Can I ask a question?

[Rollingroller]

This question is not to offended or cause any form of upset. I just want to understand.

I'm just wondering do well of /heigh earners /middle class. well educated. People understand how hard it is for people who are Low earners , may not have had a good education or even a standard one. May have disability etc .

I see comments such as get therapy , move house, get a better job, do a course. Same with with children situation get them therapy. Get a diagnosis. Yet waiting list are often years of waiting .

When it's said it comes across like its so simple.

I don't think i have worded it very well. Hopefully some people will understand what I'm trying to say.

I think a lot of people don't understand how things are gut people in different situations from them

Unless someone has experienced it, they cant imagine what its like or assume that everyone is on the same level as them.

I think it’s quite ignorant of you to put the ‘might have a disability’ in the category for being a lower earner

No I don’t think they do.
I don’t think unless you have lived in poverty you can ever understand how it becomes ingrained in your very soul.
I have lived (and survived) in very real
poverty and it is bloody hard, it affects everything your health (mental and physical), education and you just feel at a loss.

Not everyone who has a good job and a good life started off like that. Many will have worked very hard to get where they are.
Not everyone has had everything handed to them on a silver platter.
You sound a little resentful OP, like these people are to blame for the misfortune of others

No not at all . I was asking a question. I even said in my op I do not mean any offence or upset . That I just wanted to understand. Please do not twist what I have said

What do you want the answers to be?

It's like where posters who live in London don't understand that public transport or delivery services in other parts of the country can be utterly dire.

They're stuck in their own bubble.

The fact is, I think you only truly understand your own lived experience.

Just as you op might feel empathy for a person living in a third world country but don’t truly understand their struggles with living in a make shift shelter with a shortage of food, clean water and little or no health care, and the threat of war, disease, natural disaster and death ever present.

I know the sort of person you mean. I was once talking to the young adult dc of a well-off friend and bemoaning the fact that our kitchen was too small to have either a tumble dryer or a dishwasher in it. "Why don't you just buy a bigger house, then?" was her solution to the problem!

I can just imagine that her solution to poverty would be to tell people to just get a better-paid job.

I personally don’t understand, no. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try and have empathy and compassion and concern for others.

No, they don't.

No-one can really understand a situation they've never been in.

It works both ways.

No most don’t.

the lack of freedom and choice or options that being poor brings. That you can’t take a risk because the stakes are so much higher. That there’s no safety net when something goes wrong. That’s the preserve of privilege that privileged people struggle to grasp.

I definitely have compassion and can easily understand how people end up in difficult situations, I really can.
I also find it hard sometimes to fathom the decisions that some people make which seem to sabotage their lives.
Eg - we employ a number of people. Most are fab. One is brilliant - she left school at 16 but she is focussed and driven, keen to learn, puts in so much effort and gets well rewarded for that.
Another employee, takes so much extra time off , we can guarantee after his football team has lost he won’t be in the next day, he’s great when he’s there but is pretty uncommitted. We’ve also offered him extra hours (he’s part time) but he’s not interested at all. Personally I don’t understand not wanting to work more (still reasonable hours!) but I figure, each to their own, but he can’t complain about being hard up.

What I have found, having worked in professional firms and then running my own business is that mental health issues are absolutely rife for people on lower incomes. Now I don’t know which comes first, lower incomes making life more difficult leading to mental health issues or MH issues leading to not being able to work more, leading to being poorer, but I strongly believe that people need a LOT more help with MH issues.