In a word...NO.
All but our parents generation (mid 70's & up) have ever seen a real Depression.
IMHO, the relentlessness in goobermint pushing to place more spending and control ASAP is becasue of what is coming.
They do not want a WW III, so killing off the boomers, the sick, and the disabled leaves infrastructure in place and lets them redistribute the wealth as they best see fit.
Has the world economy ever seen such a scheme?
Think about it.......the goobermint is practically giving away the H1N1 vaccine to the kids (not infants). I've read that this particular bug shows traits of a man-altered virus.Think about it on just how much the goobermint has recently pushed these inoculations especially for kids.?
What better way to get rid of the elderly and the sick?
The recent CRU unavailing is a prime example of my complete distrust for those at the top running the show.
Yes, and with the Great Depression, many of the people who went through that did not already have McMansions full to the brim with clothes, shoes, five sets of dishes, four computers, gads of electronics, appliances, cars for each driver, and on and on.
IOW, they more or less NEEDED stuff eventually, whereas many boomers don't need much of anything --- ever again. So, in the Great Depression, the motivation to spend was there once the economics of spending came back. I don't think that will be the case with our Great Crash.
For example, my mother and her sisters got a couple of new dresses most every year until the Great Depression. Then they stopped getting stuff. This meant that for the next several years they had to make do with the 3-4 dresses they already had or could get as hand-me-downs, keeping them mended and trying to let them out or rework them as the girls grew older.
Many people today have closets and dressers full of clothes. If they totally stopped buying for the next five years, they'd still not even come close to wearing out (using up) all the clothes they already have!
As a society, we were much, much more affluent when the economy crashed than were most families during the Great Depression. Many boomers could go the rest of their lives without buying much of anything and still have everything they "need." It seems to me this makes it much more likely that a downshift in discretionary consumer spending becomes permanent.