This is a very materialistic culture. All around us the story is told that to be successful and live life to the fullest you have to make a lot of money, own expensive things, the latest gadgets, sports cars, mansions, be surrounded by beautiful men/women on your own yacht, etc. Few would deny that people with such material success "have it made" or are "living the life".<p>That's what many people's whole lives are focused around. Their families often pressure them to be (or at least dream of their being) rich doctors or lawyers (or, more recently, tech billionaires), etc.<p>If you don't make it in these material ways, for whatever reason, you're often viewed as a failure, as a loser, still living in mom's basement, and so on. You might be working at a shitty job, making very little money, being treated like crap or a replaceable cog, unlikely to ever afford to retire, watching your family (who are also poor) be bankrupted by medical bills or not being able to afford the medical treatement and care they need as they grow older.<p>None of this is likely to help your self-esteem, it might even make you depressed (surprise!), and when you run in to psychological or physical difficulties from your decades of working at a no-future job and being treated like crap while others in the media or in rich areas of town are sipping cocktails or going vacationing in exotic locales while you continue to sweat it out at the factory or the call center or the online retail warehouse where you're even penalized for taking bathroom breaks and can't afford to go on vaction (if you get any), you might feel like you're on an endless treadmill and you might actually start to have trouble coping. Imagine that.