So if you have a place to live, and food to eat, and crime is kept down to a dull roar like usual, this is the bottom line for a “severe depression”.
And what does it have against it?
A population conditioned to expect government help
MASSIVE entitlement mentality from the majority of the population
Lack of moral fortitude that used to be present in America
A full blown communist as a president
A full up gun grabbing AG. Civil Unrest ... turn in your "assault weapons" ... POOF
That's the spark on the powderkeg.
This isn't your great grandpa's Depression. This will be MUCH worse.
You forgot smoldering race hatred, that has been fomented for several decades.
A lot of the problems you mention solve themselves. If they are out in the desert, with an empty canteen, most people will quickly realize that nothing is going to happen if they yell at it, “I want water!!!”
The same applies to government largesse. Sure a lot of people will be royally po’ed when Washington turns out its pockets and says “no money left”, but it will be a statement of fact. People can be angry at their boss as well, when they are fired because the business has gone out of business. It achieves nothing.
And don’t be too dismayed by America’s modern lack of moral fortitude. From 1900 to the 1920s, a lot of Americans were sympathetic to anarchists and communists. Eugene V. Debs got a hefty chunk of the votes. Woodrow Wilson restarted the KKK, while his own parties’ far left was horribly screwing up Washington.
Over 100,000 Americans fled the Great Depression to move to Russia. The Russians did us a favor by making most of them slaves or outright killing them.
Then in the 1930s and 1940s, “Ol’ Frank” just used the constitution as toilet paper, lifting hefty chunks of the new deal from European fascists. The left was in love with Hitler and Mussolini and Franco before they hated them. The far left hated Hitler, then loved Hitler when he signed a treaty with Stalin, then hated Hitler when he attacked Russia.
What moral fortitude America had, we still have. We just haven’t needed it as much, lately.
Oh, I’ve no doubt that Obama and his crew are going to be annoying as all hell. But most of the military are Republicans, most of the police in the US are generally conservative, and most of Obama’s allies are lily livered, divisive and petty.
Obama will probably go down in history as having gone down. Like Carter or Clinton, but less effective. That doesn’t mean that the depression is going to hurt any the less, just that there probably isn’t going to be a major crisis unless people are homeless and starving, which even Obama should be able to handle.