Here are a couple quotes from a recent article that peers into the lives of a few victims of layoffs. Multiply this by a million and this is what America looks like today.
“Three weeks after learning that his plant was closing, he suddenly collapsed at home.”
“Bob Smith, 42, a forklift operator with four young children, started having chest pains.”
“Don Turner, 55, a crane operator who had started at the mills as a teenager, was found by his wife, Darlene, slumped on a love seat”
“After it shuttered the coke ovens across the street from the galvanizing mill in 2001, two workers committed suicide.”
“…found her husband sitting on the love seat, his hat and gloves still on.”
Source: New York Times
The recent and mushrooming unemployment or underemployment may not be considered a technical “Depression” but realistically and on the bottom psychological rungs of the ladder,it most certainly is.
It certainly marks a turningpoint for the US citizen. It seems like the new normal increasingly resembles less democratic, less developed nations.