Many people simply see no role for themselves in the future - be they young people unable to accept that they’ll have a lower standard of living due to globalism & socialism, or older people booted from their “before-times” jobs simply unable to maintain the standard of living they had. Since so many have no religious reason to turn from suicide, they remove themselves from the picture. Here in NJ plenty of people are walking in front of trains as our economic death spiral continues; we just elected a new governor who promised before the election to raise taxes on the highest-taxed population in the country.
Yes, we live in insane times.
Incidentally, the highest marginal tax rate during WWII was 94%!!! Granted, this was on the extremely high-income earners, but you can probably track lower tax brackets as being just as relatively high. Even in that time, people were not as despondent as they are now.