[dougmwne]

Life in the USA can be seriously depressing. There is a constant awareness of just how unequal everyone's opportunities were. There is a lot of visible poverty and crime. I have personally watched people eat bits of food out of the gutter in San Francisco. There's also a lot of animosity between the haves and the have-nots. Daily conversation with strangers can be a minefield. Does this person not have access to health care? Do they have hundreds of thousands in school or medical debt? Do they expect to ever be able to retire? Does their job even allow them any paid vacation? Is a comfortable and well-paid job hopelessly out of reach for them? Have they experienced racial discrimination in school or work?

For many, many people, the psychic pain of all this inequality is too much and they retreat into bubbles of people very similar to themselves. Communities, schools, workplaces, and social networks can be shockingly segregated by race and class and people constantly get more unable to relate to the lives of others.

A little extra money is worthless in comparison to all that. Please enjoy the egalitarian society that we will never know.