The United States has always had deep poverty relative to what it probably should be. US culture is weird. We value long, hard work as well as fortunes made ov

The United States has always had deep poverty relative to what it probably should be. US culture is weird. We value long, hard work as well as fortunes made overnight in dubious, speculative fields. Combined, this leads to a significant percentage of the population working hard, expecting their reward to come, not bothered by current circumstances. Obviously there are religious overtones here, like something out of the Middle Ages that kept the serfs in line. If you look at accounts of the Depression, such as Stud Terkel’s excellent “Hard Times” oral history, people remark about how passive America seemed, how in the face of grinding poverty, the rebellions and revolutions the intellectuals all forecasted never came to past.