Great Depression

The Great Depression was an economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939 that affect the lower class, mid class and high class. The most devastating impact of the Great Depression was human suffering. Like Christina D. Romer said “In a short period of time, world output and standards of living dropped precipitously. As much as one-fourth of the labor force in industrialized countries was unable to find work in the early 1930s. While conditions began to improve by the mid-1930s, total recovery was not accomplished until the end of the decade.” The Great Depression and the policy response also changed the world economy in crucial ways. In the United States, union membership more than doubled between 1930 and 1940. This trend was stimulated by both the severe unemployment of the 1930s and the passage of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act (1935), which encouraged collective bargaining. In many countries, government regulation of the economy, especially of financial markets, increased substantially in the 1930s. The Great Depression also played a crucial role in the development of macroenomic policies intended to temper economic downturns and upturns. Growing social inequality among different social classes caused people belonging to the lower class to desire change in the way the government taxes in order to balance the nation’s wealth. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world.
The great depression hit middle class families the hardest. It did effect the poor but there where already accustom to not having things and there was not much of an effect on the rich, although there where some rich families that lost everything in the stock market. The middle class families where already in debt dew to new installment plans. After many industries closed there doors there where no jobs left. People had no money to pay any