As an anecdote, I attended a bankruptcy proceeding at a federal court in Redding where one woman had a cancer medication pump tube going in her nose. She lost all of her savings and almost everything else due to insurance not covering expenses.. and she’s Stage IV. Imagine involuntarily dying painfully and going broke simultaneously. This is worse than suicide because while otherwise healthy it’s a choice, cancer rarely is.
The contributing factors are:
0. The very, very rich have corrupted government to work primarily in their interests.
1. Technology has increased productivity and eliminated need for as much human effort.
1.5. Oversupply of labor leads to low pay.
2. People remaining in work have lost real wage gains correlatively with the decline in organized labor and rise in desperate workers both domestic and migrants, and as such, employers do nearly whatever they want to employees.
3. Outsourcing and closure of domestic production (globalization).
It will take another Roosevelt to save capitalism with some stabilizing half-measures, or the path is marching towards decline and likely rapidly-precipitating, populist communism like Venezuela. A third option that would work, but will not be considered without some violent and nonviolent force of the people: strong, appropriate regulation, removal of wealth welfare for the rich, fixing the tax code to eliminate loopholes for the rich, non-capitalist-influenced leadership and comprehensive investment in health, wellbeing, social services, UBI and helping workers out of intolerable life situations.