Most people in the US begin life poor, and most of them are not poor forever. I wouldn't call this a "bleak future". I was definitely poor when I was 18, but I wasn't pessimistic. Pessimism at such a young age is almost always a mistake.
Thank heavens young Americans can look forward to a $63k/year median income when they are employed full-time.
This is no reason for abject pessimism at 18 years old.
I would think something like Gini combined with HDI and GDP per capita, on which the US only fares well on the latter. I found out there is something called Global Social Mobility Index, done by the WEF, and it places the US in 27th.
And this is borne out in emigration patterns and visa applications...
It feels like we expect to be #1 in every category and we're unable to recognize that the US has it pretty damn good in a lot of important ways. Envy is the thief of happiness.
Of course the US has less of a social safety net than Norway, a petrostate with trillions of dollars in a national oil endowment, and ~half of their GDP is from fossil fuels. I don't know that I'd want to move to Norway for the kind of "social mobility" that I'm after.
Is pessimism a consciouss choice?
One can develop pessimism about pessimism without a conscious choice, but once you become aware of how negative your outlook on pessimism is, it's a conscious choice to not try to figure out the different meanings of that word and how important it is for the proper functioning of democracy.
Maybe read Orwell for a glimpse of mandatory optimism:
"The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one... Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen.
I am much more pessimistic generally than I was 20 years ago. But that's something I work on, not something I accept passively as a fact of life.