If a Great Depression happened again, would people still stand together like they did during the penny auctions?

https://lemmy.ca/post/54240371

Nope. There's no solidarity in America anymore.
Theres nothing like a Great Depression to rally the troops.

This one’s going down as The Great Desolation —so, not likely, no.

(Suck it, Smaug, you whiny pile of plot hinge.)

Had to look that up as I have never read the The Hobbit. Over my head.

The GD had a somewhat clear culprit. It didn't hang on half the country voting in the cunt who ended up causing the recession, there was a very distinct group that was removed enough from the average people so they could cooperate.

Today? MAGA is solely responsible for this crash, and the whole country knows it. Anyone left of MAGA, who didn't vote for the orange clown, will NOT help MAGA. Those who cooked the stew shall eat it, and all. And I can't say it won't be deserved.

The GD had a somewhat clear culprit

Do you have a source for your claim? I just happened to study this as an economics/history undergrad. There’s a lot of disagreement.

At the time, "everyone knew" that it was the speculators on Wall Street who've caused it.

Now, how much truth is there to that - when in reality we know that a bunch of things contributed in a major way, like the Smoot-Hawley tariff (doesn't that sound familiar?), gold standard policy fuckery, and so on - doesn't matter. What matters from this perspective is that the people at the time didn't blame each other. There wasn't really a major political division that could or would be blamed.

This is a stark contrast with today's situation where 1/3 to 2/3 of the country is directly responsible for electing the orange turdsack who caused the crash (depending on if you blame those who didn't bother to vote).

gold standard policy fuckery

short explanation for anyone who hasn’t studied it, there were massive arbitrage opportunites using gold. i can’t remember the specific countries involved in the trade strategy, but the US and another country (the example i use is Britain but again, i studied this 20 years ago. some details are fuzzy) had their currency at a legally mandated fixed exchange rate. example out of my ass, 1 US dollar was tradable for 2 british pounds. Each country also had the exchange rate between gold and their currency fixed by legal mandate. One country changed their currency:precious metal exchange rate (i can’t remember if they went from gold standard to silver standard or just changed the gold rate). Since their currencies were fixed in relation to each other, gold was cheaper in one country than the other by their own law. As a result, gold (and thus the backing for the currency supply) drained out of the US severely constricting the money supply, severely exacerbating any existing recession. And, since the prices were legal mandates and not responsive to market conditions, the arbitrage opportunity would only end when the law changed or the entire national economy collapsed.