> Just being born in the US already makes you a top 10%
Our family learned how long-term hunger (via poverty) is worse in the US because there was no social support network we could tap into (for resource sharing).
Families not in crisis don't need a network. Families in crisis have insufficient resources to launch one. They are widely scattered and their days are consumed with trying to scrape up rent (then transpo, then utilities, then food - in that order).
> that is what ad-infested society does to everyone… you end up spending money on you sure think you were going to already
Your followup example of this is an impulse buy that happened adjacent to ad exposure. For that particular confluence, your theory could bear out.
But I'm not sure folks do that with any regularity. And for folks who rarely impulse buy or don't see/hear ads in spaces they control - I don't think they run into it.
The very language of religion is rooted in political and economic struggle. Concepts such as "guilt," "sin," and "redemption" originally emerged from ancient debates regarding debt, law, and social obligation. During the "Axial Age," major world religions like Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam developed specifically to address the social dislocations caused by the rise of markets, coinage, and professional armies. For example, the biblical "Law of Jubilee"—which mandated the cancellation of debts and freedom for bondservants—was a direct political intervention into the economic sphere. Similarly, the Christian concept of "redemption" was originally a financial term referring to buying back something (or someone) held as security for a loan.
I offer that intersection isn't definition. To run across politics and then need to navigate it doesn't transform an entity into a political one.
Folks who have transformed their faith into a political entity tended to utilize methods and beliefs that fall outside of the scope of the faith's founding principles (ex: Republican Jesus).
You're not going to find, with me, a realm of life that's not fundamentally political—"the personal is political," and one's religious choices are social choices fundamentally shaping your relations to others. Think of Siddhartha Gauthama—his renunciation was a withdrawal from a governing class, not just from private life and, in his final instructions, the Buddha is portrayed as telling the monks to govern themselves on the model of the Vajjian republic: regular assemblies, harmony, shared resources, and respect for agreed rules.
Jesus was very political. The archetype of the Messiah was understood to be explicitly political in the context of liberation from Roman occupation. Overturning the tables of the moneychangers was political. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and Render unto God what is God's" is political. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God", "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.", "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.", "Let the dead bury their own dead." All political.
"Supply side Jesus" obviously has nothing to do with Jesus' actual teachings but the faith's founding principles are inextricable from politics because those principles are inextricable from the followers' relationship with the world and its power structures.
As measured in knowledge utilized during basic living: The lives of lords were much less complex than that of modern poor people.
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