This may be a long post. It may not seem like it at first, but this is very relevant to late stage capitalism.
Without giving away too much personal information, I have an ongoing medical disability that marked the end of my employable years. This took years of life-halting agony, terrifying sudden attacks of said illness that would leave me curled up on the floor, weeping and vomiting, waiting for ambulance rides that costed thousands of dollars each, ininsured, to see emergency room doctors that had somewhat-more-waivable fees, only to be turned down again and again for anything but medication that was, at best, a temporary relief, IF I could keep it down.
I was told by local clinics and doctors that there was NOTHING they could do, and in one case "It's in god's hands", which is a cynical way of saying "you have no medical insurance and corrective surgery would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars." The way medical people would carefully evade mentioning WHY "there was nothing they could do" grew more apparent and horrifying over time.
I took a longshot chance and applied for disability during this increasingly disabling period. After two rejections and hiring a lawyer, I finally saw the inside of a courtroom and put a human face and a lot of pain and hardship forward that sheets of paper could not express.
The timing of the urgent need for surgery coincided with the end of a years-long legal struggle to have that disability legally recognized. Because of that, I dodged a bullet the size of a freight train. There's no way I'd be alive today if I didn't have the disability and Medicare-covered surgery when I did, and I could not have access to that surgery if it weren't for a few fraying strands of what's left of the social safety net.
End result: I live. I can function in limited ways, but I am unable to do any "profitable" work, and even if I could, the entire infrastructure of work-while-disabled programs locally are cynical right-wing trapdoors designed to remove people from disability payments entirely. It would be criminal if laws had a conscience.
I live extremely frugally. This computer, old and getting older, is the one outstanding luxury I afford myself. I have relatives I'm barely in contact with that complain about how little they have when their income is ten times mine, and then snidely complain that I have it too good. My significant other works tirelessly, often all day, and one of the few things I can do for her is offer massages for constant backaches and stress-related fatigue.
She wants to start a family, but I look ahead into the future and feel crushed. What future would that child have? What could I possibly provide other than the local stigma of that kid coming from a poor family, being mocked and bullied for it? Will WIC be cut next? Or food stamps? Or will Social Security/Medicare be "privatized"?
My health is middling. I am temporarily immobilized for medical reasons, so exercise is very difficult. The only medical care I can get takes months to secure an appointment, with a cynical "one problem per visit" policy that I only learned about through a social worker, but that was my day to day experience.
In summary: I feel crushed. I know I'm a "burden" because I didn't win the genetic (or financial) lottery when I was born. The reminders are everywhere, both publically and from my biological family. Christmas, and other get-togethers, are framed in a "did you bootstrap yourself back to work yet?" asked by elderly people that watch too much Fox News and are cheering on Trump in hopes of sticking it to "those dirty Mexicans and welfare queens" with me in earshot.
I hold out vague dreams of being a writer, and have completed one novel with another on the way, but that's not capitalistically viable. If I churned out some kinky monster-fetish schlock or wrote harlequin romances, maybe I'd be a slightly more productive cog in the machine.
I know exactly how Burgess Meredith's character felt in the Twilight Zone episode "The Obsolete Man." Where I used to cheer on technological and medical advances, all I see are things out of reach, toys and indulgences for the fantastically rich. I could, plausibly, restore most of my functionality with some around-the-corner medical promises, but I know all too well that they are things for the rich. Medicine is a frustrating and futile sector for someone expected to address one medical problem at a time, once per visit, one visit every few months, with many visits being, even now "there's not much we can do. Have you considered psychiatric medication to help with that anxiety and depression?"
That's my story. One Obsolete Man in the late stages of capitalism. I really don't know if I'll live to see a more just and less destructive world. A part of my is dreadfully afraid that the Zuckerbergs and Shkrelis will commodify, rule, and cow us, while taking smarmy selfies and living utterly apart from all human compassion and decency. I fear that this new Gilded Age will drag on, unchallenged, until there isn't much left to save.
That is why I feel crushed.