So, during the Great Depression who ended up doing well? What can be applied to today?

almost_usual 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The consistent best thing you can do for yourself and family is sleep well and exercise to increase your aerobic efficiency.

	▲	JMiao 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		yes, i will become the consummate amazon prime one hour delivery guy

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TheJoeMan 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unfortunately, during that time is when they screwed around with the gold confiscations. So the best option would have been to illegally hoard gold until they struck the statute down?

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AnimalMuppet 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Oof. Private gold ownership was illegal until 1975. So, you have to hide it for 40+ years? That investment strategy has some significant downsides...

	▲	aftbit 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm shocked that more people don't know about this. It seems insane that the "land of the free" (yeah I know, not really, but that's the pitch anyway) would have such an obviously command-economy policy through the heart of the cold war.

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conception 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Own stuff, not paper.

	▲	phendrenad2 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's for hyperinflation. In a crash, you actually do want money (if you can find a job).

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aftbit 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Whoever had money on hand to buy assets at bargain basement prices for people who didn't. Also - rum runners and smugglers.

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adventured 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There isn't going to be a great depression.

The US is going to debase itself endlessly through spend-print-spend-print. At some point they may load up enough debt that the economy suffers a gradual heat death, in the style of Japan, wherein too much of your national capital is going to debt maintenance, sitting in a low yield blackhole sucking the dynamism out of your system (instead of going to productive use, business expansion, R&D, et al).

There's absolutely nothing particularly interesting or special about the direction the US is going. It's very, very, very easy to see what's coming and has been for ~20 years (since Bush nearly doubled the size of the Federal Government and blew up our finances with simultaneous tax cuts + massive spending expansion, we've never turned back from the bleed).

Gold has gone up ~10x since the early Bush years precisely because of the USD debasement, that's the reduction in value in the dollar being represented in the ultimate store of value. All of it has been remarkably predictable. I've been chirping about it forever here and there's nothing special about my insight either, this stuff is plain as day national econ 101.

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macintux 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> since Bush nearly doubled the size of the Federal Government and blew up our finances with simultaneous tax cuts + massive spending expansion

We were 10 years from paying off the national debt when Clinton left office. 10 years!

	▲	themaninthedark 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What would job numbers look like if the federal government wasn't doubled? I say this as someone who thinks Bush was an absolute idiot and would love to see the government shrunk. TSA is basically a jobs program, what happens if we get rid of it?

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JMiao 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i know what you mean. 2008 and covid taught me to stop underestimating the abilities/nerve of our financial schemers and their political representatives to kick the can down the road. but i am too anxious about it to think straight. what to do?

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netbioserror 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The turning point is approaching: Interest rates will gradually overtake all other gov't expenditures. All politics will revolve around shoring up the parasitic drain on the rest of absolutely everything.