I've been watching a few American TV shows and it blows my mind that they put up with such atrocious working terms and conditions.
One show was about a removal company where any damage at all, even not the workers fault, is taken out of their tips. There's no insurance from the multimillion dollar business. As they're not paid a living wage the guy on the show had examples of when he and his family went weeks with barely any income and this was considered normal?!
Another example was a cooking show where the prize was tickets to an NFL game. The lady who won explained that she'd be waiting in the car so her sons could experience their first live game, because she couldn't otherwise afford a ticket to go. They give tickets for football games away for free to people where I live for no reason at all..
Yet another example was where the workers got a $5k tip from their company and the reactions were as if this amount of money was even remotely life changing. It saddens me to think the average Americans life could be made so much better with such a relatively small amount of money and they don't unionize and demand far better. The company in question was on track to make a billion bloody dollars while their workers are on the poverty line and don't even have all their teeth?
It's not actually this bad and the average American lives a pretty good life like we're led to believe, right?
The American economy is built in a very specific way to make certain things cheap and certain things very expensive. The cheap things are gas, toys, commodities, clothes, unhealthy food. The expensive things are education, good food, healthcare, and, in certain areas, housing. That means there are a ton of Americans who live extremely precarious lives, where losing their job would be the end, but they still have a higher level of material comfort than many people would in other countries.
The other thing about the American economy is that wealth is extremely biased towards older people. For a long time, the system was built around normal working class people buying a house, and building wealth through that. As long as housing prices went up at a controlled rate, everybody slowly got richer. Now, older people own most of the houses. Like I grew up in a small town that was sort of the ideal American dream neighborhood. There were a bunch of other kids on my street, including some good friends. We rode the bus together and spent the weekends hanging out in my friend's loft. Now, when I go back there, there's like one family with kids on the street, and everyone else is a retired couple in a huge house that they don't really need. They have no particular incentive to move out, because it would be expensive and they're comfortable.
So if you're a younger person without in-demand education you really are extremely poor. 5k could really improve your quality of life by letting you get some dental work or something. Although the unemployment rate is low right now, companies are able to collude to some degree to keep entry level jobs precarious.
I cannot understand the desire to be trapped in a job because without it your family gets no healthcare and will basically either die in a ditch or you'll get a bankrupting bill for it. Not having universal healthcare even as a safety net scares the crap out of me.
Most people hate this. It's just impossible for the average person to do anything about it because very few politicians support changing the current system. In the 2020 election for instance there were like 2 dem candidates and 0 Republican candidates who wanted a public option for health insurance. Nationalizing the whole thing, NHS style, is completely off the table.
Policies like Medicare for All are popular with a majority of Americans, but aren't implemented because the parties in charge flatly refuse
Also the unemployment rate is low because they stopped counting those who have given up looking for work
There's just a lot of inequality in the US that is both socially and politically unacceptable in the rest of the developed world. Extremes are more accepted here.
There are more extremely rich people than you would see in other Western countries and and many, many more extremely poor people than in other Western countries. Alleviating that would mean implementing policies to redistribute wealth that many Americans are not willing to implement, especially conservatives.
The US basically sacrifices the good of the many for the great of the few.
Every American is a rich man who is temporarily down on his luck and making big societal changes would screw them over when they finally get their money.
Tl;Dr: It varies very drastically by locale. Rural Americans can often live okay on "very* minimal income. Standards on what " poor" and "normal" vary about as widely between parts of America as they do between America and where you're from.
Where I live (Dallas), I'm making around $40,000 in an area where the median is $60,000. I live alone, but I will have to buy a new car this year and I will barely be able to make my payments. I do not have a college degree, and I'm still basically entry level.
I've been looking at moving a lot recently. If I moved where I want to live (Oregon), I'd probably make the same or slightly less money, and my rent and expenses would probably rise by a few hundred a month. In effect, I would barely be getting by if I didn't have a car payment.
I've also been looking at Chicago, where the median wage is slightly less than I make now, but cost of living is slightly lower, and I'd make slightly more. I also wouldn't have to have a car, so my disposable income would rise drastically.
Dog if you're thinking about moving, come to the best small-town vines rust belt city that has the lowest cost of living in the US, where I was born and raised, Pittsburgh. I love this city to death and it has deep working class roots. I bought an 1800 sq ft, 4 bedroom home that was built in 1890 for $160k in 2020. I've been renovating it for the past few years and still got a ways to go but it's coming together beautifully.
For what it's worth, our rent is still well below the national average, and I love this city to death. It's small, but not too small, but not too large, everybody seems to know everybody, and there's always always something to do. The geography and nature and rivers really forced this city's hand a few hundred years ago where now everything is just built around and into mountainsides and deep woods, highways and roads and everything is a snarling maze of studio Ghibli elden ring on ketamine and I wouldn't want it any other way
It really depends on where you look. In rural areas of red states (states in which the majority of elected officials are members of the Republican party), things are pretty bad. Red states tend to have fewer (read: almost no) social programs.
I have a bit of a unique perspective on the dichotomy, because one side of my family is firmly in the lower class and the other firmly in upper middle.
There's a big difference for the two. It's like two different countries. For the lower class, what you've described is indeed normal. And many in the other classes would not believe that it is that bad for them.
Obviously things are worse in red statea, but poverty is a constant in America. The only reason rich dem areas seem rich is because they force all the service economy workers who make their lattes and teach their kids to commute hours into work every day.
Are these lower classes voting to change this or are they completely brainwashed into voting against their own interests?
It almost kinda sounds like there's an unspoken caste system going on in the way you described it.
A lot of it is decades of misinformation and propaganda paired with limited to no education and what some journalists call "braindrain" where those who do come from these areas and do get educated end up leaving.
Lots of us poors just don't vote at all.
We're working all the time, so its difficult to find the time and energy to try to be up to date on the local politicians and ballot measures in any real way and even find time away from work to physically go vote (because who the fuck even knows if the mail in ballots even get counted assuming you can get one and figure out how to mail it back in).
Also, there isn't anybody to vote for. Your options are Dem, Repub, Libertarian, Independent. And none of the politicians running under those banners are actually offering any drastic material change to a shitty system. During the last mid terms where I live, I took a few hours to find who was going to be on the local ballot and skim their websites. The farthest "left" candidates were the Dems and the choices where "Religious Person", "Religious Person", "Milquetoast Boilerplate Dem", and "Cryptobro." None of them run off voting year outreach programs where they help people in need navigate the few social support programs in the deep red state where I live. None of them advocate for vacant houses, apartments, empty hotel/motel rooms to be appropriated by the city government to house those without homes. None of these candidates even really exist outside of the 12 months between filing their intent to run, securing their spot on the ballots before they're printed, and the final vote counts are certified.
Oh yes, these states are red because the Republican party has convinced them all to vote against their own interests.
Many may not understand this, but the single most important voting point to most in my area is abortion. The churches have convinced the masses that it is basically the ultimate sin. They will choose any candidate with an R (Republican party) next to their name on the ballot.
They've also convinced them that social programs are for lazy layabouts, and they should be cut. Even if the abortion issue were somehow solved, it would not change much.
Where I live we're fortunate enough to have universal healthcare but it's constantly under attack from the same side of politics that ultimately want to abolish it.
I have a friend who was going on about cutting taxes and especially not having to pay for others healthcare. Meanwhile, this idiot had just had a baby with his wife with the entire tab picked up by taxpayers, was now receiving family benefits and payments for starting a family and would soon need to rely on taxpayer-subsidied child care when she went back to work and school going forward. It somehow didn't dawn on him that he himself was reliant on all of this assistance and was getting far more out of it than he was putting in.
At least he wasn't so cooked that he was scared of others having abortions but I've at least had a taste of this bazaar mentality here.
Poor people don't vote because they've completely checked out. They don't believe either party represents their interests. They're correct.
There is no way to vote poverty away here because the entire apparatus is already owned by the people who want widespread poverty to exist
When I was poor, $5k would've been life changing. I wouldn't have eaten any better except for a day or two, but I wouldn't have had debts hanging over my head.
Matter of fact, I had a $4k debt hanging over my head for like 6 years because I dropped out of college. I couldn't pay it off until I got my dad's life insurance after he died. I worked the entire time, 6 years straight, but was underpaid and Wells Fargo was doing its illegal overdraft fee thing....I will never work with that bank again. It wasn't uncommon for me to pay $70 in fees on a paycheck of $400. Idk how the fuck I survived.
$5k definitely helps people, it lets you catch up on bills, treat yourself a little and be able to enjoy life for a bit. But in this show it felt like medieval royalty throwing a few copper to the peasants on the streets and they literally said it was a once in a lifetime thing for these people. It was downright depressing that Americans live like this.
I’m an American and I had a pretty decent job out of college and the idea of moving out of my parents house without roommates was impossible. In fact I don’t know a single person who did it.
$5000 might not be life changing for me, but it would take me a really long time to save that much.
Americans have high salaries compared to the rest of the world, but everything is really expensive so things kind of balance out.
One thing to consider is that the higher salaries make it easier to get things like an iPhone or MacBook. But all the things that are needs like housing, food, and a car are almost too expensive to afford.
Most people have a car loan, most people don’t even dream of owning a home any longer. When you see that you will never earn enough for a home, then you don’t really save for it.
When the amount you earn that. An be saved is too little then you don’t really bother with it.
Most Americans do not live nearly as well as it is portrayed on TV or in movies.
update
I’ll add on to this that most Americans have debt for some reason or another besides having a car and house. A lot of people have student debts that are oppressive some people have medical debt as well.
Gas prices are reasonably low, but everything is so far that you end up using a decent amount of gas to get around.
I’m an American and I had a pretty decent job out of college and the idea of moving out of my parents house without roommates was impossible. In fact I don’t know a single person who did it.
Not to pick on you specifically, but I've never understood the modern generations' seeming aversion to housemates.
I had housemates from after college until 7 years later when I had a wife, starting in the mid-90s. My mom had housemates in the 60s after college (my dad had the GI bill, which afforded flexibility, but had other drawbacks).
It seems weird to me that people these days seem to think that's unacceptable. That's how people do it when they are just getting started. Either that, or they live somewhere less desirable, far from cities, small, old, crappy. Personally I did both... housemates in a rural area in a shitty place. :)
The aversion to housemates represents a breakdown in social trust in general, plus people are just more precarious. You've got to hope your housemates can pay rent when all of you hold tenuous employment. One person losing their job is a disaster for everyone else. One person moving out can also be a crisis.
I lived with housemates around 2010 to 2016 and it was a constant struggle to keep bills paid, plus we'd have to share vehicles and that was difficult since sometimes one of us would work nights, some of us days. Also revolving door of girlfriends/boyfriends who'd come in and eat our food or borrow cars.
Not great experiences. Honestly some fun times looking back on it all. Was nice to be around friends or do movie nights. But otherwise it was a struggle to keep together.
This may be unpopular to hear... but most of the justifications for not having roommates are like the ones in this thread. People say they can't have roommates because they have social anxiety or other people are just jerks.
To an older person it sounds like "My generation can't have roommates because we don't get along with other people, and they don't get along with us." That's not an economic problem.
It's actually far far more worrying than that. What happens to a generation that has no ability to coexist with other people? What happens to the world when they are in charge of it?
I do see it as an economic problem. Precarity is going to induce loneliness and tension. People are working more hours and there's simply less ability to connect. There are fewer "third spaces" (places outside of work or home) these days, so people have reduced capacity to develop bonds with one another. All of that is going to generate mistrust and lack of friendship among people.
Political tensions are high too, for instance, I would refuse to live with someone who expresses casual transphobic because I wouldn't trust them to be around me.
Furthermore this is a niche internet forum with a lot of nerds who have general social anxiety. Probably not a good cross section of a population.
Most Americans do not live nearly as well as it is portrayed on TV or in movies.
I think American TV in the last ten years has started to portray people as richer than it did in the 90s and 00s even. Is there anything like Everybody Hates Chris or My Name is Earl on? Shit, even Malcolm in the Middle they were clearly middle class but I feel like most American TV now is about upper middle class people or Hollywood. (I've heard of Abbot Elementary but haven't watched it.)
most of us enjoy driving
wat
just put "They" in triple parens you coward we all know what you mean
I never in a million years meant any specific people or ethnic group. I see it now that you pointed out out to me and deleted my comment. Thank you.
Not my intent.
it's sometimes hard to distinguish between hating the great reset for anticapitalism and hating it for deranged fascism. sorry if that was a false positive the enjoy driving part got my hackles up
