Two Eras Of Hurt

"Our whole infrastructure was rebuilt during the Depression thanks to the New Deal. We had airports and highways and post offices and schools that were built because we took unemployed people and put them to work," she says. Now, "what worries me is that because those programs don't exist, not only are we not giving those people skills, or feeding them, we're not even prepared for the recovery once it happens."

With deficits dominating the discourse in Washington, a massive outpouring of federal cash is all but unimaginable today. President Obama proposed his half-billion-dollar American Jobs Act in early September, but it hasn't gained traction in Congress.

"We need somebody like Roosevelt to say, 'I don't care what you think, I'm going to push this through and I have the people behind me,' " says Coplan. But he thinks that's unlikely. Now, he says, "money has become the ruler. And I fear for our country."