No Great Depression, Run The Table.

And by 'Run The Table,' I mean a very optimistic wank in which things go exceptionally well. For starters, cure progeria by 1965.

Okay, so how is the great depression sidestepped and where do things go from there?

The biggest PoD is avoid WWI. Without WWI and US involvement the US wouldn't be suffering from overproduction, industrially and Agriculturally.

But with a PoD after WWI, all you can really do is make the depression less devastating. The US was going to have a downturn. By 1929 the only thing propping up the economy at this point was speculation on Wall Street. Once that goes, there goes the neighborhood.

I think I'd like to have POD(s) starting 1919. You still have the same disastrous Treaty of Versailles, but over time it's modified.

And the waves of influenza pandemic in 1918-19 highly motivates medical research.

Have the U.S. forgive British & French war debt?

And what about even bigger spending by a Democratic PotUS in '32-40?

And look at the potential upside! The rise of the Nazi party needed both the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression, as well as quite a bit of 'good' luck along the way. If the depression is a smaller blip and more quickly recovered from, this small little dopesville party with a bellicose leader never comes within a country mile of gaining real political power. And in various dystopian timelines where it does, people are likely to call ASB.

And furthermore, the First World War with the prior shifting alliances and the whole tinderbox, that was the one which was difficult to prevent. WWII seems like the easier one to prevent.

Kill Hawley-Smoot for starters, and the ensuing wave of protectionism around the world. That alone might have resulted in "the slump of '29" rather than the GD.

What about modifying the climate so that the American Great Plains get sufficient rainfall to avoid the Dust Bowl?
Yes, I know that part of the problem was farmers expanding into marginal lands during damp years, lands that were not arable in the long-run.

Sorry, economic downturns can be delayed slightly, not stopped. People are always stupid about their Dutch Tulips of the day.

And taking the sting out of it - the right regulations, Keynesiasm and Monetarism, and
wasn't understood until after the Depression.

And OTL. FDR and Congress did enough spending to support all the allies. And it worked, along with the rest of the world's war spending, to end the Depression.

Geekhis Khan said:

Kill Hawley-Smoot for starters, and the ensuing wave of protectionism around the world. That alone might have resulted in "the slump of '29" rather than the GD.

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If you or anyone else can provide some details, I'd appreciate it. I'm assuming this trade protectionism contributed to a downward spiral at the very time we needed an upward spiral.

GeographyDude said:

If you or anyone else can provide some details, I'd appreciate it. I'm assuming this trade protectionism contributed to a downward spiral at the very time we needed an upward spiral.

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Read all about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot–Hawley_Tariff_Act

While economists obviously don't all share the same opinions even about quantifiable historical facts (and economics debates are often flame-bait), from what I (disclaimer: not an economist or economic historian) have always been taught the H-S tariffs are often singled out as a major contributor to the worldwide spiral. To quote Bernanke: "Economists still agree that Smoot–Hawley and the ensuing tariff wars were highly counterproductive and contributed to the depth and length of the global Depression." How much so is, of course, the source of much continuing debate, which in my experience typically speak more to modern economic arguments than to actual historical fact.

Geekhis Khan said:

Read all about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot–Hawley_Tariff_Act

While economists obviously don't all share the same opinions even about quantifiable historical facts (and economics debates are often flame-bait), from what I (disclaimer: not an economist or economic historian) have always been taught the H-S tariffs are often singled out as a major contributor to the worldwide spiral. To quote Bernanke: "Economists still agree that Smoot–Hawley and the ensuing tariff wars were highly counterproductive and contributed to the depth and length of the global Depression." How much so is, of course, the source of much continuing debate, which in my experience typically speak more to modern economic arguments than to actual historical fact.

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It's questionable how much Smoot-Hawley contributed to the Great Depression seeing as the British were on the Imperial Preference system before Smoot-Hawley and the US, as of 1929, did not depend heavily on exports or imports so much as the internal domestic market. The bigger issue was the drying up of credit in the wake of the stock market crash and massive overleveraging of debt in France, Germany, and other regions dependent on postwar American loans. Taking Smoot-Hawley off the table won't stop the credit crunch especially since most of the world was still trying to operate off the gold standard up until Roosevelt froze the price of gold, greatly limiting what central banks could and could not do with the money supply. The Dust Bowl did more economic damage, IMO, than Smoot-Hawley.

The problem I have with wikipedia is that one person writes something with a reference, and then three other people re-write it.

And in general the focus seems to be on the formality of the writing, and not necessarily on the accuracy of the information.

GeographyDude said:

The problem I have with wikipedia is that one person writes something with a reference, and then three other people re-write it.

And in general the focus seems to be on the formality of the writing, and not necessarily on the accuracy of the information.

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This is all too true. Wikipedia is a good start for information but I would never depend on it to be totally accurate even with regards to summations. It has IMHO degenerated from caring about what is accurate to what a clueless editorship views as popular.

For example the WWII article starts "World War II (WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War (after the recent Great War), was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945" enough though other reliable sources date the conflict as early as 1931. Prelude to War (1942) expressly states "remember that date: Sept 18, 1931 a date you should remember as well as Dec 7, 1941. For on that date in 1931 the war we are now fighting begun." and yet efforts to get this reliable contemporary (to WWII) source with more recent works varifying it as still accurate into the WWII article were crushed.

Theses sources have been ignored in the WWII article regarding the war starting in 1931:

Cheng, Chu-chueh (2010) The Margin Without Centre: Kazuo Ishiguro Peter Lang Page 116

Ghuhl, Wernar (2007) Imperial Japan's World War Two Transaction Publishers pg 7

Polmar, Norman; Thomas B. Allen (1991) World War II: America at war, 1941-1945 ISBN-13: 978-0394585307

Spencer C. Tucker (23 December 2009). A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East. ABC-CLIO. p. 1850. ISBN 978-1-85109-672-5.

Mike Wright (21 January 2009). What They Didn't Teach You About World War II. Random House Digital, Inc. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-307-54916-7.

See the archive for how reliable sources are ignored

All these publisher's sources stating that 1931 was the start of WWII have been ignored:

Enslow Publishers, - "publishes high-quality educational fiction and nonfiction books for children and young adults in grades Pre-K, and K-12."
University Press of Kentucky - nuff said

Peter Lang - "international academic publisher"

Transaction Publishers - "major independent publisher of social science books and eBooks on political science, economics, history, sociology, psychology..."

ABC-CLIO - "publisher of reference works for the study of history and social studies in academic, secondary school, and public library settings."
Special Service Division Army Services Forces with cooperation with the US Army Signal Corps by the United States Government (1942) United State Holocaust Memorial Museum (present day)

Wikipedia has become a bad joke.

American Trade Policy: 1923-1995, Edward S. Kaplan, 1996.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=Q9...CD4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q="hawley smoot"&f=false

"The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 was mostly the outcome of the post-World War I agricultural recession. In the political campaign of 1928, Hoover stressed the importance of the protective tariff as an aid to agriculture and promised, if elected, to revise the tariff to help the farmer. After Hoover's victory in November 1928, farm groups throughout the Middle West demanded that the new president call a special session of Congress to revise agricultural duties upward. . . "

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So, it sounds like this thing was in the works well before the stock market crash.

Maximara said:

Prelude to War (1942) expressly states "remember that date: Sept 18, 1931 a date you should remember as well as Dec 7, 1941. For on that date in 1931 the war we are now fighting begun." and yet efforts to get this reliable contempoary (to WWII) source into the WWII article were crushed

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And I'd say one of the criteria of a good encyclopedia is how fairly it presents controversies within a field.

The Depression was already Great before Smoot-Hawley was passed.

The key factors that drove the Depression were 1) massive credit overleveraging 2) debt deflation spiral and 3) collapsing aggregate demand.

Trade barriers only relate, and weakly, to the third. They're not going to help certainly, but the real driving factors were already lined up for a major collapse.

In particular, with the prevailing political orthodoxy, and the economic science of today, there is very little governments could have done to head off those crises or even mitigate their effects.

Maximara said:

This is all too true. Wikipedia is a good start for information but I would never depend on it to be totally accurate even with regards to summations. It has IMHO degenerated from caring about what is accurate to what a clueless editorship views as popular.

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If you actually read more than the first sentence on the page your criticize, you'll note that Wikipedia has an entire section of that page devoted to talking about when the war begins, which includes talking about the proposed 1931 start date. The opening paragraph is supposed to be concise, so it uses the most commonly accepted start date to avoid taking up three paragraphs by explaining the various proposals that the start date be 1931, 1935, 1937, 1939, and 1941.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II#Chronology

Next time, actually read something before you criticize it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

Just in the first paragraph:

"though related conflicts began earlier" Well, that kind of begs the question, doesn't it?

"involved the vast majority of the world's nations" How involved were most non-European countries, really, in substance?

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And is Wikipedia like a modern-day General Motors, or IBM, or Microsoft where we aren't allowed to criticize the organization?

GeographyDude said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

Just in the first paragraph:

"though related conflicts began earlier" Well, that kind of begs the question, doesn't it?

"involved the vast majority of the world's nations" How involved were most non-European countries, really, in substance?

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At that point, all of Africa and much of Asia was colonized by the Europeans, so they indeed were involved. Now, I suppose much of traditional history has whitewashed the contributions of Latin America and of the non-Europeans in the colonies from the story, but they did contribute:

Dark Green: Allies before Pearl Harbor
Light Green: Allies after Pearl Harbor
Blue: Axis
Grey: Neutral

The Expanded Homestead Act of 1909 might have been written to require the improvements be "not contrary to the nature of the land under improvement," which would mean no crop farming. The area was wonderful pastureland, so maybe a lot of ranches and dairy farms. The overuse of credit was a big factor, but the Dust Bowl just made things worse. A lot worse. Go watch Grapes of Wrath, then bear in mind that the film was much softer than the novel, and the novel softer than reality. Preventing the collapse of most of the Midwest will help prevent or at least ease the Great Depression. Some kind of economic downturn was inevitable; the Great Depression was not.