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The Costs of Struggling in the United States.
How a lack of quality social safety nets and a dying capitalist system have made it incredibly expensive to be poor.
Being poor means a lot of things, and as many of us know, it is both the cause and the effect of a wide variety of issues surrounding socioeconomic conditions.
When discussing what sort of hardships a poor individual can expect to deal with, most often we can point to lack of quality education in underfunded school districts, “food desserts” where fresh, quality food is difficult to come by, and obviously housing and transportation problems. While of course it’s important to discuss those aspects, perhaps the most obvious and least often addressed part of what it means to be poor in the United States is the fact that it is indeed incredibly expensive.
Consider something as simple as a toothache.
It goes without saying that a consistent, throbbing toothache could often be indicative of a cavity. Being unable to afford going to the dentist, someone without means to get a cavity treated might just do their best to ignore it. Left untreated, the cavity will cause the nerve in the tooth to die and the tooth will rot. When the tooth rots, a root canal becomes a necessity or the tooth will fall out…
