Depression? Not even close...

Smiling faces, waiting to spend money on "Black Friday"

During the 2008 Presidential campaign words like recession and depression were thrown around, and used to get an emotional response out of voters. Before the election Barack Obama even compared the present situation to the Great Depression saying, "There are some similarities, though, to what happened back in the late 20s and early 30s and what's been happening now, and the biggest similarity is how we've been dealing with Wall Street and what's happening in the financial markets."(5/14/08, Reuters)

Barack Obama even displayed several families on his one hour media buyout special. These families were supposodly hit hard in these times, though a few of them seemed to be eating rather well- no sarcasm intended. During the election I took note of the packed shopping center parking lots, lines of people purchasing the newest iPhones, Wii game station, or big screen tvs. These were not rich people, but middle income and even, dare I say, low income families.

During the Great Depression families of five, six, and more, lived in small one bedroom apartments- and that was living high. People waited in lines for half a day or more just to get a loaf of bread and some milk. Cardboard box "towns" called hoovervilles were a common site in cities across the nation.

But on the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday as they call it, most people were not spending the day waiting in line for a loaf of bread, but rushing, literally, like herds of cattle, into shopping centers across the country- to spend money on so-called basic needs such as Nintendo games, HDTVs, cell phones, dvds, and everything in between. Are we even close to a depression? Not even in the same galaxy...