How Did America's Greed Lead To Poverty

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Quincy Terrell Mrs. Stevens English III 10 December 2010 American’s Greed Leads to Poverty Republican nominee Herbert Hoover shared some hopeful words with Americans in 1928. He said that the day was in sight “when poverty will be banished from this nation.” This turned out to be was wishful thinking. One percent of the richest families in America during this time received one fourth of all U.S. income (Brinkley2). Buying stocks on margin became very popular during the 1920s. People began to abuse this system to invest huge amounts of imaginary money that only existed on paper, which back fired when the prices of stocks began to fall and they did not have money to pay for the stocks purchased (Lonkevich4). In years leading up to the…show more content…
The Great Depression was a severe period of poverty and tragedy. It effected many other countries not just America; especially in Europe, where many countries had not fully recovered from the aftermath of World War I. The cost of World War I weakened the ability of the world to respond to a major crisis. America alone had ten billon dollars of debt from the war. In Germany America’s economic failure contributed to the rise of Adolf Hiltler, so the Stock Market Crash had a domino effect on our country and others. In America there were 16 million unemployed, which was about one third of the available labor force (Livingston1). There was some companies that faired well through-out this gloom; Camel Cigarettes was the top selling tobacco product. The reasoning for that is people were stressed out and felt that cigarettes relived…show more content…
This means that the prices for stock were too high, far higher than they were really worth, then they fell drastically. People who had borrowed money to buy high-priced stocks (intending to sell the stocks at a profit and repay lenders), went bankrupt. That’s further expounding on what I said about buying on margin. Black Tuesday also marks the beginning of the great depression (Regan3). Living conditions during this time were unsanitary and horrible. Jimmy Carter gives examples of his family’s living conditions in “An Hour before Daylight”; he says "We had practically no cash, no electricity, and no running water”. He compares it to the time of Jesus and Moses. Vadis Walters remembers living in a shack with a dirt floor and a leaky
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