This might be a little off topic, so if it is, please feel free to remove it, I just needed to type this out in some way to get it off my chest.
I have always lived in a state of poverty. Since I was old enough to understand the concept of money and its value, I have realized that my family and I have never had much of it, barely scrapping by most of my life.
Even when it got better, it wasn't so much that we had “escaped” poverty, but instead, we started to make enough money to no longer be classified as poor, but still living paycheck to paycheck. I know what it means to be without food for days until the next paycheck hits, I know the stress that it caused my parents when they missed one day of work and because of that, we might have a utility shut off.
Despite all of this, every friend I have ever made has been someone that has been much MUCH better off than me.
I am not saying that I hold this against them, far from it, I am happy for them, but I cannot stand when they can't seem to grasp the fact that not everyone has the same privileges that they do.
I have gotten into arguments with my friends because I bring up the fact that I don't think billionaires should even exist in the first place.
I have tried to argue for the fact that people with that kind of money should be taxed more and more with a friend of mine who believes that taxation is theft.
I have tried to help my best friend understand that I cannot just go off and buy things because I do not have the ability to do so.
When I bring up poverty, I am met with the same excuses on how people can “stop being poor”, and when I try and refute these god awful attempts at a solution for a problem that has been around before any of us were even born, it just seems like I'm talking to a brick wall.
It feels demoralizing to hear that your friend has just sold their house and moved into a new one while your family still struggles with paying rent, rent that, in 5 and a half months time, will be raised to an almost unaffordable price (and to top it off the location is basically the ghetto of where I live).
I hate hearing how they hate going out to work when their job opportunities are so generous and pay so well that they make almost triple what my family makes in 2 weeks.
I hate hearing how they can afford nice new cars and misc things when I scrape by for the most basic of amenities.
I do not hate my friends. I am not envious of them, because I'm just not that kind of person. However, it fills me with rage when they talk about things like “Poor people have so many opportunities to better themselves”, or, “You could always just invest and make money that way”, or even, “Elon Musk worked hard for his money because he said so in this interview”.
None of them seem to understand that their world is something that the majority of families in America, families like mine, are not familiar with, and sometimes it just makes me feel sad and upset. Does anyone else have problems like this?