[carver]

Happiness is a state of mind! I grew up on welfare, so I know what it's like to be poor, and that is not what I am. I don't own an X Box, a big screen TV, or a lot of the things mentioned in the article. These people are trying to create a measuring stick, and that stick will be used against the people of the U.S.

The Great Depression is often called a “defining moment” in the twentieth-century history of the United States. Its most lasting effect was a transformation of the role of the federal government in the economy. The long contraction and painfully slow recovery led many in the American population to accept and even call for a vastly expanded role for government, though most businesses resented the growing federal control of their activities. The federal government took over responsibility for the elderly population with the creation of Social Security and gave the involuntarily unemployed unemployment compensation. The Wagner Act dramatically changed labor negotiations between employers and employees by promoting unions and acting as an arbiter to ensure “fair” labor contract negotiations. All of this required an increase in the size of the federal government. During the 1920s, there were, on average, about 553,000 paid civilian employees of the federal government. By 1939 there were 953,891 paid civilian employees, and there were 1,042,420 in 1940. In 1928 and 1929, federal receipts on the administrative budget (the administrative budget excludes any amounts received for or spent from trust funds and any amounts borrowed or used to pay down the debt) averaged 3.80 percent of GNP while expenditures averaged 3.04 percent of GNP. In 1939, federal receipts were 5.50 percent of GNP, while federal expenditures had tripled to 9.77 percent of GNP. These figures provide an indication of the vast expansion of the federal government’s role during the depressed 1930s.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GreatDepression.html