Just to put things on perspective. Most of HN people are developers, and the average salary for a developer (30K) is bigger than 70% of the population. A 50K salary is far from unusual (that under junior developer in a bank) and that better than 90% of the UK. I lived years on a 25K salary, which is better than 50% of the population and that's the kind of salary where it does not take much to put you in big trouble. Weathering the storm is a luxury for a lot of people.

So I'm not saying that it is the end of the world. But look at Spain. If you look at the raw economic numbers, Spain has barely changed from before 2007, yet everybody I know (and that's a bunch of people) has been affected negatively.

It does not take the end of the world to make big trouble for a lot of people.