The Panic of 1873 and the panic today

panic-of-1873Many are looking back at the 1930s to the Great Depression of that Era and comparing today’s capitalist downturn to that one, but others see little similarities between that Economic Crash of what appears to many as the mere distant yesterday and today’s. Yet there is still another great financial crash to compare our current one to, the one historically called The Panic of 1873.

That one, too, had many differences to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and YES also to the one we are living now. But all three of the mentioned capitalist economic worldwide crashes share some remarkable similarities, too. Here are a few similarities between now and 1873.

In 1873, the US had just finished an incredibly costly Civil War, where huger amounts of money went into funding the military. Today, we see huge amounts of deficit spending on the military that have ballooned the national debt into the multiple trillions of dollars. Piggybacked onto that is the same credit crunch that the people of 1873 saw and experienced. Further, both these 2 economic crashes were worldwide, and not just American affairs.

One other aspect of all these Crashes is the lack of concern with most human suffering that the crashes cause to the working class. “Panic, as a health officer, sweeping the garbage out of Wall Street.” See what I mean? And another thread to all these horrible downturns is the utter confusion of people living on the dogmas of their times. Today, as in the past, people can’t seem to figure out just who to blame, and have a tendency to blame innocents instead of perpetrators of the crises.

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