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by weehoo 1901 days ago
Skid is another word for shipping pallet and it’s called skid row because it’s next to the freight train lines into downtown. Pallets would get stacked high along the streets, hence skid row. There are plenty of cities across America with their own area called skid row. The name has nothing to do with the current homeless population.

It is common for poor industrial areas to end up with large transient populations, but that’s a case of convergent evolution.
2 comments
asdff 1901 days ago
It's not named after homeless people, I'm saying the character of the place has been the same since like the 1890s. That part of town has always been full of transient and destitute people no matter the flavor of local government, is the point I was trying to make. The OP comment was implying some false correlation between homelessness and progressive government. Lest we forget it was progressive government initiatives that ended the great depression and both peace and wartime public works projects, not private corporations, that finally got people back to work decades ago.
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WalterBright 1900 days ago
That is indeed the progressive interpretation of those events. The other interpretation is FDR's progressive policies extended the Depression into by far the longest in US history.

The banking runs were caused by the fixed exchange rate between gold and fiat money - in 1929 one could double one's wealth by buying gold from banks at the official exchange rate. This naturally caused endless runs until the banks either collapsed or FDR (correctly) suspended such sales. The banks remained crippled for lack of money because the Federal Reserve Bank (not a free market bank) failed to understand what the problem was.

The country came out of the Depression late in the 30's because of vast quantities of money flowing into the country from foreign countries buying arms.

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reducesuffering 1901 days ago
If you're going to correct someone, isn't it worth spending just a few minutes doing due diligence? Skid row comes from logging roads where the logs were skidded down the road.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_row

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