The Great Recession - What does the worst recession in a generation look like?

In the long run, this Great Recession may end up afflicting the comfortable more than the afflicted.

Education — is the most important of all. It can make the pie larger and divide it more evenly.

That was the legacy of the great surge in school enrollment during the Great Depression. Teenagers who once would have dropped out to do factory work instead stayed in high school, notes Claudia Goldin, an economist who recently wrote a history of education with Mr. Katz.

NVDL: I read an interesting article which showed which companies came into being during economically difficult periods, including the Great Depression, and the fuel price spike of the 1970's. They included the likes of General Electric, FEDEX, HP - Microsoft started during a recession... However this recession/depression is different in that it entails a PERMANENT contraction, because energy resources are depleting (energy supply is contracting). There will be opportunities to thrive, and to survive, but many more to fail and die.

clipped from www.nytimes.com It is both deep and broad. Every state in the country, with the exception of a band stretching from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace. And even that band has recently begun to suffer, because of the sharp fall in both oil and crop prices. Unlike the last two recessions — earlier this decade and in the early 1990s — this one is causing much more job loss among the less educated than among college graduates. Those earlier recessions introduced the country to the concept of mass white-collar layoffs. The brunt of the layoffs in this recession is falling on construction workers, hotel workers, retail workers and others without a four-year degree. The Great Recession of 2008 (and beyond) is hurting men more than women. It is hurting homeowners and investors more than renters or retirees who rely on Social Security checks. It is hurting Latinos more than any other ethnic group.