I live firmly in a middle class area. I have no idea how it went for the impoverished. What I saw in 2008 was: - coworkers getting laid off en masse. no jobs

I live firmly in a middle class area. I have no idea how it went for the impoverished. What I saw in 2008 was: - coworkers getting laid off en masse. no jobs waiting for them. good people with families. - the housing market crashing bad and foreclosure signs everywhere. normal people, not just people spending over their means. - those unsold/foreclosed on houses eventually started to rot and get overtaken by tall weeds, making things look like The Walking Dead. Actually, it made me notice that lawns were being cut in TWD, because IRL, unkept lawns were a lot worse than what was on the show. - thieves started stripping the metal off of whatever they could. You'd see houses and other equipment missing lengths of metal or cabling.