My stock-market loss: $0
That, of course, is because I don't have anything in the stock market. You can't lose if you don't play.

Learned recently that according to the latest numbers, the unemployment rate in my semi-affluent suburb is 10.9 percent. That's probably low; many of my neighbors recently laid off from nearby high-tech and telecom firms received decent severance packages and haven't yet filed for unemployment. And it's going to rise, courtesy of the latest corporate explosion at WorldCom.

On either side of my house live men who work for a large telecommunications firm. Well, one of them worked there. He was laid off in March after 13 years. He got six months severance and free use of an outplacement service. Job offers he has received so far: 0. The guy on the other side still works for the company, but he knows his days are numbered. He's doing every conceivable home-improvement project and taking his family on vacation now, while the money's still coming in.

I have few personal worries about the economic downturn. I work in a dying industry, but it's stable, and it's not going away anytime soon. I'm reasonably valuable to my company; not so much in my current position, perhaps, but I have skills the company can use.

I do have serious concerns about the general state of the economy, and wonder how my generation will handle its version of the Great Depression.

I am not prepared to not have a job. I have no savings to speak of, not much in the way of formal education, and few skills outside those required for my current job. Except for the formal education part, I'm pretty similar to most people I know in my age group.

I don't have a lot of experience with "economic downturn," at least not from an adult perspective. I was a child during the recession years of the '70s and early '80s. I never had to consider an 18% home loan. The worst I've had to deal with, so far, is joining all my co-workers in not getting a raise for 2001, but even that was OK; thanks to a promotion, I got two raises in 2000.

But that doesn't make me immune from general worry. What I know of the 1930s is what I've read and what I've heard of my grandparents. What I've read and heard is that it was an awful, awful time in our history. It was every man for himself, and it took the deaths of 50,000 or so people in a Big War to pull us out of it. The people who had, in many cases, took an active role to make sure the people who didn't have didn't get any of theirs. Business resisted regulation on the grounds that such regulation was anti-capitalist. "Red." It's a wonder Communism didn't take a foothold in the United States by 1939, and World War II was probably the only thing that kept it from happening.

Historians will tell you that the Great Depression was necessary to force American society to take the final steps from being largely agrarian to being largely industrial. I will tell you that I'm damn glad I wasn't alive then.

In 2002, corporate executives have little incentive to not lie, cheat, steal and get as much for themselves as possible. When their companies go down, they're still going to have theirs. They're unemployed with millions stashed away. They're not unemployed, trying to figure out how to live without a $54K a year salary and with a worthless 401(k). That's not to say I think we shouldn't get as much as we can for ourselves. I just wonder if our society has any checks in place to keep one from getting as much as he can at the incredible expense of others.

The others fought back in Russia in 1917 behind Vladimir Lenin. The others fought back in Detroit in the late '30s behind Walter Reuther. I wonder who's going to rally the people this time, and where that rally will lead us.