It is a self-help maxim of the privileged to say, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” But the folks at the bottom have to. What the privileged consider “small stuff” are precisely the trips and traps that foil the folks at the bottom: no bank account; no car, or one that can reliably get you where you’re going; no health insurance; several dollars short of a package of Pampers (and when you have a poopy baby and no diapers, I’d say “sweating” would indeed be in order). It isn’t simply that being poor means having less money than the privileged; it’s that being poor means living in a continual state
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