[TheOperator]

>As a person from the lower classes, I'm fine that people live like kings and I don't

>What I'm not cool with and despise is having the fear of homelessness and hunger held over my head so that I am forced to dance for my rich masters.

Being lower-class is a big part of my identity due to being the poorest kid in my class that I was aware of. Yet I grew up in a relatively well-off neighbourhood in a well-off country. I never went hungry. I never went cold. I even got a few luxeries like modern video game systems from well to do relatives. When I see the "We are the 99%" rhetoric it strikes me how much people focus on the few people richer than then and how little they focus on the many people poorer than them. I've looked at the numbers and in a world with perfect equality westeners would be poorer. There seems to be a lot of self-serving self-victimization with a lot of the fuck the rich rhetoric.

Yet I know that even if you aren't suffering grinding poverty being RELATIVELY poor on a local basis is really hurtful and isolating. It destroys you socially. You can't do what your peers can do and have to stay home. It makes you less attractive to the opposite sex. It hurts your quality of life. It limits your ability to change this. It makes it so merit becomes less and less connected to success.

I know that a lot of people even poorer than me are suffering. I know the people most able to afford to address these problems and those least needing for money are the wealthiest in society. I also don't see the growth of inequality as sustainable. We're at gilded age levels of inequality and things are still getting worse. It's going to lead to more and more social unrest.

[idonotknowwhy]

> Yet I know that even if you aren't suffering grinding poverty being RELATIVELY poor on a local basis is really hurtful and isolating. It destroys you socially. You can't do what your peers can do and have to stay home.

This resonates with me. I tried explaining this to a relatively new friend recently and he told me "That's your white privilege talking".

People don't seem to understand that suffering is relative, and if you grow up poorer than your peers, it's still hurtful.

No I have to decide which will be better for my kids, the oldest of which is reaching school age. Bottom of a middleclass area or top of a lower class area.

[turtlecloud]

Def agree. Dave chapelle said it best. If you grew up on the hood where everyone was broke, you didn’t feel as bad cuz you didn’t know any better.

But being a lower middle class kid in a rich neighborhood, even if you we’re better off than the kids in the hood, everyday at school you are constantly reminded of how poor you feel, more so than the people in the hood.

[codyb]

I don’t understand. You were saying you didn’t have as much money as your nearest peers and it was hurting your social life and making you insecure, and they handwaved it away as privilege??

[XaoDaoCaoCao]

The replacement of class politics with bloated Imperial multi-ethnic racial politics.

Often cheered by those who have never experienced actual hardship ie Homelessness, precarity mindset of being low income, being rejected at interviews because you have to use old clothes, social isolation of the lower classes, etc

Or to put it more crassly, the poor of America aren't "sexy". The poor of 3rd world nations? HOT. People who individalize their suffering by adopting "identities" (gender, sexual, racial)? HOT. The couple sleeping in front of the boutique candy store? TOTALLY NOT

[idonotknowwhy]

Yep, "white privilege" to be precise, and that was the first time I'd heard the term. I was pretty surprised to hear it considering he knew I only had 1 parent growing up.

[meko]

Your friend is not wrong but they were still being toolish about it. You mentioned your struggle, your problem; and instead of trying to commiserate they basically said "it could be worse". Know how you feel, most people can't relate with my life experiences either so in the past when trying to discuss them I received similar levels of dismissal. Something I realized though is that it goes both ways: in the moment they said " that's your privilege talking", you had a window to turn the conversation back to them, to ask about their experiences. Of course that direction for a convo isn't always appropriate, or it may be asked too awkwardly to get a thoughtful response, but I will mention those times I shut up and opened my ears were some that broadened my perspective the most.

[BucketSort]

> Yet I know that even if you aren't suffering grinding poverty being RELATIVELY poor on a local basis is really hurtful and isolating. It destroys you socially. You can't do what your peers can do and have to stay home. It makes you less attractive to the opposite sex. It hurts your quality of life. It limits your ability to change this. It makes it so merit becomes less and less connected to success.

I understand and this is a good point.

I have further anecdotes from being friends with an African American kid who lived in the government housing area in my town -- which I visited on occasion. Even though these people lived in decent houses, with all their basic needs being met by the state, there was a dramatic feeling of depression and anger there. What did their future look like? They didn't feel like they had any way to work within the system, so they turned to degenerate preoccupations. When you feel like the system "isn't fair," you are inclined to say fuck the system. This impacts African American's the most because not only do they see the system "isn't fair" today, but that it was really not fair in the past. The fact that it has improved dramatically isn't a saving grace for many.

I understand some of the problems of inequality, but I can't imagine it ever being different. Equality is in line with my morality, but I'm not a dreamer. Humans aren't angels. I do believe we could win the fight for securing the basic necessities of life as a right, but equality is a utopian fantasy. There is a certain level of suffering we must accept as being an unavoidable consequence of our nature.

[meko]

Indeed. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when the most disadvantaged members of society have no other means to advance other than illicit activities and then those statistics are turned around and continued to be used against them. It's depressing that plenty of people fall for it, citing "the numbers" as evidence for thier hateful claims.