I tend to think of it as: we go into a recession but not a depression because automatic + manual safety checks were deployed.

It's actually hugely troubling how much has been cut from government safety nets, because it seems liable to send the next recession into a depression and completely wipe out the very base who voted for those laws -- the poor South and the industrialized Midwest. I don't think rural America will survive the next depression with the social safety nets gutted: they've literally cut their own parachute lines, so they're going to crash not just fall.

But hey -- they saved a few years on taxes, right? Oh... wait... that was billionaires. Nevermind.