At The Atlantic, Don Peck ponders what could happen if high unemployment for the non-rich sticks around for years to come .

I’m old enough to have seen that very thing, during the Boeing slump of the early ’70s.

What happened was a lot of emotional depression, a lot of moving away (Seattle proper lost about 10 percent of its population), a lot of depressed home values, and, eventually, a lot of entrepreneurism, as desperate folks got up and tried to rebuild their lives with or without a paternalistic big employer.