There is a grain of truth, here.
To explain, one of the original *reasonable* arguments in favor of Social Security at its inception (ignoring what it was really intended to be, a nationalized retirement system run by the government for all), was that people in low wage jobs could not possibly live and save enough for a retirement at any age.
This was true, but was not just based in national, but also state and local “price economics”. For example, say in one place (not back then, of course), the hourly wage is $10/hr; but in another place, the wage is $20/hr. It can almost be guaranteed that home and apartment rental at the second place will be twice as much as in the first place, as well as all other prices.
So the *net* of workers in either place will be subsistence, and not a penny more. Very little savings, and nothing for retirement.
Even today, millions of people are living “a month behind”, paying for rent, transportation, food, health, and everything else on credit. And as soon as they are paid, their entire paycheck, less taxes, goes to pay off their credit. This means they have no “fat”, and if they lose their job, they are instantly homeless, unless their landlord gives them a second month of credit.
And, either in the Great Depression, or the Obama Depression, these people realize how close to the bone they have to live, and how precarious their livelihood truly is.
They are just as stuck in poverty as are those on welfare, and they have zero upward mobility. So “just jobs” offer them nothing.
But how to get out of the morass?
Every scheme that has been tried, including education, seems to have been corrupted to make things worse for them, to in effect “keep them down”, and prevent them from rising from poverty into the middle class.
And to make things much worse, the same “helpful” individuals whose help instead “keeps them down”, are doing their level best to drive the middle class into poverty as well. This is why we see such great “egalitarians” as Obama causing the rich to get richer, the middle class to get poorer, and the poor to get forced onto the charity rolls.
What is truly needed is to shake up the system so that the middle class and poor can accumulate wealth without it being parasitized by either the government or the marketplace, leaving them impoverished.