Twice I married a single woman raising two kids and much dependent on the grandparents. I raised them out of poverty, both times. They both had medical problems and were very relieved to have the medical insurance I was able to provide. Maybe it is you who are insulated and aren't looking where you need to be to understand. Tens of or maybe even Hundreds of millions of working class and middle-class people are doing what working class and middle -class families have done for decades, they work and maybe struggle sometimes but they get by and many of them even become affluent or maybe just comfortable. I have had hard times but we always had money in the bank because the stress of not having money in the bank was too much. We scrimped and saved, worked overtime or did without so we would always have a cushion. No credit card debt, always avoided that trap. We used the credit card but never bought anything that we did not have money in the bank to cover. Many years we paid the out of pocket max for medical bills but never did not pay the bills. My first wife had Rocky Mountain spotted fever and was in a coma for a week but survived, she was a type 1 diabetic, we got her an insulin pump when the were just coming on the market. She died of multiple organ failure as a complication of her diabetes at age 55. I did not live on the precipice of disaster I lived in the midst of disasters. I was working on the Space Shuttle during both the Challenger and the Columbia disasters. We evacuated for Katrina and I came back to a unlivable house with a tree down thru the roof and master bedroom ceiling with soaked drywall, mattress and carpet with mold already growing. We only traveled out of the country once, to maritime Canada. We did take the kids to Disney, Busch Gardens and Epcot when we lived in Florida.
Less people in the country live in poverty than ever before. Even the poor today live much better than the poor half a century ago. When I met my wives, they were receiving SNAP benefits. When I was growing up some of my father's siblings' families were getting food stamps when they were out of work. The textile mill (a major employer) in the town I grew up in closed and laid everyone off including my father. He started his own business, money was tight for a while, but I did not feel poor.
None of my stepchildren, 4 of them, ever went hungry or homeless even though before I met their moms, they were poor. Their moms had family that would help even though the families were not well off.
I wonder if some people struggle so badly because they have no support network, no sharing, trying to be independent when they can't. Aren't willing to admit they need help. After her mom died, one of my stepdaughters was in tears and in great distress because she was out of work, owed the IRS a bunch of money for taxes on income from a gig she had, and had run up some credit card debt but had not filed for SNAP or unemployment, had hidden this all until she just couldn't anymore. I helped out and after a couple bad years she bounced back.
I don't know what you mean when you say, "does not mean everything is fine." We will always be far from utopia. Everything is never fine, sometimes some things are fine but there are always things that are a mess. At least right now not so many young men are dying in the desert or jungle and we actually cleaned up a lot of rivers and lakes. It is hard to feel like things are so horrible when they used to be so much worse.
TEK
