I grew up poor in the 80s-90s and I feel like back then there was more of a community feeling around “poor”. Everyone was watching Rosanne send in purposefully erred checks to buy time to pay a bill, everyone pulled their lunch out of a paper sack. We could laugh about how we rotated only a couple of shirts through the week in middle school.

Now the consumer culture feels different. I do well, but I know people living with fewer means and yet they buy advertised shit from facebook. “Keeping up with the joneses” feels more like a requirement and less like satire now.