I agree with a lot of this, but as someone who lived at the near poverty level as a musician in NY City for about 20 years, then as a doctoral student for the next 10 years, and who has known many from poor and working class backgrounds who even now live as rather "poor" (financially) artists and are doing fine, there are other options.

One involves NOT living in a major metropolitan area. Also, just to take the clothing example, when I was temping on Wall Street I occasionally got mistaken for one of the bankers. Yet my entire wardrobe cost $100 and was purchased at various thrift shops.

I remember thinking we could not cut a penny from our expenses prior to March 2020. I decided to leave my job when the pandemic started and was concerned about not being ready for retirement. Somehow we cut $1000 a month starting in April.

And did fine (just eliminating eating out saved nearly $5000 a year, and amazingly, we don't miss it. Now we invite friends to public parks and do pot lucks, SO much more fun and delightful than paying ridiculous prices at restaurants.

The larger point is we (all of humanity) have to get together and learn to share.

Good luck with that, you say? I'm an incorrigible optimist, and I believe circumstances are going to force us to do that if we don't choose to first.