The lower class has been stepped on since the beginning of time. The easiest way to build a lot of wealth is to take a little bit from a lot of people. Because poor people are the most plentiful on the pyramid, any way institutions can scrape a little bit off the top, even pennies, will yield significant gains over time.
Often times poor people don't even realize they're paying a tax. Credit card companies place all the burden of fees, not on the credit-card holder, but on the vendor that accepts the credit card. How crazy is that?
This leads one to ask: "Wait, if businesses are being charged a 1%-3% fee to accept credit-cards, then why would they accept them in the first place?" The answer is deceptively simple: they make money doing it.
If they accept credit-cards, then people with the credit-cards will shop there. All the business has to do is account for the credit card fees by raising prices by like 1%-3% for everyone. Now anyone who shops at that store is paying for these fees without even knowing it via the increased cost of goods.
Maybe now you're thinking: "What about supply/demand and the free market?" If one store charges more for goods/services then people won't shop there and take the business elsewhere. Unfortunately, we're already way past that, and credit-cards won by a landslide.
The early adopters of credit cards simply matched prices in the beginning to stay competitive and used the extra business they received to make up for the losses. Once other businesses around them started accepting credit cards, everyone raised their prices together, and here we are.
And that's just hidden credit-card fees. What about the actual fees? I got an offer for a credit card today with 25% APR. What a deal. This kind of usury put's a person's own reputation up for collateral. If you mess up your credit score, it can be difficult to get a car or even find a place to live (renters included).
I've never had an overdraft fee, but it seems like everyone I talk to has. Banks will extend their customers a "line of credit" when they don't have enough money in their account to cover the charge, and then gouge them after the fact with a $30 overdraft fee.
This obviously only happens to poor people because only poor people don't have money in their account (for the most part). It costs the bank very little to extend this line of credit, but like a loan shark they will charge the poor people $30 for each infraction.
On top of that shit sandwich, banks have been known to purposefully reorganize charges so that someone trying to make sure they don't get overdrafted does anyway. You might put $100 in your bank account and then buy 5 different things for say $5-$10 each. The bank will see that the $100 hasn't cleared yet, but neither has the other 5 charges, and they purposefully put the 5 charges in front of the $100 deposit that came first so they can ding you for $150 in overdraft fees. These vipers have no shame.
A lot of these shady tactics were made illegal and banks have gotten in a ton of trouble for them. However, banks are so high on the important-people ladder that these fines are almost always lower than the money they made doing the crime in the first place. Capitalism at it's finest.
My roommate had a very late registration on his car and they charged him so many late fees the final tally was almost $1000. Again, poor people don't have the money to pay for stuff, so we just fine them over and over again until they finally cough up the money. Pretty gross.
Insurance and healthcare can also be a huge burden for the poor. Bernie Mac died of pneumonia because he didn't go to the hospital soon enough. That's how deep this stuff runs, even when they have the money to go to the doctor the upbringing and culture around going to the doctor kick in. Medical care is so expensive that it is culturally accepted and even encouraged to roll the dice and hope it all works out.
Celebrity Net Worth reports that Mac had a net worth of $15 million at the time of his death.
Dental work is another big one. If your tooth hurts, you should go to the dentist. However, people without the money just ignore it until the problem becomes a hundred times worse. I'm actually guilty of this right now. Hate the dentist, need to go... ignoring it for now.
Even the kind of food we eat plays a huge factor in healthcare costs. Those who eat low quality food and/or don't have the time/energy to exercise will pay the price later while not even realizing it. You get what you pay for. Time is money. A cheeseburger is no substitute for vegetables and lean meat.
There's also the issue of appearance and status in society. If you look like an unkept homeless person it's gonna be a lot harder to get a job. Culturally, status symbols are very important, especially when considering marginalized communities where the difference between getting a job could be writing Joe on the resume instead of Jose. Systemic racism lurking in the background definitely plays a factor in all of this.
Society loves to blame its problems on poor people. Why is there so much gang violence? Why are so many people overdosing on drugs? Why are there so many people in prison? It must be because people are bad! They should learn to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and stop being poor!
When in reality society is responsible for all these problems. The system is rigged and those at the bottom of the meat grinder get desperate as they get taken advantage of again and again and again.
These problems are going to get worse before they get better. The lower class doesn't have much left to give, and the elite has been targeting the middle class and pushing them down for a while now. Small businesses are being pushed out and the good jobs are being eliminated, automated, and outsourced to other countries. It's not looking great for the legacy economy, that's for damn sure.
I see crypto as the solution to all of this, but decentralized governance is slow to act and pick a direction. Also, decentralization is very inefficient. There doesn't seem to be enough lifeboats for everyone. We are all lucky to be here so early in the game.
