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How poor is the average American? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Kushia@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I've been watching a few American TV shows and it blows my mind that they put up with such atrocious working terms and conditions.

One show was about a removal company where any damage at all, even not the workers fault, is taken out of their tips. There's no insurance from the multimillion dollar business. As they're not paid a living wage the guy on the show had examples of when he and his family went weeks with barely any income and this was considered normal?!

Another example was a cooking show where the prize was tickets to an NFL game. The lady who won explained that she'd be waiting in the car so her sons could experience their first live game, because she couldn't otherwise afford a ticket to go. They give tickets for football games away for free to people where I live for no reason at all..

Yet another example was where the workers got a $5k tip from their company and the reactions were as if this amount of money was even remotely life changing. It saddens me to think the average Americans life could be made so much better with such a relatively small amount of money and they don't unionize and demand far better. The company in question was on track to make a billion bloody dollars while their workers are on the poverty line and don't even have all their teeth?

It's not actually this bad and the average American lives a pretty good life like we're led to believe, right?

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[–] Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world 41 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Disability (which I paid taxes for, to protect me from poverty if I became disabled) pays a whopping $914/MONTH.

I sell nudes to afford basic necessities.

They also have an asset cap of $2,000 which hasn't changed since 1974. Basically, if I have more than $2k in my bank (or in any valuables like comics or coins) at any time, they take away my food and Medical insurance. If adjusted for inflation, it would be $13k. I'm drowning and lucky I'm an attractive girl, otherwise I couldn't afford to survive.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There are a lot of awful things here but to focus on just one, holy shit monthly rent could go over the asset cap in a few years.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 5 points 11 months ago

It already is in the more expensive cities like Denver or San Francisco.

[–] lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah disability is intentionally designed to be awful. You can only have it of you're dirt poor and it pays so little that you will always be dirt poor. God help you if you live in a place where it's hard to get separate housing assistance, that has poor EBT benefits, a state that fucked over medicaid, etc. God help you if a family member tried to assist you in some way and now you have ever so slightly too much money. It's a really messed up system considering how hard it is to get ln disability, meaning that the vast majority of people who have it aren't scamming the system as some people might like us to believe.

[–] Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

I had to lawyer up and fight to prove I was disabled, even though I had medical documentation of seizures, severe Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Tachycardia, etc. If you don't have a lawyer, they automatically deny you. Lawyers only get paid if they win, so if you're not lawyered up, they assume you weren't bad enough for a lawyer to take the case.

I contacted a senator in my state and she basically told me that Social Security is going to run out, so the cap hasn't changed because only people with no other choice will be on disability, and it'll last longer