• Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    The southwest.

    And owning a car is not optional here. Mass transit is a joke and many people travel 60 miles (96km) or more to work. Multi-Generation housing arrangements are on the rise. Not everyone has that option though and it shouldn’t be a requirement in the world’s richest economy. Fresh food of any kind in the US is more expensive than unhealthy processed foods in many areas, especially when you might have as little as 3-4 hours a day to clean, cook, eat, socialize, bathe, do errands, and decompress. I’m not unaware of how other people live, I’ve traveled and lived in those conditions myself, I just had the privilege to be able to come back to the US afterwards. What I think you’re missing though is something called Purchasing Power Parity. Things are vastly more expensive in the US, so a lot of that money is getting vacuumed up by those prices. And some of the things you mentioned like hot water are comparatively cheap because it’s been built into our infrastructure.

    So would someone in a cardboard lean-to love to come live a working class life in the US? I’m sure they would but that doesn’t invalidate things like our workers dying due from preventable and treatable health conditions because they can’t afford medical care here.