Moreover, what of those retail workers? Are they all lazy losers and we shouldn't bother with them? Or are they, partially, victims of circumstance?
Before I got cancer, I used to believe everything happened for a reason. I realize now that that belief can be very toxic. Why punish myself? Thats a choice.
That doesn't mean we need to be doomer. But we need to recognize some things are not in our control, and some things aren't even in anyone's control. And we shouldn't feel guilty about needing help, and we shouldn't punish ourselves out of some pursuit for bootstrap virtue.
Given that a lot of today's trouble are effectively caused by our economic systems being utterly rigged and heading for a hard crash - the former. Elections increasingly don't matter in practice, because fringes aside it's all the same shit just in different degrees of brown.
The only way left to take meaningful control is violence, which is consequently what we're increasingly seeing everywhere - be it escalating protests (e.g. BLM), individual murders (Luigi, Kirk) or executive overreach (ICE, police violence in general).
And that's not just a contemporary thing. Historically, the scale and brutality of violence has closely correlated with economic and wealth disparities - the French Revolution, the violent strikes around the turn of the 20th century and the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany are all directly linked to too few people becoming way too rich while the masses struggled to survive.
Perspective is important. Does life happen to you or are you in control of your life? Are you a victim or do you take control?
The idea that life sucks isn't new. It's been around forever.
The difference is today we have a global media that reinforces this idea to sell us products. A victim is a much more lucrative customer than someone who is empowered because they can be convinced they aren't capable of doing things themselves. Ever notice the "life is hard, pay us to take this off your hands" advertising?
Start looking for the victim mindset or the "life happens to me, I'm powerless" mindset in people. You'll see it all over. Then look at people who are busy and doing things and generally happy, they don't have this mindset. They're more mindful, is one way of looking at it.
If ya wanna be a sad sack victim, go for it, but don't be surprised when happiness passes you by because you never bothered to experience adversity and don't have the skills to navigate life or the ability to inconvenience yourself. There is a lot of happiness to be had, just gotta go find it or make it happen. One person's great experience is another person's bad time, perspective is what changes that. If your perspective is victimhood then you're never gonna have a good time. You're always gonna think you're depressed if that's your perspective on life.