Really? I mean, if you're at an indoor venue like a Walmart or a museum, sure, but I can vouch for California being an extremely painful place to take a long walk across town. In SF every goddamn toilet in the Richmond district, Sunset district, Noe valley, Daly City, and everywhere outside the tourist hotspots are "customers only".

In LA it's even worse. Miles of streets even in the poshest neighborhoods with zero toilets. Once had to ask my GF to get access to a restaurant toilet and secretly let me in because if you're male they're usually for "customers only" but if you're female you get to use them.

It's kind of like if you had people redeeming bottles and cans and lived in section-8 housing.

But these people are going around in third hand bikes pulling hand fashioned carts, sometimes the carts are human driven if they don't have a bike.

The big difference is there is no shame in being a recycling collector, but there is shame in being a burden to society.

The rich in the US don't have any shame paying little if any taxes, buying tax loopholes, and corrupting government to get more socialism for themselves and removing it and economic fairness from everyone else.

They just use the money to buy drugs / alcohol and sleep outside because the recycling money isn’t enough for rent, but it’ll get you fucked up enough you won’t care.