Oh, I have no doubt that they were overpaid. But with that kind of a paycut, they're looking to lose 80% or more of their workforce.
Maybe that's what they wanted. There are drastic cuts that wouldn't have been so impossible to live with, though. Going down to $16 per hour would have been a 40% cut that would have allowed some degree of possibility of staying on board.
As you sad, you stayed on. I don't know how many others would.
It was my wife that got laid off. She made about $60K to my $40K at the time. We clipped a lot of coupons, stayed home a lot and generally cut our expenses to the point where I actually started looked forward to a Domino's pizza on a Friday night (it was one of our only indulgences during those times).
What we didn't do was sit around and complain about the "unfairness" of our situation. My career started taking off around that time and my wife eventually found an even better position.