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unhinged
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'...to diminish the real hardship faced by the poor in the united states solely because it is usually not as crushing as suffering elsewhere - and i say usually, because in some poor counties in america, conditions and life expectancy actually *do* rival those in some of the poorest nations on earth - is neither a logical nor an ethical response to that hardship...if the median income is well above your own, you will be effectively priced out of the market for any number of opportunities; as such, even if you are objectively richer than someone in bangladesh or ghana, the life you will be able to carve out for yourself *in the place where you actually live* will be far removed from the mainstream there.
...if anything, to be poor in a rich country, where one's worth is sadly too often presumed to be linked to one's possessions (unlike in a poor country, where people still know better) is to foster a particularly debilitating kind of relative deprivation. to be poor in a place where success is synonymous with being rich and famous increasingly means finding oneself voiceless, ignorable, criminalized and perceived as disposable. to live in a place where wealth is not only visible but flaunted, where the rich make no pretense to normalcy, and where one can regularly hear oneself being berated on the airwaves as losers and vermin and parasites *precisely because you are poor or working at a minimum-wage job*, is to be the victim of a cruelty that the citizenry of poor nations do not as likely experience. in a nation where poverty is distressingly normal for the vast majority, the poor are still likely to be viewed as belonging equally to a common humanity, unlike in a wealthy and powerful nation like the united states, where the humanity of poor people, and certainly their right to full citizenship, are increasingly under attack.' - tim wise
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181007
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