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?

  • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
    0·
    11 months ago

    There’s just a lot of inequality in the US that is both socially and politically unacceptable in the rest of the developed world. Extremes are more accepted here.

    There are more extremely rich people than you would see in other Western countries and and many, many more extremely poor people than in other Western countries. Alleviating that would mean implementing policies to redistribute wealth that many Americans are not willing to implement, especially conservatives.

    The US basically sacrifices the good of the many for the great of the few.

    • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
      1·
      11 months ago

      Every American is a rich man who is temporarily down on his luck and making big societal changes would screw them over when they finally get their money.

    • SelfHigh5@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      And they manage to get poor people on board by tying their policies to Jesus and Family Values. And it works like a charm and it’s so weird.

      • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
        1·
        11 months ago

        Which seems even stranger. In many other countries, Christians vote left of center to promote economic equality, reduce poverty, get green policies to protect God’s green earth, make sure that everyone has universal access to healthcare and education, etc.

        In the US, they vote oppotite of that.

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    11 months ago

    1 in 8 lives in poverty (<20k for a 2 person household).

    1 in 4 has less than 1k in savings.

    1 in 2 has less money saved than last year.

    1 in 2 is living paycheck to paycheck

    But thanks to massive income inequality, the average American makes 59k a year.

      • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        This. If you are fortunate to have great employment (100k+, dual income preferred (so breaking 200+), depending on location), with good healthcare, your options are great, and you’ll access a higher level of service than most of the world can get. Great schools, great doctors, great home/car/vacations.

        If you don’t have that raw income, and therefore don’t have that support, america is a much much different place.

        I’m fortunate enough to have gone from very low class to a much higher strata and I never get comfortable. I’m constantly surprised by shit that just happens…easily.

        An example: by having good insurance, I have a very good dermatologist. I have psoriasis and use a biologic injectable to handle it completely. Once, my specialty pharmacy had some sort of shipping issue and I called my doc to check in. They said come by.

        They handed me 6 doses FOR FREE, so 6 months of medication, like it was nothing. Each dose is thousands of dollars cash. I pay 25$ with my insurance. I assume a vendor rep dropped a ton off.

        Point being, I know there are millions of folks on very expensive meds, who don’t have a high quality doctor relationship, who could never access that perk I did. Literally paywalled customer service.