tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post3188731082788346832..comments2024-01-03T01:40:26.911-08:00Comments on Life Drawings: 4 November 1957 “1957 or 1937: The Modern World Encroaches into the Past”50sgalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09250940806307766624noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-28968071845404250732011-11-09T07:36:58.921-08:002011-11-09T07:36:58.921-08:00I, too, would love to see you do a 1930's year...I, too, would love to see you do a 1930's year. If you did, would you go about it with as much detail as you did the 50's? And, would hubby be on board with it as well? I think a year in this time period would be so much more relevant to what is currently going on in the world today, the parallels are astounding. We have a ton to learn from that period.Betsyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06961949757283263982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-32025017550247794192011-11-05T10:14:27.721-07:002011-11-05T10:14:27.721-07:00I loved this post! I love it when you write social...I loved this post! I love it when you write social/economic commentary. It always gets me thinking. :)Meinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-89458741482016714832011-11-05T07:46:48.581-07:002011-11-05T07:46:48.581-07:00Wow - love this post! So much to mull over.Wow - love this post! So much to mull over.Monicahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01048605346384889326noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-10810222915532663032011-11-05T07:01:48.760-07:002011-11-05T07:01:48.760-07:00This was a thought-provoking post. We do need to ...This was a thought-provoking post. We do need to understand history to have a good perspective on today's events.<br /><br />The quote from the bank consulting firm--"Healthy banks are paying for the mistakes made by failed banks" could apply to more than banks. When we divorce consequences from actions, people (and institutions) do not have the incentive to be "healthy" or work hard or behave responsibly.Conniehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10577304198119995552noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-64374780612898454282011-11-04T17:44:44.282-07:002011-11-04T17:44:44.282-07:00I loved this post! Thank you for all your thinking...I loved this post! Thank you for all your thinking and writing. I have 5 different soups in my menu for the week which really stretch the food dollars. I prefer to save all I can by being the best homemaker I can be and leave the outside jobs for those who are the primary bread winners. DeeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-73618488186124940162011-11-04T15:38:59.102-07:002011-11-04T15:38:59.102-07:00also Susan it is also hard for many to shop at ...also Susan it is also hard for many to shop at 'local shops' as they are less available. I know in my area it is almost impossible to shop completely for groceries at local places as well as clothing.<br />We must remember to consider all reasons and not be too cruel but rather to consider and look at both sides of problems. <br />Again, I am less concerned about blame and more about finding solutions.<br />And to add, the next big bubble, like the housing bubble, may very well be college education. The endless easy credit available to college students and easy to get loans for over priced schools where after graduation there are fewer jobs is only going to lead to more trouble down the road. It is too sad.50sgalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250940806307766624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-75839909864306687042011-11-04T15:13:42.279-07:002011-11-04T15:13:42.279-07:00susan branch-I do agree that our welfare programs ...susan branch-I do agree that our welfare programs are hardly well organized. For example one commentor from Canada said she receives one whole year maternity leave. Perhaps if we didn't pay people for not being responsible enough with child birth then we might have to money for such programs for families who Plan children. <br />I am not sure how I feel overall, though I don't like to ever have a blanket ideal of a people. I think maybe calling the protesters 'lazy' is really just another part of our problem here in the USA. We are often quick to draw lines and join camps and throw names and hate at one another. When really if we talk with each other we find that we do indeed want many of the same things.<br />I think maybe some of the protesters are simply angered, as am I, how the banks were allowed to get the power they have and then to get bailed out. I do think that there is truly a large loss of jobs in our country. The manufacturing and farming alone that was happening in the USA in the 1930s is no longer even available here in our own country. So, I can understand some of your points I don't like to call people lazy unless I understand their entire situation.<br />We must FIRST take away the 'crutch' of the government handouts to the Corporations, they certainly received quite a bit including the car companies that easily was greater than any amount given to people on Social Security. We need to look less at blaming each other and look to where the problems lie and get to the root of them and see if they can be rectified. There are certainly no simple solutions but anger towards others suffering is hardly the answer.<br /><br />Anon-I am not sure yet. I am going to let it mill about until the end of the year and decide on 1 January.50sgalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250940806307766624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-23185715328550229602011-11-04T15:03:12.497-07:002011-11-04T15:03:12.497-07:00I would love to hear more about the 1930s as I thi...I would love to hear more about the 1930s as I think it is my favourite era of the 20th century. so much change, many new ideas, a very interesting timeJennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06659929017085133209noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-70440616101796712792011-11-04T14:03:22.313-07:002011-11-04T14:03:22.313-07:00Donna, I'm thrilled that you are planning to m...Donna, I'm thrilled that you are planning to make 1930s posts!<br />Will your next year be 1936?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-29155697833476851982011-11-04T13:37:01.629-07:002011-11-04T13:37:01.629-07:00Difference between today and the great depression ...Difference between today and the great depression (yes, it was GREAT).<br /><br />*Today there are a great many of people who CHOOSE not to work. Many who will not even work part time because here in America people can be paid not to work.<br />*I work at an inner city school in Boston and (sadly) there are many gilrs who are/plan/want to get pregnant before graduation, because here in the Baystate, they will qualify for section 8 subsidized housing, food stamps, etc. I had one student say to me that "you are a sucker for working, my mother does not work, we have a free house, free food, and get a monthly check and free healthcare). <br />*There are college students in the area (as seen on ch. 5 news, who eat their meals at food pantries, so that they can spend the money that their parents give them for food on the credit card bills, shopping, and phone plans.<br /><br />People consider themselves "poor" if they can not keep up with the Jonses and it is sickening. If those lazy protesters down on Wall St. spent as much time/energy working/looking for a job as they do complaining, they could amount to something.<br /><br />If people do not like the big banks, put their money in a local bank - we did!<br /><br />If people do not like the big box stores, then stop shopping at them - we did!<br /><br />All the government handout are doing is making aAmerica a greedy, lazy intitled nation. <br /><br />Take away the crutch of a free hand out and you would be surprised how many people could walk.<br /><br />Susan BranchAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-42623501798772571342011-11-04T13:29:58.220-07:002011-11-04T13:29:58.220-07:00hotpinksy-Its so true. I also see such things that...hotpinksy-Its so true. I also see such things that would have been unthinkable just last year. <br />I see more 'please give me work' signs in the main town here as well.<br />I really am beginning to consider next year's focus on either one year or the entire decade of the 1930's. Perhaps it will prepare me and all of us for what might be coming, more Depression and hopefully not, but maybe? a world war.<br />What is interesting is the last World War got our country out of the Depression because of all the production.<br />Today, however, we are AT war, we are fighting a few wars but all the money is NOT being made in this country. It seems if we are to continue fighting in USA's name we could at least begin steaming up the factories here to make all the things needed for it rather than simply private contracts to companies producing in China, India and other places. <br />What is scary, too, is when the Depression really hit in 1930s there were not as many people with house debt there was NO credit card debt and the government actually started with a surplus while our government is currently very much in debt. We also had a gold standard for our currency which we do not now. <br />It is all very scary and I think we should keep our minds and eyes on the big picture and our hands and hearts at home learning and making do with less and learning to restructure our own needs and skills there, don't you?50sgalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250940806307766624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-36811762397915370172011-11-04T13:07:53.020-07:002011-11-04T13:07:53.020-07:00I agree and I wonder what future this country is f...I agree and I wonder what future this country is facing and if we will look back on this as a Great Depression. I see more and more people standing on the street begging for jobs, money, food so much more than I used to. This past weekend I was driving in my middle class suburban strip mall and came across a young couple (20s) with a handwritten sign up on the side of the road asking for a job... That never would have happened 20 10 or even 5 years ago. It makes me wonder what this nation is evolving into and with all the turmoil in Europe and slowing growth in the US it will likely only get worsehotpinkskynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-38827527499115833392011-11-04T12:33:23.486-07:002011-11-04T12:33:23.486-07:00Betsey-I have felt the same way as well. Only the ...Betsey-I have felt the same way as well. Only the more I really begin to peel back the onion skin do I realize that we are to 'blame' in some sense, but that our 'coercion' into it was in many ways just evil practices. The media and tv/comp is basically a wonderful propaganda machine that allows us to literally raise people from infancy to simply think there is no other choice but to buy buy buy and have credit is the norm and no saving or self sufficient skills. <br />It isn't as if we all have such skills and simply think, "Oh well, i won't teach that in the school or to my children, I'll just let em buy it all up". There are no generations removed from any sort of school level teaching of self sufficient banking saving cleaning cooking normal life training. There are no shows that support such behavior and the general consensus for 'cool' is to have and have more and to 'rebel' from parents who are too busy working two jobs anyway to pay any attention.<br />So though we are to blame somewhat there is much to be said for the great power of a media station in every home and hand that allows constant advertising to not only sell to us directly but to sell to us a new kind of normal that keeps us distracted from the real problems and real solutions.<br />At this point I don't care who is to blame I just want to know how we CAN fix it. And I wonder if we can. We are so hedged in with laws and various regulations that literally the small farm/business/family/town has no place to go. Think of children generations removed from a normal small town now just living in various 'satellite walmart towns'. One has to work for them, buy into them, and it is all such a mess.<br />I just want us to find solutions. <br />So, for me, at this point, it is in my home and try to move out into my small town. To see what we can do just to get by on less money.<br />We have SO many regulations for small farms and business to do this or that yet it was completely legal for big corp such as steel mills to move overseas while devastating an entire city and area. I think it is hard to 'blame' those who sought out such jobs to raise a family when that company left with all the work.50sgalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250940806307766624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-38296180935965532632011-11-04T12:25:51.758-07:002011-11-04T12:25:51.758-07:00country lady-thank you so much. I know it is hard ...country lady-thank you so much. I know it is hard for small farms and farmers. Our Gussie works for a local farm and they are always getting hit with new 'regulations' that require them to go into more debt to be 'legal'. <br />Much as it is with any real small business today, regulations and laws are merely set to benefit the big guys who can afford it. I know I was a small business owner and when we had to sell, there went 5 local jobs from a local business.<br />We have thought of farming ourselves, to try and subsist but realize the idea of ever selling to make money from it would be very hard due to the regulations. If I wanted to kill chickens I raised and sell them in my town, I would be fined and have to have a specifical facility that would costs 100s of thousands to do it. How can any of we small people really do anything any more? We are completely at the mercy of and dependent upon large corps and the gov which are really one and the same.<br />Thank you for sharing that with us. It is good to hear from all of us to better understand our world.50sgalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250940806307766624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-20633497585713907682011-11-04T12:10:04.271-07:002011-11-04T12:10:04.271-07:00I think that we are so far removed from the "...I think that we are so far removed from the "do with less now, to have more for later" mentality that it's a foreign concept for many people. While much of our economic problems today can be blamed on the banks and governmental regulations, we have to also accept some of the responsibility ourselves. We (as a collective culture) allowed ourselves to be lulled into the idea that we deserve whatever we want, whenever we want, no matter the cost. No one forced us to buy iPods and all the Walmart trinkets and McMansions. <br /><br />I'm on the fence on where to place blame. I agree that banks and big business and big government have acted atrociously the last 30 years. I hate that there are less well-paying jobs all around; I've come up against that personally as my husband currently has to work 3 part time jobs, and between the 3 of them he still makes less than $20,000 a year. He has a masters degree, but can't find a full time job that pays a living wage. I hate that a college education is so expensive; we'll be paying back his student loans until we're 80 probably. <br /><br />At the same time, if we had managed our money more responsibly over the years, we wouldn't be struggling so hard to get by now. Our income would be the same, but we wouldn't have so much money going out for credit card payments, and we would have money set aside for emergencies. We came by the "do with less now, to have more for later" mentality too late, as has much of the rest of the country.Betsyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06961949757283263982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-88389851719831605042011-11-04T11:51:56.495-07:002011-11-04T11:51:56.495-07:00Your post today was very interesting. I don't ...Your post today was very interesting. I don't know if you interested in hearing about what it is like to be a small family farm but I thought I would share with you. My husband and I are small farmers (in Canada). It is a struggle. My husbands family has been in dairy for what is now the third generation. However, his parents wanted to retire from it just as he finished college, and in Ontario we have a quota system, if you do not have quota you can not milk cows. Well, at that time the bank refused to give him a loan so he could take over the dairy operation, but they offered him a loan to set up a finishing operation for pigs. This makes no sense, there is far more volatility in pigs, as seen a couple of years ago when it was costing more to raise the pigs than the farmers were making. One in every five pigs farms was going bankrupt. So he had to work off the farm and save enough so that he could eventually get a loan to get into dairy. Basically with quota a simplified way of looking at it is 1 kg of quota means you can milk 1 cow. He initially purshased 10 kgs. We are now up to 16 kg and the first 10 are completely paid off. For both of us to be able to work solely on the farm we would likely need around 40 cows. And currently there is very little quota available, we bid on 1.6 kg each month (you are allowed to bid on 10% of what you have) and receive 0.1 to 0.3 kg. To put this in prespective the farmer behind us milks 600 cows, we only want 40-50. In the past few years they placed a cap on the price of quota so it is at $25,000 per kg, it had been getting up into the $30,000 range. We receive no subsidies. And the huge farms drive the land prices up so high that if we had not purshased our 50 acre farm from a family member we could never compete. The large farmer behind us has an open offer of $12,000 per acre for any land that comes up for sale around him (his farm backs ours). We could never match that, for a 100 acre farm that is $1.2 million. I will be going on maternity leave in December and will be going back to work after, but for the duration of my maternity leave (1 year here in Canada) we will be putting away his income and living on my maternity benifits and the farm so determine if it will be managable for him to work only on the farm after I go back to work. I help on the farm, but he does most of it, so currently he works from 5:30am to 8pm monday to friday and weekends are often spent doing the farm work he does not have time for during the week. Which is why we have decided that he will work on the farm upon my return to work even though he is the higher income earner. This year will be good practice for us living on a reduced income, while still having his income should it not work out. And once I return to work we will be used to living on less than I will be making.Country Ladyhttp://thisandthatcountrylife.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-62262273188047409312011-11-04T09:55:19.867-07:002011-11-04T09:55:19.867-07:00I have to apologize for the proof reading of this ...I have to apologize for the proof reading of this post. I am now seeing that it is rather hard to read, but very busy today and off to do my marketing now. I shall try to fix it later, but hope one can still get the gist of the thing with my odd un-proof read sentence structure.<br />50sgal50sgalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09250940806307766624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6960946442922071473.post-17762895089230432592011-11-04T09:48:18.915-07:002011-11-04T09:48:18.915-07:00Well, first thing first: Happy belated birthday!
...Well, first thing first: Happy belated birthday!<br /><br />Wonderful, well thought-out post here. I do love It's a Wonderful Life. The movie does seem more relevant to me now than it ever did before this whole economic mess. It makes me sick to think about it, but as you said, what can we really do? We have to keep chugging along, doing the best we can with what we've got, working and hoping for a better future.looloolooweezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285571872065043306noreply@blogger.com