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

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 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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[–] alphabetsheep@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

My guy you shouldn't have visited New Jersey... In all seriousness though, this is at least partly satirical right? There are definitely some tough spots in America like most places, but when I went to Europe and Scandinavia it was about the same.

[–] Thisfox@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 months ago

Hilariously it wasn't as awful as anyone jokes about when we went to New Jersey. Lived there a week and the people were nice. Great little ethnic supermarkets, smiling people, but yeah just like everywhere else, constant begging. Chicago was more like that stereotype really.....

I haven't spent much time in Europe, but people there didn't beg me for food, cry in the street, tap on my car windows begging for food and water, or attempt to steal my bag of groceries anywhere I have been in Europe. They did all those things in many different coties and even small towns in America. Not the same, in my opinion.