In a way, I lived through a similar thing in a post-soviet country. Pre-1990 it was illegal, to be unemployed. But on the other hand people got a guaranteed job

In a way, I lived through a similar thing in a post-soviet country. Pre-1990 it was illegal, to be unemployed. But on the other hand people got a guaranteed job if they wanted to work. Sure it was in most cases a meaningless job, but a job nevertheless. Somehow that part of the world seems to have avoided this phenomenon. Maybe because it was a big political/external change (the collapse of the soviet union), so people found it easier to cope with it.