So did I, but I don't regard someone a failure who deserves misery if they did not 'gather necessary skills'. There are a lot of reasons why someone might not be able to move past minimum wage work in life, not all of them their fault. Even if it is and they threw away every opportunity they ever had does that mean they deserve a lifetime of hardship?

> A citizenry has moral obligations to its society. Demanding handouts for minimal contribution does not create a strong society.

Our society provides trillions to oligarchs like Bezos. If we're OK with that then we should be OK with giving more to those who need it most even if they dont work "hard enough".

As we're seeing now, wealth and income inequality are at terrible levels. Wage stagnation has been hurting the middle class. Housing is becoming increasingly expensive as jobs centralize on cities. Gentrification pushes out the working class.

We have climate change bearing down on us, the effects of which are already being seen through mass migration, fires, hurricanes, and other disasters. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry would have us believe there are "two sides" to this argument so that they can continue to profit instead of adapting and doing the right thing. The first to feel it certainly won't be those of us making several hundred thousand dollars per year and looking down on those living paycheck to paycheck. It'll be those living paycheck to paycheck who feel it first.

Neither artists nor bartenders have the power over humanity that capitalists do.

I'm sure they've thought this through more than some random poster on Hacker News.

Because winning the birth lottery gets you to the top, otherwise if you're from somewhere else in the world...good luck.

Of course 7 billion people can't live like upper middle class americans. Upper middle class americans are going to have to bring their lifestyle down to a sustainable level.

We have a myriad of problems at this moment in time, some of them existential. I have very little sympathy for people who think we should maintain the status quo in the face of these problems.