| The impoverishment is in terms of the same things the lower class have always lacked. A lack of agency and security. Often their situation is such that they cannot change it. For the employed, there is no time or energy to improve life. For the unemployed, employment often has a negative net income (once accounting for transport costs, reduction in benefits and costs they can currently pay with time such as food prep which would have to be paid in money). There are no spare resources for education or entrepreneurship. No resources for fulfilling hobbies or self development. Even if you accept the negatives for long term growth, getting an entry level job from that position requires grovelling and outright lying to your 'betters' about how you want to dedicate your life to breaking your back stacking shelves for $8/hr on a split shift 100% availability basis (that doesn't give you enough time to get home in your 3hr 'break') because you love it so much. Then there's the precarity that poverty brings. Not knowing how you'll afford an emergency, and constantly weighing eating vs. paying the power is mentally draining and incredibly harmful to your mental health. Not conceding to your landlord's insane demands could leave you permanently homeless, and now debt collectors are calling you for a bill you have receipts of paying every 3 hours. A car is unaffordable, public transit is underfunded, demeaning and unreliable, and pedestrian or cycling infrastructure is unaffordable. No level of government will listen to your concerns, in fact their decisions are actually anticorrelated with public support. On top of that you are constantly told that everything wrong is your fault, and you just have to drink fewer lattes and vote with your wallet more. Public space is stolen and turned into space for cars or privately owned malls. Anything your community does build for mutual benefit is torn down and rebuild to be extractive. This is not the life of nobility. It's basically just the same as a peasant with easier access to propaganda, protein, calories, and mentally destructive dopamine buttons. In many ways it is worse because it is so isolating, and the source of the harm is so nebulous. |