THE RICH DON’T KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS TO BE POOR

It’s a curious trick of the mind to stand on a marble floor and accuse the man drowning in mud of not trying hard enough to climb out.

The rich have always cherished a good story.
They recite it like gospel:
“If you just worked a little harder, woke up a little earlier, believed a little deeper—you’d be one of us.”

But they never mention the hidden toll, the silent surcharge life slaps on the wrists of the poor.
Because poverty isn’t merely the absence of money.
Poverty is the most elaborate paywall ever constructed.

The poor pay for everything twice when they have nothing once.
They pay interest on the cheap shoes that crumble in six months.
Interest on the battered car that devours repair bills faster than it drinks gasoline.
Interest on stress, because when you live at the edge of survival, health becomes a luxury you can’t afford.
Interest on time itself—hours evaporate in queues, waiting rooms, and dead-end jobs that never pay enough to let you breathe.

Meanwhile, the rich buy things once—good shoes, good schools, good doctors—and call it thrift.
They marvel at their own efficiency, their own foresight, never pausing to wonder how it feels to watch your wages combust the moment you earn them.

The myth of laziness is deliciously convenient.
“Poor people are lazy.”
It lets the rich sleep soundly, untroubled by the reality that most poverty is engineered.

The truth is that it costs more to stay poor than to get rich.
It costs more to rent than to own.
It costs more to borrow than to save.
It costs more to work three jobs than to be paid fairly at one.

If laziness were the problem, it would be the easiest problem to solve.
But what we call laziness is often exhaustion wearing a borrowed name.
It is the fatigue of never catching up, never getting ahead, never being allowed to imagine a different ending.

There are fees no bank will ever list on a statement.
The cost of watching your child get sick because you can’t afford the clinic.
The cost of saying no to a field trip because lunch money already feels like a negotiation with the universe.
The cost of losing your smile because survival swallowed it whole.

These are the expenses the rich never tally.
These are the debts no bailout ever forgives.

And yet, somehow, people keep trying.
They wake before dawn.
They lace up cheap shoes that will fail them again.
They swallow their shame like medicine and step into a world that charges extra for their existence.

If that isn’t work ethic, what is?

The next time someone in polished shoes tells you how simple it is, how easy it would be to bootstrap your way to the top, remember this:

It is easy to climb a ladder when you were born on the third rung.

But some people are scaling walls with no rungs at all.
And they are not lazy.
They are tired.
They are overcharged.
They are still fighting.

That, in itself, is a feat richer than gold.

#PovertyTax #ClassMyths #TheCostOfSurvival #InvisibleDebts