What you call "choice" is empty of meaning or significant because you leave out the very relevant context in which that "choice" may be exercised. For example, it's dishonest to say a person with $20,000 in savings has the "choice" to pay cash or take a mortgage for a $200,000. Such "choice" is not real or meaningful, because it can't really be exercised. Likewise, it's dishonest to suggest that "choice" in America is not correlated strongly to income and wealth. The lower one's income and means, the fewer real, meaningful choices one has about a great many things--including medical care, food, housing, and basically everything else humans need to subsist.
I have lived in every income spectrum up through my current one--from severe poverty to relative affluence. One of the most important observations I've made is how little "freedom of choice" there is the further down the socioeconomic ladder one goes in this country. It's just an empty phrase most often spouted by people who have never known anything other than a life of upper-middle-class or better living.
Well, "most often" isn't "always", and that your family was on welfare doesn't mean anything with respect to the fact that you seem to not understand how empty the phrase "freedom of choice" is. The one has nothing to do with the other.
I have lived in every income spectrum up through my current one--from severe poverty to relative affluence. One of the most important observations I've made is how little "freedom of choice" there is the further down the socioeconomic ladder one goes in this country. It's just an empty phrase most often spouted by people who have never known anything other than a life of upper-middle-class or better living.