Just last week I had someone explode on me Thanksgiving night and physically assault me for a prolonged period of time, while saying things about my poverty and how I was born in poverty and would die in poverty, and trying to blame me for every bad thing that has happened in my life.
This is a person who has been to jail twice for federal property damage and a DUI, who has had several cars given to him by his parents, and who had to resort to a contract with the military in order to straighten himself out. He couldn't hold a job for the longest time and would steal from everyone around him. His parents have helped him again, and again, and again, while mine were just not there.
When a meth-dealing police officer who often stalked my friends and I planted drugs on me at the scene of an accident, I didn't have parents to back me up. Probably a dozen friends who had a parent that was a lawyer, but no one offered to help. I was railroaded by the system and received the maximum possible incarceration time. It didn't matter that I had witness testimony; I didn't have money.
So I am aware of how a socioeconomic safety net works. I am aware of the classist mentalities which keep these systems in place. If you aren't going to provide meaningful anecdotal data or answer my question, then please refrain from giving me a crash course in socioeconomics like the other couple dozen posters who beat you to the punch.
I'm not talking about daily bad decisions. I'm talking about things like: failing a college course needed for my degree program because of a bout of depression, but having parents who would pay for me to take the class again to pass it. I did that. A lot of people with professional parents have done that.
The poor and the working poor don't have that kind of safety net. The personal consequences of failure are far greater for them, and they experience those consequences at high rates, which one way they can get stuck in the rut of poverty for a long time.