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How poor is the average American? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Kushia@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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?

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[–] D61@hexbear.net 4 points 11 months ago

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.