You're entire post is tremendous. A couple points really stuck out to me: the wealth gap is widening tremendously. The amount of consumer debt people are taking on is eye-opening and scary. An additional layer to that is the balances of student loan debt in comparison to the annual income in so many cases makes no sense. People are taking on student loan debt balances that are never justified by their income level. Secondly, the level of auto loans in comparison to income levels is also scary. Not to mention 84 month auto loans becoming far more commonplace.
To further elaborate on the poverty angle, my worry about America’s rising poverty is how American poverty is more unforgiving and dangerous as more options for self-destruction emerge as time goes on.
In broad terms, Non-First World nations are usually comprised of a small, all powerful elite classes that, to quote Fitzgerald, float “safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.” Their poor may constitute upwards of 90% of the population (Venezuela).
Their poverty is so institutionalized and resigned to fatalism, that it’s lived out more acceptably in its own sort of self-sustaining deprivation. In other words, the poverty of the Balkans or Eastern Europe’s “second world” is more so left to itself. Yes there’s alcoholism, illiteracy, malnutrition, domestic abuse, idleness, and minimal upward opportunity, but there’s also family and a social togetherness that can keep you from fully self-destructing. For instance, courts force the families of those sleeping on sidewalks to give account for why their son or daughter is homeless.
Conversely, America’s growing “street poverty” (especially on the West Coast) is worse because in its expanding numbers it has no such social safety net, save for the good souls of volunteer organizations and food banks. But even worse, the poorest aren’t left to themselves in their poverty; namely all those tent cities from L.A. to Portland are overrun with indentured drug abuse. Anyone ending up on the streets is actively pressured into drug addiction and prostitution that’s profitable for the criminal element working the streets.
And whereas poverty most everywhere else in the world is something you’re born into, I worry that America’s increasing “street poverty” is driven by the Americanized traps set for it through its two added options for self-destruction: 1) greater levels of personal debt and 2) rampant overprescribing of highly addictive Opiates (Percocet, Oxycodone), Benzos (Xanax, Klonopin), and Z-drugs (Ambien, Adderall), all three groups of which increase their user’s willingness to A) try street drugs (Heroin, Meth), B) try designer drugs (Cocaine, Ecstasy), and C) unsafely combine with prescriptions or mix with alcohol or “lean drink.” Not to forget how highly fatal Fentanyl continues saturating its way into A) and B).
Only America offers such a layered, complex, and dangerous drug reality.
In short, whereas poverty around the world is mostly born from itself, I worry America’s poverty is compounded by those also unable to keep up with the 9 to 5 life by way of personal debt and a cultural saturation of drug use.
