I went through two life-saving surgeries, and one that improved my quality of life so much I sometimes can't believe it myself. Have four degrees, currently doing a PhD that doesn't feel like a decade-long indentured servitude. Debt, medical or otherwise? Zero.

And I worked shitty jobs through more than half of that education just to support myself. It was miserable despite all the safety nets I could get. Not even for a moment I thought "that person's life is nowhere as shit as mine, give me their social aid!" It's not collective responsibility or socialist indoctrination or whatever polysylabic name substacks crowd[0] made up for it. No, it's basic humanity and empathy. We can talk about those. We can talk about differentiating self-interest vs avarice, from ethics to economics (hell, you no doubt have means to school me on both). But having a talking point about how others not suffering through same burden is making you feel bad by diminishing whatever 'sacrifice' was made is some kindergartner-level problem the author has to grow through.

Exercise for the reader: convince me I'd fare better, or at least not worse, under American conditions.

[0] - EDIT: For the record, I don't particularly care for their political views. Or, for that matter, yours. Hell, I like you the same either way. This is just my new blanket term for their generally shoddy scholarship, from misapplying geology and biology to fumbling at basic modelling, they seldom speak with any of that reason or rationality they espouse.