Even during the last Great Depression, there were large numbers of people who lived very well, indeed. In fact, if there was 25% unemployment, at a particular time of the Great Depression, there were still 75% still employed... :-)
Count my grandparents among them. Grandma lived on a farm...no lack of food. She used to say that they didn't have any money, but neither did anyone else. And, that wasn't a whole lot different from when times were good.
My great-grandfather was a mechanic, who could fix damn near anything. Lots of demand for that in a rough economic patch. Grandpa said that they more-or-less lived on a barter system.
I became a Dad a couple of years ago, and was sitting in my Living Room on top of a pile of baby stuff. I mean, it looked like the grandparents went to Babies R Us and bought two of everything...Mrs WBill and I were having a problem finding places to put it all, and simultaneously wondering if we had enough stuff.
Meantime, my Dad brought over some letters that he discovered from my Great-Grandmother, to my Grandmother. They were written during the war (WW II) just before Dad was born. So...we're sitting atop this massive pile of stuff reading the letters, and one of them mentions a "Need to save Safety Pins, because they're expensive and hard to find due to rationing." Ironic? Sure.
Things aren't that bad right now. While I won't deny that they can get worse....they're not that bad.