In the mid-1930s when Kaufman and Hart wrote You Can't Take It with You, Americans were suffering through one of the worst economic periods in the history of the United States, an era known as the Great Depression. Many Americans lost their life savings, homes, and jobs in the stock market crash of 1929 and the numerous bank failures which followed. Unemployment rose to record heights for the time, reaching over 20% in 1935. Hopes raised by an apparent upturn in the economy in 1936 were dashed when the recovery collapsed in 1937.

After his election in 1932, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted his "New Deal" legislation, a series of liberal reforms which put in place welfare, social security, and unemployment benefits. These relief efforts dramatically changed Americans' relationship with their government, which now provided many with a living either in the form of a job in a federal program or...