If only there were some way to record previous events, and then maybe (just maybe) have people learn this in a structured environment where they are allowed to ask questions. 🧐
For those that don't get the joke here...
This is an iconic scene that is intentionally designed to portray a very, very boring lecture from a teacher, which none of the kids want to pay attention to, that they are right to percieve this as boredom-torture.
The motherfucking actual literal topic of the lecture is how the Smoot Hawley tariffs of the 1930s massively worsened the Great Depression.
... god, Damnit.
Anyone...anyone..
I believe that is now called "DEI"
You mean social media?
People wrote down Trump abusing tariffs in 2016 and there are analyses about how they damaged the economy. But nobody on lemmy knows about it. People will point out economic theory for why tariffs are bad because they seemingly don't remember the tariffs failing in the real world. Memes forgot 2016. There's even articles about politicians/billionaires selling stock using insider knowledge because "how else would they know about the tariffs?"
It's not like I read the entire fediverse but whenever tariffs are brought up I'm confused why people ignore 2016. It's not trivia, it's extremely relevant to what people are discussing.
Then this meme would have to acknowledge that the 1930's depression already started in 1929
Friendly reminder that the rich love recessions. It's their intent to cause one.
That's when they amass greater property and wealth.
Wealth inequality always worsend following recessions.
There's always a logical point where making more money becomes less efficient than making other people poorer.
And here I thought The Great Depression started in 1929. I'm not saying tariffs in 1930 didn't make it worse, but they didn't cause it.
Yeah unregulated capitalist economy did that. Good thing we didn't deregulate the economy since then though.
/s
2008 happened for the exact same reasons as 1929, because some of the protections put in place because of 1929 had been rolled back many years before. It wasn't as deeply bad because (dare I say) the US had a reasonable executive branch very shortly after.
But none of those protections were reimplemented. Credit default swaps are still totally a thing, for example.
That's a misunderstanding of the causes. Now, admittedly there's a debate on this so what I will say is an opinion, but one that shows how the tariffs did cause the great depression.
The problem people have in understanding the great depression is the initial shock isn't the cause so much as the trigger to the cause which is the tariffs.
Had the tariffs not come into play, the stock sell off and subsequent deflation could have been resolved with simple monetary easing, which is what we do today. This would have simply been a recession and we would move on. However, the tariffs following the stock sell off is why it's the great depression and not just a simple recession.
In fairness, monetary easing policy didn't really come into play until after Brenton wood agreement. That said, it would have been the right solution during the onset of the great depression.
So you can't actually say that tariffs didn't cause the great depression as again had it not been for tariffs we would have pulled through.
Things can have multiple causes spread out over time. The Great Depression didn't become Great until 1932 and the first causes were a flurry of bad borrowing and over-valuing of stock that started in the early 1920s.
I would say that the Tarrifs are a further attack on the working class as they were back then. Another tool to consolidate capital.
The largest difference today is the financialization of our economy (basically meaning every company runs like a bank). This had been a method of consistently allowing the contradictions of capitalism to be delayed and passed off through layoffs and stock buybacks to further sustain the bubble of this system.
It's almost impressive at how well capitalism has adapted throughout the centuries to suck more and more away from the working class before it has to deal with a potential revolutionary "breaking point". It's definitely something Marx could have never predicted.
TLDR: I would not say that tarrifs are the cause of either of these events. I would say they are a tool of the ruling class to be used in times that capitalism hits a crisis. The cause is capitalisms contradictions itself. These extreme tarrifs are just a tool to attempt to deal with those contradictions.
Their luck's gotta run out sometime
To be fair, in 1930 people had little education and no internet. Today you don't need to remember to understand what's wrong with tariffs.
Let me tell you a little something about ✨declining media literacy✨
You can leave out "media".
There were radio, televisions, and books. And while people had overall poor quality of education back then because of lack of access, Noam Chomsky mentioned people still try to educate themselves through reading.
The problem then and now is that mass communication is used by bad faith actors to emotionally manipulate the public into voting against their own interests. Back then, yellow journalism riled up jingoism. Goebbels and the Nazis saw potential use of radio for mass indoctrination, and made conscious effort to make radio cheaper and widely available in Germany.
To be fair, in 1930 people had little education and no internet. Today you don’t need to remember to understand what’s wrong with tariffs.
This makes the assumption that Internet usage makes one more intelligent. I am pretty sure there are plenty of counter-examples.
Sure, bad things have happened every time we’ve tried tariffs.
But we have to do something to balance the budget!
The federal government has achieved fiscal balance (even surpluses) in just seven periods since 1776, bringing in enough revenue to cover all of its spending during 1817-21, 1823-36, 1852-57, 1867-73, 1880-93, 1920-30 and 1998-2001. We have also experienced six depressions. They began in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929.
So old Billy Clinton was the only president to balance the budget without causing a depression? Interesting.
See, this kind of bullshit is what actually gives some credibility to the various 'cyclical' or 'generation based' models of history.
Such models are often either unjustifiably bold/definitive/precise in their future predictions, or they are reasonably restrained, but the pop culture version of them neuters all the caveats and nuance.
... But goddamn if there isn't some real merit to the idea of humans never learning from their own history being a consistent theme of human history.
Had to read up on the 1828 tariff that was basically enacted as a giant game of chicken, nobody expected it to pass... then it did.
Similar to Trump winning? Twice?
I really hate that we can’t collectively learn from our mistakes.
Hey they can always do a war again to get that sweet Keynesian macro economics flowing.
If there is a WWIII, I doubt America will be left alone as much as it was the last two times, especially since that led to America becoming the economic powerhouse it became.
Just the idiotic part of our society. That's more or less a third...
Always fat, stupid fucks that resemble McNuggets.
