I was looking at photo's of the great depression

[blues90]

My god , I haven't dared to look at this for sometime . I was trying to relate to just how bad things could become if this country sinks any further .

I can't imagine how this would look today but this must be what many are experiencing in the gulf coast and in Iraq .

I am not doing well in this so called economy myself , seems like many are doing better or ok for the time being .

[Bluzmann57]

1. That is why my parents eat virtually anything put before them

Because they lived through the depression and know what it's like to be hungry and have to scramble. I admire the people who lived through those bleak years and hope that none of us or our children have to go through that.

[blues90]

2. My parents and my wifes went through this too

Now I know the feeling more than ever before of what my parents went through , both born in 1917 .

This was the reason they never took anything for granted and saved and worked hard to keep from ever going back to times like that .

Different times now , it has become a toss away nation rather than a keep it going fix it nation .

I would have never thought this is what we would come to after all they went through and what kids like me back then wore hand me down clothes and made things last and took care of them .

I still have this mindset but find it next to impossible to fix anything now since things are built to break and not repairable so now I learn to live without .

I have power tools that I can keep going for many years to come but even these are getting to the point of cheap toss out , buy new costs less and this does create another void of jobs in the repair field .

Each thing that vanishes takes a whole host of jobs with it .

[angry_chuck]

10. then those jobs get consolidated

and many moved offshore to cheaper jurisdictions without all those silly human rights policies we have here.

"Why should I pay you to fix my TV since I can buy one made new by some factory worker in Malaysia for less money? Plus they will ship it faster than you can fix it, jerk." - Joe B. American

all repair men should concentrate on things that do not so much break as need a tune up, like computers or the integration of home media devices.

They can never outsource American ignorance.

[Zensea]

3. That is why I eat virtually anything put before me

Because my father lived in Oklahoma and then California during the Dust Bowl and I paid close attention to his stories when I was growing up even though I was born in 1956.
He actually saw with his own eyes when the orange grove owners burned oranges to keep the price up and supply down and called out the National Guard to keep the "hungry hordes" from retrieving the oranges before they burned.
You hear stories like that when you are young and you don't forget them if you are paying attention.

[Deja Q]

6. And because many X'ers and Y'ers haven't, I've observed a lot of waste.

I may be an X'er, but I get damn pissed when people waste food for the sake of it - or parents letting their offspring waste. It's deplorable.

Maybe that's why things are happening now; it's a wake-up call to us. We all talk about needing to change, well maybe this is our opportunity.

(I don't waste food, but I can cut down a little on gas. Not much as I live close to work and don't buy into that "middle class people must live 50 miles away", which is a load of smelly cattle manure in the first place...)

[jody]

4. I was born in the depression and have early memories of how little families

had to just survive.

The wonderful thing is people would share their meager supplies with each other. I don't believe that would happen today.

[jwirr]

5. Their resourcefulness and courage may be the light that leads us

in the problems of the future - global warming, oil peak, water shortages. I and my children are using my mother & grandmother's recipes to start canning again and we are gardening, stocking up on tools & other supplies. The problem is that the two era's have differing problems.

[blues90]

7. They are different

There was land that one could try to live on , now it seems someone owns all of it . You could get by with basic skills and common sense , today this seems to be lacking . Plus the population is much larger now and the landscape covered in cars which would make a shelter of sorts .

I doubt if many people who be sharing what they have with others as they did back then and you could grow some food where would one do this now .

Everything is now run by power and electic and batteries . Of course we could adapt to life in the woods in a tent city .

[jwirr]

9. You are correct. I hadn't thought about how blessed I and my family

are that we do live in the woods. I always encouraged my family to stay in our rural area and build lives here. They thought I was crazy until now.

[area51]

8. kick. (n/t)