I was born and raised just above dirt-poor, by American standards; e.g., lived in a poor area (now a full-fledged ghetto), we reused milk to each have a bowl of cereal with the same milk, we wore all hand-me-downs, any toys we had were hand-me-downs from church friends, nobody in my extended family had ever graduated high school, we never left the state once, we ate at restaurants a few times ever, etc. Both of my parents’ parents were absolutely dirt-poor and entirely uneducated. My maternal grandma couldn’t even read.
I worked my fucking ass off as a teenager, starting at 13, making minimum wage for 2 years at various jobs; I slowly upgraded my job status to the point where I was earning almost 3 dollars an hour more than minimum-wage by the time I was 19, and I was proud of that at the time.
Needless to say, I didn’t go to college (nobody paid for that and I certainly didn’t have the money).
I became motivated by learning how much profit some of the customers I helped were making as entrepreneurs (always being nosy and asking questions, etc.), and I started a half-ass business at 22 years old. I made a little bit of money and learned some new skills burning the midnight oil till 3am for months, which translated into a sort of graphic design job, now making more money. I got acquainted with web design and web development just by reading stuff on the Internet and reading books, seriously burning the midnight oil. I worked my ass off nonstop and never stopped trying to learn more and more. Fast-forward 6 years and many hundreds of hours studying, and I was earning almost $200,000 a year as a software engineer.
Nobody gave me anything. Minimum-wage was much lower, inflation adjusted, when I started out. I started out at a huge deficit with a poor family that was uneducated and did not steer me in any particular direction. Yet, I made it.
The moral of my story is that all of the “adversity” that I experienced was exactly what made me successful. Earning minimum-wage is for people who are starting out for people who can’t make it past there. I certainly didn’t deserve more than minimum wage money earned it; but I’ll tell you what, I did deserve more when I got there, and I didn’t have to be thankful for it, because I earned it. Nobody deserves anything by default, not even clean water. Everybody has the freedom to make their own choices, including how to create a safe and clean society. It’s not the job of some government overlords to fix everything for us plebeians by passing laws. It’s our job. It’s our world, until we give it away to hucksters masquerading as our saviors.
Listening to people on here whine like groveling animals about how they deserve this and deserve that, because life is expensive, like that’s somebody else’s job to fix for them... imagine trying to describe your woes to an Irish immigrant, who just came home from a 12 hour day at the same factory where he lost his finger a few months back; and you’re typing your message out to this laborer on your $1400 phone.
Some people won’t make it; that’s OK. It sucks, but it’s how life has always been for every species since the beginning of life on Earth.