The southwest.

And owning a car is not optional here. Mass transit is a joke and many people travel 60 miles (96km) or more to work. Multi-Generation housing arrangements are on the rise. Not everyone has that option though and it shouldn’t be a requirement in the world’s richest economy. Fresh food of any kind in the US is more expensive than unhealthy processed foods in many areas, especially when you might have as little as 3-4 hours a day to clean, cook, eat, socialize, bathe, do errands, and decompress. I’m not unaware of how other people live, I’ve traveled and lived in those conditions myself, I just had the privilege to be able to come back to the US afterwards. What I think you’re missing though is something called Purchasing Power Parity. Things are vastly more expensive in the US, so a lot of that money is getting vacuumed up by those prices. And some of the things you mentioned like hot water are comparatively cheap because it’s been built into our infrastructure.

So would someone in a cardboard lean-to love to come live a working class life in the US? I’m sure they would but that doesn’t invalidate things like our workers dying due from preventable and treatable health conditions because they can’t afford medical care here.

What if your parents are dead, or abused you, or rent and aren’t allowed to add you to the lease?

Don’t own a car? For millions that means no way to get to work, no way to get supplies, isolation.

Not everyone has a lot of choice in where they buy food, especially with no car.

It sounds like you don’t understand how big the US is and how absolutely shit public transportation is. Where I live, I can get to town in 5 minutes by car. By Bus it would take 40 minutes. There is a 5:30pm bus that would get me home but if I missed it the next bus wouldn’t come until 8pm.