Originally Posted by
MickAK
If I remember correctly, the last Great Depression is what started the panoply of government benefits and social services, instead of cutting them to the bone. Something about a Deal, or something.
If you do the math, if all the consumers in the country were scrimping and saving and driving 22 year old shitboxes to save for retirement, the economy would completely collapse. It's fun to bitch at the improvident, but at a certain point you have to look at the underlying bones of the system and realize they're growing rotten.
People like to fantasize about watching the grasshopper starve in the winter because they're the ant, but I don't think very many people actually have the stomach to watch people starve or freeze to death anymore. I don't think people ever really did, hence why slums exist and banishment was a thing. Humans are pretty empathetic creatures on the whole.