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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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[–] ctobrien84@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Don't confuse the difficulty of unionization with the lack of need/want. Most states are "at will", which means they can pretty much fire you for whatever, whenever. Couple that with low wages and poor social programs, and you have a vast amount of workers who can't afford to go on strike.

However, many of us are living comfortably, with decent wages, insurance, and paid time off. Folks from other places really tend to forget how many people are here, and just how varied the situations can be. It's not dire for many of us, but if you're on the bottom, the struggle is nearly insurmountable. Which, unfortunately, is by design. We're working on it though, just don't equate tv shows to an accurate depiction of a country of 300 million.

[–] FilthyHookerSpit@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Came here to say this. Living in New York is completely different than living in a small town in Wyoming. Might as well be two different countries. The available jobs, average wage and education can differ vastly depending on which state and which part of said state.