This is today's USA, 80% living paycheck to paycheck, and 20% living fat.
We don't like to think of ourselves as being a part of a class based system, however, the dominant culture is made up of a minority of wealthy individuals who are able to buy nice things, afford good health care, and basically live a life free of worry.
The common person will not be able to escape their tier of this class based system, it's designed that way, if you weren't born into wealth, for the most part, you will not be able to attain it.
Among the many reasons people of poverty cannot escape poverty is the inability to buy nice things, if you are a poor person, you buy the cheap car, you buy the cheap shoes, and you buy the cheap bed.
Not that you couldn't save up and buy an expensive car, it's just that in order to afford even a cheap car you pay a price in other areas of your life, it's harder to afford the bed and the shoes, also the cheap car breaks more often, or altogether, so you have to replace it more often.
Being poor means that you are subject to more ecological racism, so you are more likely to get sick from environmental exposure to toxins, no wealthy person wants to live near the fiberglass factory, being poor also means you don't get a voice, when it comes to stopping the fiberglass factory all together, politicians don't listen to people who don't have money.
When you are poor you also don't get the common courtesy granted to people with money, and forget professionalism, whether at the store, the library, the doctor or the park, poor people face a lower level of treatment, they are talked down to, looked down on, and discredited, people who are poor are treated as if they are not as intelligent, and as if they are worth less than their wealthy counterparts.
We as a society have agreed we won't discriminate against people for a wide verity of cause, race, gender, age, religion, creed, or code, we agree to treat all equally based on those standards, but where money is concerned, we are altogether accepting of discrimination, and discriminating against the poor is actually encouraged in most areas.
You can't afford to park? Go away. You can't pay rent? Shuffle on. You don't have any money? You must be here to steal.
We as a society need to understand that poverty is actually caused by the minority ruling class of largely white men, and that the rest of us, we are second class citizens.
