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.
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.
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.
As long as there’s a neovim extension
Suburban car culture. People can go on and on about the how they like driving, and like the freedom to drive everywhere, even if it makes them fat and lonely. But what about their kids? It’s insane that kids are essentially trapped at home unless a parent happens to have the ability to drive that somewhere. Your convenient lifestyle comes at the cost of raising neurotic introverts who won’t go outside.
I have this hazy, memory from when I was about 8. I was exploring a peat bog, which was fun because everything was soft and squishy and I could just run around. I saw some weird looking bushes, and decided to go check them out. But, as I ran up, it turned out there were growing over this sort of wet hole, where maybe there was a spring or something. I suddenly fell about 8 feet, and was in this mud pit slowly sinking. Luckily, I managed to grab some of those bushes I’d seen, and pull myself out. But it was very hard, because the mud was pulling me down like quicksand. Eventually, I crawled back out on the bog, covered in mud.
Nobody I was with remembers this, and honestly it might not be real. Childhood experiences are super weird.
Huh, do you have any cultures in mind?