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Fast Food Now a Luxury, Says 78% of Americans
(www.lendingtree.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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When I was younger, I enjoyed watching this local TV show "Luxury Trap" (translated from the original Swedish "Lyxfällan") as kind of a guilty pleasure. I am not gonna lie, I watched it for the "feel good factor" of "at least I am not as miserable as these people" - which is probably the reason most people watch it. The whole premise is that these self-proclaimed financial experts help people who are in deep debt to get back on their feet by helping them sell valuables and pay off the worst in short term, and set up a pay off plan for the long term, and then bam, all fixed. Along the way there is a lot of shaming the indebted people for their life choices, mainly stuff like buying fast food, snacks, and sometimes some bad spending habits or gambling problems. It's a 30 minute formula that always gets happily resolved by the end, and is followed up ONCE after one month with a perfect "thank you I'm cured" response, the entire theater part is thinner than a white guy's skin. It's just milked for drama all the way through.
Every episode follows the exact same formula and after a while you start to understand that it's all about just kicking down on the people who have deeper issues than just being slightly irresponsible with their snack money, having been ground down by the shitty life they are dealt, but it sells like crack, they are probably at something like season 30 now. Disgusting, really, even if I personally find fast food to be devil's work
I really hate that show. It has done immense harm miseducating the public about what poverty is and what it looks like. The people on the show are never truly poor, they always have a reasonable income and some assets. Many of them are home owners. And they're presented like absolute clowns whose only problem is being too stupid to do basic math.
The show never explores issues of mental health or economic marginalisation. The people on the show never have trouble finding gainful employment, if needed the show runners will set up interviews for them. People on the show never experience unforeseen expenses and it is never explored how hard frugality actually is in a society where everyone seems hellbent on making you spend money all the time.
No, poverty can be solved simply by selling your dumbass second caravan and stop eating fastfood every night.
Yeah, I just need to say your critique is spot on.
But even for the more well-off middle-class people shown in the show, it's never as easy as just "wow thanks for telling me I should not be buying so many snacks, I am gonna be debt-free now!", the shitty buying and debt patterns are usually some kind of a coping mechanism for a deeper problem