[GH85Carrera]

I think what really makes the depression of the 30s and 40s different from today's economic problems is there was no government welfare or food stamps. If you did not work you went hungry. Sure there were soup lines in the big city but the rural areas it was work or starve and the work was very hard to find.

I think of my wife's grandparents. They got married in 1929. They moved to a very rural part of Oklahoma and with money they had saved and wedding gift money they bought a land in the middle of nowhere. They raised 4 boys with no electricity. Going into town was a all day ordeal. They cleared the rocks and put up fences and made a farm, built a house and a barn and made a living. Now imagine 1930s dust bowl Oklahoma. It was the hottest and driest period on record. The wimps packed up and moved to California. They stuck it out and survived with no government handouts.

I have been very lucky and never had to face those hardships.

I have never received one penny of any type of government assistance. I just pay a lot of money in taxes. I receive the benefits of a strong US military and government funded roads and infrastructure and other government services but everyone alive in the country gets those as well. Even if they have never worked a day in their life.