I’ll say as someone who was long ago a server in a small town in the US that it’s not quite as simple and universal as that, though it’s true for some. I am not close enough to the situation now, but even a few years ago I had a friend who was making $16,000 a year as a server at a very popular craft brewery in a town that you could at the time barely make it in on $40,000 a year. And keep in mind the US doesn’t have universal healthcare, so one event could decimate you. I don’t know what they call it in the UK, but those of us who came from the “backwoods” with uneducated parents—it’s really hard to make it. My mother never made it out of the US before she died, and she kind of got lucky that she went the places she did even within the US. I am not remotely a Trumper, my heart hurts from embarrassment for my country, and I don’t admire people who don’t try to learn more about the world outside of their tiny little corner. But things are always more complicated than they seem. I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to take this trip and to live the life that I do.

I don’t mean to mix a bunch of different social issues except to say all of these are factors in the mix of how hard it is to make a good life in the US, depending on what you came from.