Tony Dokoupil

RBG

March 28, 2020

-Tony Dokoupil, CBS This Morning co-host

In 2009, I interviewed Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the “upsides” of the Great Depression, which got me mocked on Gawker. (Deserved it.) It was part of a series with people who lived through the Depression and it got burned off the web in the many fires of Newsweek’s demise.But I found the original text in an old email this morning and as we confront another hard time, I thought this passage from Justice Ginsburg was especially worth bearing in mind:

“I can’t say that I knew about the breadlines. But as an adult I found it hard to understand why a country with our resources had such great discrepancies between the rich and poor. Fortunately, there has been significant change in that regard…

“Today we would never allow what happened during the Depression to happen again—we would never just leave people totally without resources…”

“We have the Depression to thank for that. It helped the country accept what our European allies had long understood: that the poor were the responsibility of the whole community…

“Social security, unemployment benefits, FDIC-such programs never would have passed without the Depression. They would have been called Socialist. So, yes, I think the Depression left the country better off.”

Imagine that.