>>8843525Its a double edged sword. You have free healthcare, but you pay %50 of your paycheck in taxes. We have shitty overpriced healthcare, but the poor's pay maybe %5-10 paycheck tax.
>>8846430The line about meritocracy is not bullshit. The issue with a lot of poor Americans is poor life choices. They get involved with drugs, alcohol, crime, whatever, and they blame society instead of themselves for their problems. Or people who have every opportunity to go to college with scholarships but turn them down because they're lazy. Literally Walmart will pay for your college tuition if you work for them, yet %90 of people I know who work at Walmart think college is a scam and not worth your time. That's true of useless Lib-Arts degrees, but there's plenty of college degrees that can land a useful job. Or a Trade school. My high school, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Ohio, has a trade school right next door and any high school student in 10th grade can choose to go there for free and learn a trade, like carpentry, welding, automotive repair, cooking, nursing, etc. I took the welding course on a whim, now I make $85K a year. I'm the first person in my family, on either side, to be entirely self sufficient since the WW2 generation.
America is still a land of meritocracy and opportunity, it's just that most poor people don't know how to make it. Some don't want to make it, while others are trapped in wage slaving. America does need change, badly, but it's not as bad as everybody makes it out to be. Especially if you don't live in a coastal state or city.
