[jkyle]

Or they starved to death. With their kids. Or they started selling themselves or their children to get by.

If you go back a little further than 100 years (in the U.S. anyway). They were also relatively likely to get together a bunch of folks with guns and weapons and murder men, women, and children and take their land to make their own.

I'm not sure the hutzpa of 100 and 200 years ago is exactly what we should aspire to.

[trgn]

It's gotten harder to be both poor and self-sufficient. There was rampant poverty in the olden days, but you could be a lot more resourceful when you were a poor farmer in the Piedmont 60 years ago, than when you're a poor service worker in suburban Atlanta today.