(FB 1546445205 Timestamp)
Fascinating how the depression affected families differently. My mother’s (French) lived in a large custom built home on a huge farm, with typical parlor, living room, dining, kitchen, porches, and four or five bedrooms. But they were devastated by the depression, and despite the number of lawyers and professors on my mother’s side I’m not sure they’ve yet recovered. On my father’s side they were business owners and during the depression bought vast tracks of land at rock bottom prices – and frankly lived off the incremental sale of that land as well as their inheritances – until my father’s generation they kept the original investments and did not draw upon them. This is how intergenerational families are created – demand for behavior driven by demand for inheritance of not only wealth but opportunity and prestige. However, through the excessive inflation that wealth (which was rather absurd at the in the early 20th century) it was obvious to my by the 80’s that it is nearly impossible to hold wealth between generations at these rates of inflation, unless it is in land (really: proximity to discounted opportunity costs) that has some chance of appreciating. That said my father’s people are businesspeople independent of land and soldiers and a few politicians, while my mother’s people are business people dependent upon land, with politicians, and lawyers, and academics. What has happened to both sides of the family is that they have been taxed and conquered through immigration, while the only people that profit from taxation and immigration are the financial sector and the state.