The bottom line is that it takes income in order to pay or to try to stay current on bills -- as well as all those other responsibilities that adults have to successfully address, of which, whether that money is there to do so or not, those bills and incumbent responsibilities never seem to ever disappear or go away. One of the biggest bills, if not the biggest bill for most people, is the rent, or the mortgage (for those that own a home), which has to be attended to on a monthly basis. In recent years, home prices, have steadily been rising, typically making the home affordability index, less and less affordable and consequently problematic for many, but with historically low interest rates for those with good credit, this is somewhat mitigated. On the other hand, for those that choose to rent, or pretty much have to rent, as reported by cbpp.org, from 2001-2018, the median rent (including utilizes) when taken into account inflation rose 13%, whereas the median household income when taken into account inflation, has essentially been flat, with just a minute increase of .5% during that same time period. This so indicates that in a construct in which educational costs have skyrocketed within this same trim frame, as well as the same steady increase so occurring in healthcare, that the upshot is that a significant swath of the population are currently faced with trying to find some way to make ends meet, and must attempt to do this with income that has not materially improved.
Thus, what is happening for millions of households in America is that they are struggling mightily to make ends meet, because the wages that they are currently making, aren't in actuality, living wages; but in reality are just enough to give them the illusion that it is enough to perhaps make ends meet, when it really is not. Further to the point, when a multitude of households are teetering on the edge of insolvency, it only takes one unexpected negative event, to turn things from bad to much, much worse. This then creates the misery that should not be occurring all that often, for all those good people that are doing their part by laboring hard to have a piece of the American dream, but just aren’t able to achieve any sureness or stability to securely obtain such.
This is the richest nation that the world has ever known, but far too much of that wealth is tightly held in far too few hands, thereby leaving millions of Americans, without; and subsequently vulnerable to the misery of broken dreams, unpaid bills, evictions, bad health, and the like. While countries can be evaluated and measured by a multitude of scales, one of those measurements, should be how the average family is actually doing in the present day, and how much security that family has in regards to their income and especially in consideration of their debt obligations and bills that they are responsible to pay. In truth, all is not well in America, which is reflected in the divisiveness, fear, and incivility so often reflected in this modern age, which is indicative that too many good people are struggling to make ends meet, and are feeling the palpable hopelessness that it won't get better for them, anytime soon.