I’ve been couch surfing and regularly starving and in and out of government programs. I now have a cushy office job that disqualifies me from even food stamps. It’s absolutely bizarre to me when people don’t recognize that “paycheck to paycheck” has a very wide range of meanings. Sure, the person escaping homelessness and the person struggling to start a savings are both wage laborers who live paycheck to paycheck. But their interests aren’t some 1-to-1 overlap.
The fundamental problem is that people who have never been there have no idea how to express solidarity. Usually, “I’m still learning, but am happy to help however I can” is a good start, but is also not where most well-off people start.
look at how defensive some better-off leftists can get about how socialism isn’t pauperism
"NoT a PoVeRtY cUlT"
anyone who unironically says that needs to be re-educated
Tangentially related to your comment, but I think some leftists get stuck in a reductive class framework that doesn't allow more nuance than strictly proletariat/bourgeoisie. Which is a step up from class-blind liberalism but not really how marxism is supposed to be applied.
Someone here posted this a few days ago, a quick breakdown of classes in China in 1926 by Mao. It's a nuanced analysis trying to accurately gauge the class character and material interests of the real world, not aggressively shove the real world into a reductive two-variable model.
I think it's more that people do not believe they have the power to fix any of these problems
