I’m actually shitting on that opinion, that “lazy people who don’t bother to work are destroying the traditional family dynamic of American society” nonsense but I guess not being from around here the dry sarcasm doesn’t come across as well as I’d have hoped.

And yeah, coming from a position of poverty does cause further crime, but the solution that people should just “suck it up and get a job” ignores the realities that there are unimaginable hurdles for many people to be able to make any meaningful change in that regard (education, transportation, hell it might even be difficult to be presentable - consider the extreme example of homelessness). Upward mobility is only possible if someone somehwere gives you a chance, and as a society we’ve backed off of that significantly, if we were ever good at it at all.

Assistance programs can help, and should be well-funded and not shamed; currently this is possibly the only way out for many.

But it all comes back to systemic issues; even with assistance, everything is designed to keep the “poors” down, as an example to the middle class of what’ll happen to them if they start to question the status quo and how they’re being squeezed. It’s expensive to be poor.

So what happens when you live in a place that kicks you when you’re down, and you don’t even have the ability to get around it?

You stop giving a fuck, and you form stolen ATV gangs for kicks.

Fight for a more equitable society, homies. It’ll be a better world for literally everyone.