A few weeks ago, saw a random Reddit post from someone who had been homeless, and finally was in their first apartment. They showed the food and cooking supplies they had bought, and were lamenting that they spent so much on that, they only had $18 to last the rest of the month. And, based on what she had spent, she could really only eat one meal a day anyway.
Some actually kind-hearted folks responded, breaking down the food purchase choices made. There were a LOT of "convenience" items on her counter -- things like pre-shredded hashbrowns, pre-cooked chicken fajita slices, etc. It was clear that she really didn't have any idea how to cook or put meals together. Folks broke down for her things like "you spend $3 on a 1 lb bag of shredded hash browns that you'll get three servings out of. For $2.50, you could have bought a 5 lb sack of whole potatoes that you can bake, mash, roast, etc. You bought pre-cooked chicken, 12 oz for $6. You could have bought 3 lbs of chicken leg quarters for less than that. Roast them, and you have 5 meals."
Poverty itself is a poverty trap. One thing goes wrong and you get a $50 late charge, then you can't afford groceries next week. And you spend too much on groceries because NOBODY ever taught you how to actually cook and use whole, simple ingredients. It struck me at the beginning of the pandemic, when certain things were hard to find....I went into a Dollar General that was near my barber shop. I was able to get TP, in a 4-pack. I was able to get a single container of bleach wipes. First, because panicking suburban women with money weren't swarming the store and buying 4,000 rolls of TP at a time. But also because the kind of people who shop at Dollar General do NOT buy "in bulk," because they can't afford to buy in bulk. They have $75 a week to spend on groceries and necessities. So, they buy their TP 4 rolls at a time. Which ultimately costs MORE. It's the old Terry Pratchett "boots" theory of socioeconomics:
To bring it back to this topic, so many of the people who suffer on the economic margins don't realize that the very people they just voted for are those who most support the most predatory economic model possible. MORE fines, MORE late charges, MORE "free market" to fuck over and extract every possible penny from the poor, because while they don't have MUCH money, a little money from 100 million people added together is a lot of fucking money.
And yes, the Democratic party's failure to face that phenomenon head-on in recent decades has made them a less attractive alternative. People picked the Leopards Who Will Eat Their Face as opposed to the Leopards of Indifference. It's dumb as hell.....but the Leopards of Indifference are not without blame.