America's Contribution To The Great Depression

The 1920s were prosperous years for America. The economy had been in good shape since the beginning of industrialization, which took place at the end of the 19th century. Life seemed to be great to the ordinary person, but in toward the end of the “Roaring 20’s”, America started to go downhill. America entered the Great Depression, and this was a time of poverty and helplessness. Many believe that the stock market crash of 1929 is the main contributor to this depression. While this may have triggered economic turmoil, it is not the only factor that caused the Great Depression. Many other economical predicaments happened that aided to the thought of a Depression coming about in America. Uneven distribution of income is one of many economic indicators that caused the suspension of a Depression approaching during the prosperous years of the 1920s. The payment of employees had hardly risen; however, the productivity of goods increased greatly, as well as business profits. Therefor, “Economic success was not shared by all, as the top 5 percent of the riches Americans received over 33 percent of all income” (Newnan and Schmalbach 2015, 497). With this being said, it is easy to see how one could look at the big picture and see only good things happening for businesses, but if one were to dig deeper into research, they would find out that …show more content…
Things like overproduction of consumer goods, government policies, and global problems also could have made people see what was about to happen. The Great Depression affected almost all Americans, and was a horrible time in history. These things could have predicted the Great Depression before it started, but I do not believe that acknowledging them before hand would have stopped it from happening. Nevertheless, there were plenty of economic indicators that a Depression might have been coming during the great prosperity of the