You keep bringing up this idea of "minimum requirement in life", and I'm not really sure what you mean. It sounds like you are talking about the money that would be necessary to not be dead, and yes, that number is often fairly low. Even people in poverty spend their money on things that aren't essential to living. However, as many other have brought up, living in poverty is also very much mentally taxing. You have to account for the fact that money which you seem to think is wasted or frivolous, is often being used to help a person's mental health. If someone is living in poverty and buying a video game console and a TV, they are not just frivolously throwing away money on something that isn't a necessity, they are spending my money on something which allows them to escape and relax, which may give them the willpower and sanity to continue working a job that they hate.

Does the fact that an individual spent some money on a console mean that the cost of living isn't too high relative to wages? Of course not. This shouldn't even be a part of the conversation, because under this line of logic, there is no such thing as economic injustice as long as the workers are alive (more or less). Obviously, this is faulty reasoning. As previously stated, income inequality should be examined not through looking at whether a low level worker owns a TV, but whether their pay is what would be expected in a just economy. When a company is making billions of dollars as one of the most successful companies in the world, they probably shouldn't be paying their workers minimum wage as they kill themselves over doing physical labor at an inhuman pace.

Again, income inequality is a symptom of economic injustice, and it is not something that can be defended by saying "Well, the poor own TVs".

Take a FAFSA loan and go to a trade field. Congratulations, you just enter the middle class.

Actually, a lot of those countries that have "free health care" have high taxes and pay more for basic products as a result. Not to mention we pay for a lot of these countries' defense which is wrong on so many levels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SznOanekygY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoVb3DX85LA

Yep it's that easy for everyone.

It is easy, that is why people are able to get 100k loan for a stupid liberal arts degree.

We're talking about people who already have things like rent, utilities, car payments, childcare expenses, health insurance, etc and need income to continue paying for those things so dropping everything and going to school is not feasible, we're not talking about people who are just starting out and have nothing to lose.

Obviously what you propose is a very good option for some people but for others its not.

No, it is the best option going forward. You can't keep working two jobs and not expect the worse to come eventually. My advice is something millions have followed before.

Keep in mind if they are in a scenario where it's an old abandoned town, going to college probably won't fix their issue.

They need to move.

Most of the time if you want to end up well off, you've got to give a lot more than you would think you would. This usually doesn't become apparent until you're older though, so if you decided to get married, buy a house, and start a family, etc, while you were quite young and poor/broke to some degree, you now have even more to give up to achieve that goal, or you can learn to live with it.

This tends to be mostly faults of parents. Society has a role to play as well, but a small one. It's not their job to set your path, that's up to your parents and in the end, you. If you made a choice you regret, that's tough luck unfortunately. If you were lied to, tough luck. Parents who didn't care? Tough luck. Life's not fair and is full of wishes and regrets, but trying to put the majority blame on everyone else will just make things harder for yourself. It becomes obvious if you ever get past it.

Coming from a lower middle class family, to being in an upper middle class situation, where I feel wealthier than I am, I know for most people that 'good enough' is doable. You just have to be willing to give up a lot, focus, and always be willing to give that second effort. You also have to properly understand what money and time are worth, and more specifically, worth to you. Eventually you'll get where you're headed, if you've made a reasonable decision that is. Trying to be something you're not will almost never work out. Sometimes being yourself isn't what society demands, and so you don't get rich because of it, and will have to settle for whatever you can get. Many people do something they don't enjoy, but fits them personally, and makes them as wealthy as they would like to be. Everybody has their choices to make.

Now for the straight up poor or medically ill, well that's an unfortunate problem that's almost impossible to solve without screwing up the rest of the system which works pretty good. Which sounds horrible, but every other system that has tried to accomplish this task, no matter how useful it sounded, has never come close to offering everyone as a whole, the much improved life that westerners have. Until the day that system is born, and it surely won't be just a few adjustments to the existing system, people really have little choice but to just deal with what exists.

Life definitely can suck, and will suck at times, period. Personally, the way I looked at life, was that compressing as much suck as possible into portions of my life, allowed me to live more stress free going forward in general, and was better than dealing with a small amount of suck everyday consistently. Some look at it like I lost part of my earlier life, and I look at it like I gained a better life overall. Both are true, but they are just different viewpoints of life based on individual choices. It depends on what you want, and what you're willing to do to get it.

Oh honey who said I was done?? You should've seen the shit gutter I crawled out of. Where I'm at now is better than where I was. With these jobs I still manage to have somewhat of a social life, campaign for Bernie Sanders, and I'm working with several unions to help organize my coworkers to get better working conditions and benefits. The last two things are helping me gain connections I'll need to advance in the future. I'll rest when I'm dead.

The problem is that it shouldn't be this hard to move up economically especially in a country as rich as the US. With so many barriers in the way it's almost impossible for some and downright untouchable for others.

Even though I'm struggling I'm grateful for what I have because I know the situation I came from was much worse (I was homeless) and I know that others have it worse than I do rn. 

My goal isn't to climb the socioeconomical ladder and then just stop and close all the doors behind me. Instead I would like to use my position to make it so that no one would have to go through what I went through. We have a problem in America and simply blaming people is not going to solve it. I'll use whatever little privilege I have to help those that need it.