This is deliberate

Keep people on the edge of ruin, and threaten their healthcare if they dare leave an exploitative employer

Slavery never went away in the US, it merely expanded to include more people and was rebranded as "the free market", or "rugged individualism" or some bullshit

German, here.
I failed my first college degree, and finally got one (a BSc in ecology) on the second attempt after 10 years of fucking around and procrastinating, with a grade equivalent to a C.
I've never had a full time job in my life, always worked between 24 and 32 hours a week, with 4-5 weeks of vacation per year and unlimited sick days.
I didn't inherit anything.
And I am now 200x richer than 40% of Americans, with free healthcare and a decent pension set up on top.

I realize I'm very privileged, but your country is just fucked.

Trump/Epstein class: "They still have money we could plunder!"

I've never understood why people get so excited about tax refunds, but this provides some context.

Aged like wine

Just-in-time economics.

I see it every day and I've been there.

It wouldn't be surprising to find out that this is skewed towards young adults and seniors.

I was the young person with next to no savings and facing a nearly impossible situation of "saving" anything. Lots of us leave home in our teens with nothing or close to it. Then it's a struggle just to get all the pieces in order, and all the while, the pieces you already managed to get in place break down, get stolen, need fixing, need replacing, and so on. That first step of just keeping your head above the water is not easy, especially without support.

And then towards the later years, peoples' health fails them. They find it harder to keep a job and harder to make the same money they did when they were younger. Healthcare is expensive, even with insurance. Husbands and wives pass away, leaving you with the financial fallout. Even if you saved, the true costs of inflation come when you go to buy food and medicine and even when you need to pay someone to fix your car -- regardless of what the official numbers are.

Granted, "cash savings" means even people who are otherwise relatively well off in terms of assets fall into this category. So, it's also not a great assumption to assume that all these people are in difficult/dire situations.

I have my deductions set up where I always owe $50-200 when tax time rolls around. Those fuckers are not getting all of it upfront.

Savings? Lucky them. I have debts...

That tracks with my experiences. It's partly lack of money, but it's partly financial irresponsibility. A lot of Americans are so used to crisis and struggle that they treat every windfall as a treat because they think that their savings slowly fading away or getting eaten in a few chunks is a problem rather than evidence of crises they didn't have to suffer through. Add in the fact that their lifestyles rise to match their income and there's no room for savings.

That's not enough to resolve the big stuff, a low earner isn't buying a house on saved tax returns. But a medium income household might be, and a low income household may be setting themselves up for disaster by buying too expensive of a car because they can afford the payments.

Too few Americans understand that living paycheck to paycheck should be seen as dire financial straits. The goal should be a few months expenses in savings, and if you can take a lifestyle hit to get there you should. My wife and I live in a studio apartment because we were worried about draining our savings too quickly while unemployed.

What does cash savings even mean? I would assume that most people have their savings in a bank account...

Wow, I had no idea that Americans were that poor. And here I thought I was poor.

This has been true since $500 was worth $1000, iirc

Gotta pump those percentages up!

Signed: The billionaires.