People don’t generally choose to be poor. Money may not buy happiness, but if you’ve ever been broke you know that having no money makes you pretty fucking unhappy—you’re eating ramen twice a day and hoping the unemployment check comes and buying eggs (the only “groceries” you can afford) with spare change and constantly thinking about how you don’t have money or a way to get money and how there’s no way, mathematically, you can pay your rent and electric bill. It’s like your brokenness is a big backpack of rocks you have to carry around with you at all times, and the straps dig into you until all you can think about is money and food and how you don’t have either. No one fantasizes about being poor except for well-off teenagers who romanticize being poor in the same doe-eyed, naïve way some kids fantasize about being orphans or hobo train-hoppers.
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