[devonkim]

Literally repeating past failures (and successes!) is rare throughout history so direct comparisons are not necessarily going to be useful for determining likelihoods of future events.

In modern America, we don’t have food shortages but we do have housing shortages resulting in high living costs, different health problems than the early 20th century folks, lack of jobs for the lesser / inappropriately educated, high consumer debt, student loans, etc. that contribute to the misery index. The misery, however, gets offset by the sheer glut of passive entertainment leisure options the world has never seen before in history. After all, who cares if we’re living longer if we’re feeling worse throughout it?

Not saying things are worse than the Depression at all, just saying we’re always going to be comparing apples to oranges as we go from different historical periods so looking at primarily economic factors may have limited utility even in looking at sociopolitical problems.