what Americans do, or at least used to do. They took their medicine, endured the economic hardship, and just six months later, by August 1921, the unemployment rate had dropped from 20% to 6.7%.
Harding died suddenly in 1923, and his vice president, the Great Calvin Coolidge, continued the programs. By the end of that year, the unemployment rate was down to 2.4%, an 88% drop.
We’ve heard the term the “Roaring 20s.” Well, it was the Harding and Coolidge policies that made the 20s roar! Not government programs or intervention. There were no bailouts. Companies were allowed to fail, and new ones took there place. Capitalism was permitted to thrive in such an environment, and it did.
All the lessons are right here. Capitalism vs. socialism, government vs. the private sector, spin vs. actual results. Everything has been tried before. There’s nothing new, and history shows what has worked and what has not.
Now I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but if the Democrats achieve their declared objectives, by 2024, our nation will likely look worse than it did in 1920.
There will be pain coming, one way or another. Assuming we make it to 2024 intact, we will then have to decide whether the solution to avoiding another depression will be a quick rip of the bandage (Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge) — with it’s accompanying shooting but short-lived pain — or the long slow pull (Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama, Joe Biden) with its long, drawn-out anguish.
Written by Brent Smith
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