▲ | forgetfreeman 18 hours ago | |
Inability to save, class immobility, and insecurity of both food and housing are identical problems regardless of whether smartphones have been invented. It's telling who, specifically, advances claims about the notional fabulous wealth of the impoverished in the US. In any case the assertion that poor communities are in any way better off than their predecessors is only accurate if you push you compare cohorts ~80 years or more apart. After the advent of social safety net programs in the US the working poor were (at least for a time) significantly more able to eventually join the middle class. Modern limitations on earnings and savings that have been applied to these programs has provably reduced this kind of class mobility. Additionally, the combination of hyperconcentration of wealth, deregulation, and globalized trade have all played a part in the near total elimination of economic opportunity in rural communities. |