The Great Depression
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The Great Depression
The Great Depression not only affected the United States but the world in general. In my estimation some the reasons for the depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920's and the debts not paid back from WWI.
The distribution of wealth in the 1920's, "roaring twenties," was done with despair between the very wealthy and the lower classes, between industry and agriculture within the United States, between the U.S. and Europe. This imbalance of wealth created an unstable economy. The excessive assumption in the late 20's kept the stock markets artificially high, which eventually lead the large market crashes and the American economy to turn over.
The "roaring twenties" was an era when the U.S. prospered immensely. The nation's total income was rose tremendously, but not equally. The "Coolidge Prosperity" of the 1920's was not evenly shared among Americans, which led the rich to become richer, by not having to pay such high taxes, and the poor to not prosper. This widened the gap of disparity even more. In this period of time there was an increased manufacturing output, which made more money for the manufacturing plants and the people who invested in it, but not for the workers. There came to be an oversupply of goods and not enough buyers. During this time credit sales became a big thing for people to use to buy products. The government made it easier to just put it on credit, thinking that it would be paid off at a later time and it would also help the economy. Many American's used this method, which even led the European country's to pay for their supplies on credit during the war.
The European nations were struggling to rebuild themselves from the damage after the war. The U.S. government lent the European allies billions of dollars for the war to purchase U.S. goods. After the war they were in no position to pay off debts. Their gold had flowed into the U.S. during and immediately after the...
- Submitted by: lewpfusw
- Date Submitted: 04/14/2006 01:56 AM
- Category: American History
- Words: 728
- Pages: 3
- Views: 428
- Rank: 181024