This sounds like hammers looking for nails, too. I don't see how swelling the ranks of communists (which then unswelled a couple decades later) or unions has an

This sounds like hammers looking for nails, too. I don't see how swelling the ranks of communists (which then unswelled a couple decades later) or unions has anything to do with inequality being the correct cause for OP's complaints about things getting worse. I'll agree with you that inequality and poverty fueling two things designed to deal with inequality and poverty (socialist/communist political thought and unions), but I think that's sort of a tautology. Now if you think swelling ranks of communists would be making the world worse than before, I'd agree with you, having lived in China and seeing how the communist governments have turned out... Regarding the Great Depression, though, the generally accepted cause are generally seen as monetary policy failures and/or the effects of deflation [1]. Of course Marxists see the cause being inequality, but this is looking for nails for your hammer: Marxists only have one note in their song. You'd think that if inequality played a large part in causing the Great Depression, that there would be a fair number of economists--whose job it is to figure out why the economy does what it does--who would agree with that view. But they don't. Calling the Greatest Generation as growing out of Marxists talking points is just ... well, I guess if you think that socialists, communists, unionists, collectivists, New Deal people are heroes, you might think it was a great generation, but I've never heard the term "Greatest Generation" as referring to anything of the sort. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression#Causes