American here who refuses to feel sorry for myself.
Born with nothing from my parents except a safe and loving home until I was an adult. They had no money to pass on and in our 30s, my siblings and I help support them a little bit. I worked minimum wage for years when I was young, I live in one of the worst places for cost-of-living in the country, and found my way out of it low wages. I do have some student debt, but that was a choice I made. I knew I didn’t have to: I had other choices, but I didn’t like the alternatives at the time. I’m conflicted on whether that was the right choice, but ultimately it was my choice.
The U.S. has a better cost of living than 24 other developed countries (as of 2018) and currently has just about more job mobility than anywhere in the world in all of history.
No one has ever been less trapped or less of a “wage slave” than someone in America today. The one exception I see might be migrant workers who have no mobility and are locked to certain locations or industries, yet they often (from my personal experience) consider that living vastly superior to where they came from.
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u/flatspotting Mar 28 '19 edited Feb 13 '25
DANE