If you don't have any money, that is your problem and can only be remedied by you. To believe in anything else is to believe that all of us must be enslaved to the worst of us.
People are fundamentally and inherently different. Not everyone can be wealthy or successful...or rational and clever. When times are really hard, like during the depression, great numbers of people are really poor.
Last time I checked, the Great Depression was a historical oddity. Besides, I knew a lot of people who lived through it, and they didn't find it nearly as bad as its hype. Back then, people didn't have Tom, Peter, and Dan to tell them how miserable they were.
But slightly higher unemployment rates do not mean that everyone is suddenly poor. And among those that do lose their jobs, prioritizing and rational decisions make a huge difference in how long they are out of work and how miserable they are when they are out of work.
The really telling thing is the fact that the people you champion are miserable no matter how good the economy is. The problem is with them, not the rest of us.
Recognition of our limited powers and our responsibility to others has been with us for a long time. It is at the heart of most major religions.
To believe in anything else is to believe that all of us must be enslaved to the worst of us
That's a really pejorative way of characterizing a basic truth. The poor, the weak, the stupid, the ugly, the criminal, the failed are always with us...unless we decide to kill them en masse.
Great Depressions don't happen very often. I only used that to illustrate a point; our powers are limited. we can all be overwhelmed by larger forces. The story of Job.
they didn't find it nearly as bad as its hype
Many didn't. Only 25% were unemployed. 75% were employed. If you owned a farm and weren't indebted to banks you might not even have noticed it. It was much less severe on the West coast than on the East coast. Among many there was a great feeling of camraderie and a great willingness to help. And so on.
But great numbers did suffer. Enough so that the stability of the society was endangered. In fact WWII was a direct result of a world-wide inability to relieve that suffering.
The really telling thing is the fact that the people you champion are miserable no matter how good the economy is. The problem is with them, not the rest of us.
No question there are people who are miserable no matter their station in life, people who cannot benefit from opportunity, people who are beyond help. But it's outlandish to say that programs like the GI bill or the Marshall plan didn't make a great difference, that they didn't have positive effects on the lives of great numbers of people and the societies in which they lived.