World-System (1900-1950) World In Depression

  Our current approach to Economic Policy is based on our understanding of the  Great Depression . Google Gemini notes that: I will argue that, as a major Economic System Failure , we have mostly not studied the period from the perspective of Systems Theory , starting with the definition (the graphic above provides a concise summary of our misconceptions). The Great Depression has been studied so much that the definition might seem obvious. Here's Google AI's statement: Hidden in the definition are a number of assumptions about economic performance during the Early 20th Century. I'll dig into these issues in this post. The graphic at the beginning of this post shows US GNP for the period 1900 to 1950. First, imagine that you were standing at the start of the 20th Century before WWI . What would you have predicted? Could you have predicted  WWI ? Here's Google AI's statement: For the moment, assume you could not predict WWI and were using data from 1900-1915. No...

  I had wanted to study the Great Depression as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1970's. My pitch was that the Great Depression was a "Systemic Event" and therefore should be studied from the perspective of Systems Theory . I received two responses: (1)  Systems Theory  had a "bad reputation" in the Social Sciences and (2) the    Great Depression  was a topic reserved for elder statesmen in Economics and was not appropriate for a graduate student. I went on to apply  Systems Theory   to Late Nineteenth Century Development in Germany and emphasized the systemic issue of Stability . Today, I am at the end of my career, I'm still interested in the Great Depression and I don't need anyone's approval to study it. What I have found is that there is really no consistent theory of Great Depressions and that Systems Theory in the Social Sciences is, unfortunately, poorly defined (it is clearly defined in Environm...

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