Blaming this on bread and circuses alone is as tone deaf as the article with regards to the problems with poverty in this nation. To be fair, there is a real li

Blaming this on bread and circuses alone is as tone deaf as the article with regards to the problems with poverty in this nation. To be fair, there is a real limiting of opportunity as education is increasingly used as a caste delimiter. However the real issue still is financial insecurity: * Consider that 1 in 5 people people today struggle with paying the rent and face rental insecurity (https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rental-insecurity-the-threat-of-evictions-to-americas-renters/ https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rental-insecurity-...). * Before you claim that they should be buying instead of renting, also consider that you have to have a good credit rating to buy (which automatically cuts off 1/2 of the population; average credit rating is 700: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/10/average-fico-score-hits-an-all-time-high.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/10/average-fico-score-hits-an-a...) and you have to be able to put down at least 10% which varies widely in the US (https://www.zillow.com/home-values/ https://www.zillow.com/home-values/) but would probably require at least 20,000 in savings. If you have money in savings you probably don't have rental insecurity. In fact median net worth is $200 according to the last US survey here (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf), and mean net worth is _negative_. In short, the majority of people in this country can't afford to buy and they will not be in a position to buy anytime soon, if they are still worried about not getting evicted. * Almost 14% of households in the US have food insecurity (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/interactive-charts-and-highlights/#trends https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...). That's nearly 1 in 7. So much for the "bread" part of the theory. You think any of those people can afford to invest in the stock market, create new businesses, or take on any risk that could threaten starvation of their families? Do you think they can afford to send kids to college without taking loans? * And a voice on the internet, a printing press to the least advantaged? 89% of people have a computer at home, but that means at least 10% don't. That 89% number is so high because the stats include smartphones (https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/acs/ACS-39.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...). Unless they go to the library to use the computer, they are not in the "public" internet discourse. And you better bet that all these categories are intersectional. 99% of serfs. Gah. There is still real poverty in this nation, people afraid of starving, people afraid of having nowhere to live, worried about underemployment, a laughable opportunity at higher education, no real way to climb up the social ladder, and it is not yet getting better. The imbalance is only being talked about because it is becoming increasingly difficult for the upper 80% who don't have these issues to perceive themselves as part of the 1%.