The point of the article, life goes on even in a depression, is indisputable. However, I was thinking about the differences then and now. One conclusion I reach

The point of the article, life goes on even in a depression, is indisputable. However, I was thinking about the differences then and now. One conclusion I reached was that an economic depression is like a giant step backwards in terms of opportunities to get ahead, standard of living, etc. So for the sake of argument, say a Great Depression knocks you back 15-20%. What I realized was that a crash in 1929 pushed a significant number of people into actual subsistence poverty (not the modern Marxist definition of 75% less than others). The US was just barely out of an agricultural based economy in 1929. Today a 15-20% setback puts us back, on average, to sometime in the '80s. So the consequences today are not as severe as they were in 29.