Great Depression Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====Inequality==== [[File:Tenantless farm Texas panhandle 1938.jpg|thumb|[[Mechanised agriculture|Power farming]] displaces tenants from the land in the western dry cotton area. [[Childress County, Texas]], 1938.]] Two economists of the 1920s, [[Waddill Catchings]] and [[William Trufant Foster]], popularized a theory that influenced many policy makers, including [[Herbert Hoover]], [[Henry A. Wallace]], [[Paul Douglas]], and [[Marriner Eccles]]. It held the economy produced more than it consumed, because the consumers did not have enough income. Thus the unequal [[distribution of wealth]] throughout the 1920s caused the Great Depression.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Joseph.|first=Dorfman|url=https://worldcat.org/oclc/71400420|title=The economic mind in American civilization.|date=1959|publisher=The Viking Press|oclc=71400420|access-date=February 18, 2022|archive-date=February 18, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220218125334/https://www.worldcat.org/title/economic-mind-in-american-civilization-vol-5-1918-1933/oclc/71400420|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Allgoewer">{{cite journal|last=Allgoewer|first=Elisabeth|date=May 2002|title=Underconsumption theories and Keynesian economics. Interpretations of the Great Depression|journal=Discussion Paper No. 2002β14|url=https://www.vwa.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2002/dp0214allgoewer_ganz.pdf|access-date=February 18, 2022|archive-date=March 4, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304134117/http://www1.vwa.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2002/dp0214allgoewer_ganz.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> According to this view, the root cause of the Great Depression was a global over-investment in heavy industry capacity compared to wages and earnings from independent businesses, such as farms. The proposed solution was for the government to pump money into the consumers' pockets. That is, it must redistribute purchasing power, maintaining the industrial base, and re-inflating prices and wages to force as much of the inflationary increase in purchasing power into [[consumer spending]]. The economy was overbuilt, and new factories were not needed. Foster and Catchings recommended<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Foster|first1=William Trufant|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BDNBAAAAIAAJ|title=The Road to Plenty|last2=Catchings|first2=Waddill|date=1928|publisher=Houghton Mifflin|language=en|access-date=December 28, 2021|archive-date=February 18, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220218125332/https://books.google.com/books?id=BDNBAAAAIAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> federal and state governments to start large construction projects, a program followed by Hoover and Roosevelt. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page