I'm pretty much here with you as a UK prole, for what it's worth.
I constantly feel like middle class individuals just don't "get" what it's like to be poor. It's really common for there to be this sort of "woe is them" mindset, as if they're talking about farm animals or something that fundamentally has less intelligence/autonomy.
The vast majority of my schoolfriends who worked hard, focused on the correct things, and budgeted well, did well. The ones that went to prison or had children at age 18 didn't. None of us are billionaires, but neither are we all some sort of sub-human, toothless, brainless mass.
One of the amusing things about having money now, is that I have to "play along" to some extent. I can't just tell someone that they're an idiot for trying to find a place in London when they're a single person without any real income to speak of, even though 99% of people back in my hometown not only think that's not unreasonable, but that it's completely self-evident.
Some people face real barriers. Try being born into a country in which a Western visa costs a month or more of your wages. Hell, try just being on an H1-B. The way we talk about "poverty" in the West makes an absolute mockery of that.
I constantly feel like middle class individuals just don't "get" what it's like to be poor. It's really common for there to be this sort of "woe is them" mindset, as if they're talking about farm animals or something that fundamentally has less intelligence/autonomy.
The vast majority of my schoolfriends who worked hard, focused on the correct things, and budgeted well, did well. The ones that went to prison or had children at age 18 didn't. None of us are billionaires, but neither are we all some sort of sub-human, toothless, brainless mass.
One of the amusing things about having money now, is that I have to "play along" to some extent. I can't just tell someone that they're an idiot for trying to find a place in London when they're a single person without any real income to speak of, even though 99% of people back in my hometown not only think that's not unreasonable, but that it's completely self-evident.
Some people face real barriers. Try being born into a country in which a Western visa costs a month or more of your wages. Hell, try just being on an H1-B. The way we talk about "poverty" in the West makes an absolute mockery of that.