Great Depression .vs. Great Recession

A queue of unemployed men stand in line at a soup kitchen in Chicago opened by Al Capone in 1931. (http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/). The Great depression that followed the Wall St Crash in 1929 was detrimental to the health of the 'Great American Society' that had attracted the vast swathes of opportunistic and optimistic European immigrants to the United States. Just ten years previous this would have been a impossibly unlikely scene; America's romp through the boom of the twenties saw capitalism and consumerism promoted as some of the most attractive (and incidentally Anti-Russian) ideals in a dominant American society.

However, The Great Depression saw American society change dramatically off the back of a catastrophic fall in employment. From 1929-1933 unemployment escalated from a modest 3% to 25%. The knock on effects were destructive: with consumerism no longer as high, companies couldn't afford to increase production so they couldn't generate significant revenue to warrant the employment of more workers. This cycle saw the unemployed 25% form a migrant population searching for work across the states, impoverished hungry and predominantly men like those in the photograph.

The photo above is a particularly powerful depiction of the realities of the Great Depression because it not only shows how numerous the most needy were - even with the restraints of the photograph you can see a line three or four deep stretching back about forty metres - but from where they received help. Al Capone is one of the most notorious gangsters in history, dominating Chicago during the prohibition period via violence and corruption and yet he set up this soup kitchen, the first of its kind, to help the most desperately impoverished Americans. The Robin hood narrative that Capone followed evidently gave hope to Americans in the Great Depression. Despite it being through a life of crime and illegality, he represented a dwindling American Dream and chose to help the less fortunate. A venture that was successful, “120 000 meals are served by Capone Free Soup Kitchen”, read the Chicago Tribune headline in December 1931.

Comparatively this second image shows a child eating at the Union Rescue Mission homeless shelter in Los Angeles. (Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters). Following the Great Recession the adult population was affected in a similar way too the depression of the 1930's. According to data from the Rockefeller Institute, twenty percent of Americans saw their available household income decline by twenty five percent or more and a report from the Population Reference Bureau showed that more than seventy percent of Americans age forty and over felt they had been affected by the economic crisis. Comparing unemployment, the same report said that long-term unemployment (joblessness lasting six months or more) is also at its highest level since the mid-1940s; suggesting that the more contemporary of the two downturns affected society in a greater way.

I believe the young girls situation indicates the effects of the 2008 recession conclusively. Despite the potential recovery of economic stability, the Great Recession of 2008 left deep scars in modern American society past the wealth and living standards of adult Americans. The fact that this young girl has to go to the homeless shelter in order to eat because her family can't afford a trip the grocery store shows how the Great Recession has negatively affected the next generation of Americans. In a recent report released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation its made clear how even years after the 2008 Recession the youth of America are still negatively affected by poverty and the disparity in wealth distribution. The report says, 16.1 million American children, that's 22%, were living in poverty in 2013. And that 80% of African American and Latino fourth graders and 78% of Native American fourth graders aren’t proficient in reading. Living in poverty piles emotional and physical stress upon multiple aspects of young lives, including education. For America to remain a world leader in industry, innovation and economic strength it must be top priority too have a next generation that is healthy and well educated. A mission which the Great Recession of 2008 directly conflicted and its repercussions continue to conflict with. With the long lasting affects of inadequate education the American Dream seems to drift further into mythology for this post-recession society.