didntfitthenarrative:
king-worm:
bogleech:
provendermalkin:
- being charged
thousands (or sometimes even millions) of dollars for non-optional (life
saving) medical procedures, then sued into oblivion because you
wouldn’t be able to pay the bill even if you paid every cent you made (and I mean EVERY cent)
for years to come
- children
dying of cancer because their parents can’t afford treatment for them
- children dying of TREATABLE diseases because their parents can’t afford treatment for them
- (those same parents only being able to afford treatment because many
other working class people pooled what little they had in an act of
altruism that wouldn’t be necessary in a just or equitable society)
- being
called a freeloading leech because you were born disabled and can’t
live without help, or because you worked as hard as you could for as
long as you could to make something of yourself, but ended up disabled
- society
actively searching for reasons that you’re to blame for lifelong chronic
pain or disability in an effort to justify treating you like trash, even
if the theoretically avoidable circumstances that led to said
disability were not avoidable for you because of your pre-existing inability to
afford treatment/ eat or live better/ etc.
- being born into
poverty and automatically segregated via highly corrupt zoning laws into
the worst schools with the least resources and the highest rates of
prejudice and abuse
- being unable to escape highly impoverished
areas for greener/safer pastures because the cost of moving is
unaffordably high
- homelessness being classified as a punishable crime throughout much of the united states
- assisting homeless people by providing them with food or basic necessities also being a punishable crime
- being the descendant of black americans still
struggling with poverty because their ancestors have only had basic
civil rights for ~50 years and still make less than whites even in
identical jobs with identical accomplishments, who before that were
actively required by law to live in worse neighborhoods, go to worse schools, have worse jobs and make less money, and before that were only allowed to perform the same jobs they would have had as slaves, and before that to be slaves
- being
a non-white american whose experiences and difficulties are discounted
because literally any single member of your race (or a similar-looking
race from a white POV) has ever accomplished anything, ever
- wealthiness
and accomplishment automatically being assumed the result of hard
work, while poverty and failure are automatically assumed to be laziness
and worthlessness
- having unearned wealthiness and accomplishment
dismissed as anecdotal, but “earned” poverty or failure held up as the
absolute majority of all cases
- an unrealistic and inhumane
poverty line that says if you make more than about 12,000 dollars a
year– that’s a thousand dollars a month– you aren’t poor, with the
amount you’re allowed to make falling dramatically per each adult in the
household, until eight adults with two children can only make 43,000 dollars a year total, or 597 dollars a month per adult if you assume the two children are included in the eight person total.
- being
told that poverty is a choice and that if you were worth anything you
wouldn’t be working minimum wage despite the fact that millions of
qualified professionals work for min. wage including government
employees providing essential services for society that benefit everyone
- having the highest effective tax rates and penalties levied against the people with the least to their names
- being
expected to work with no vacations, no paid days off, no
sick leave, no paid maternity leave and (more than likely) no retirement
- knowing
that if you aren’t a salaried or full-time hourly employee of a large
company, you may have to miss the birth of any children in your family
and funerals or hospitalization of loved ones because if you take time
off you may be laid off or fired for “poor work attendance” and that
even if you are protected by federal law, you can’t take more than a short time for fear of ending up unemployed
- knowing
that even extremely humble dreams are out of reach, and settling for
cheaper one-time-purchase luxuries to numb the disappointment– luxuries
intentionally priced within the means of the poor for exactly that
reason, not out of charity but to make keep the sorrow and frustration
of the lower class within controllable limits
I’d like to add the fact that there are Americans who commit crimes with the intention of going to prison because the showers, meals, beds and medical care they subsequently get are still preferable to making it in all the above shit.
Let’s also not forget shaming people for buying little pleasures and holding anything nice they happen to own against them as an example that they could be working harder or doing more
^^^
To expand on that: to be told that if you’re poor, no matter how much you work or how much you try to save up or how many additional responsibilities you have eating away at your time and money, that if you don’t dedicate literally every waking second of your life and every penny you have towards increasing your wealth, then you deserve to be poor and deserve every negative thing that befalls you because of it.
What the upper classes and stuffy politicians really don’t realize is that poverty also KEEPS YOU POOR and MAKES YOU POORER, regardless of your efforts. You don’t have money to make investments and turn into more money. You have enough money to keep yourself alive, and that is inevitably going to get harder and harder, no matter what.
I mean, say you’ve got an okay car to get to your job. Something in it is going to break some day, whether or not you’re wealthy enough to keep it perfectly maintained.
If you’ve lived paycheck to paycheck like most Americans, then you won’t have the savings to make adequate repairs and you’re just fucked. You might just lose that job entirely if you don’t have a friend to drive you or live where public transportation is in walking distance. One little thing broken in your vehicle can wreck your whole life.
To keep that from happening, you’re probably going to have to go without something else, maybe even skip out on a bill and put yourself in more debt later. Either way, you’ll have to settle for the cheapest solution. Even knowing the car will break down again much sooner this time, it’s a choice between being ruined then or being ruined tomorrow.
So you’re forced to pay what little you have for poorer service, and then it’s going to break again faster than you can build those savings back up, which means an even cheaper, shoddier solution the next time….and the next time and the next time.
Now apply that whole story to every other thing in your life. Your refrigerator, your clothes, your plumbing, your water heater, your diet, your shoes, your teeth, any illness you have or might contract and any injury you might sustain. Every one of these things is just a ticking time bomb waiting to put you deeper in the hole until you finally either die or you lose everything and then die.
People who don’t experience this just flat-out cannot seem to comprehend it. They think if they had no trouble getting a great job, then that’s what the world is like for everyone else. They just can’t wrap their heads around why another person can’t do exactly what they did, even though every opportunity is critically dependent on location, time, existing money, how well you can afford to present yourself at an interview, who you’re competing against, how potential employers privately judge you and whether or not any existing problems or responsibilities are putting more pressure on you.
It’s a lot like aging. It only ever gets worse unless you’re privileged enough to take exceptional care of yourself. There is no simple “trying harder” to reverse it.
And speaking of which, aging is another thing that costs you more and more money, faster and faster.
