Current crisis will deform USA at least as much as Great Depression
The great depression was incredibly destructive to human beings in America but it was, at least, a crisis that repaired some of its formative excesses.
Income inequality declined dramatically. The nation moved left. Banking was fundamentally reformed to protect ordinary people. The social safety net was made much stronger. Visionary infrastructure was developed.
In our current crisis the nation has moved to the right, income inequality mushrooms, reforms are trivial (and sometimes retrograde), the social safety net, such as it is, is under constant assault. (Obamacare may or may not represent a real improvement as things play out, but it is hardly on par with the introduction of social security. And local governments are cutting the net as fast as they can. And all "serious" people seem to think that entitlements must be cut somehow.) Labor is weaker. Plutocrats are richer than ever.
Though smaller in statistical scale, this crisis is bleaker than the great depression because there is no silver lining. There is no upside, no lesson learned, no phoenix in sight to rise from the ashes. It's just a mugging.
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