Depression: better now or back in the 1930s? Which would have the higher survival rate?

[Lerkfish]

This was in response to another thread, but I felt it could be a thread starter on its own.

Would a depression be better or worse for us now than back in the 1930s?

consider how close everyone lived back then to a working food source (farm or ranch). The food distribution was decentralized and localized.
currently, most of our food is produced on a larger scale, but dependent upon distribution. Instead of 500 smaller family farms in a region, you have one big corporate farm to supply that region and 10 times that region. Modern times of economic collapse would prevent people from using the barter system to survive, as they did in the great depression. (I'll chop your wood for a breakfast, m'am).

Add to this that usable land per property is almost nil compared to back then due to maximizing property usage in suburbs and reclaiming farmland as housing projects. Therefore, even the possibility of working your own "truck" farm and stretching out your own supplies through canning and stocking back produce is drastically reduced (not to mentiont that no one knows how to preserve food anymore on a personal scale).

Also consider during the depression, there were a lot more possibilities for "tent communities" because there was so much undeveloped land that wasn't owned or at least not patrolled. Migrant farm workers could better survive with these hub shanty locations as they went out to work on the countless family farms (which of course, no longer exist now).

Further consider that the economic structure was buffered by localization. Yes, banks failed, but they failed individually rather than globally.

Another issue is that there is no demand for manual labor as there once was... so the opportunity for the poor to work hard and get even a paltry wage simply isn't there anymore.

so, honestly, we are on the precipice of economic collapse that has the potential to be exponentially worse than the great depression, if it continues further.