Do you feel America has failed you or else?

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I know this site is international, but I want to talk exclusively to Americans because I know Autism has become a big buzz word in our culture especially with the recent comments done by our politicians.
Do you feel the system has failed you or that you weren't trying enough?

Many of us can't compete in the marketplace due to our mental and cognitive limitations, but can still have access to accommodations for living support, but for the vast majority of us living support groups aren't super feasible hence why many parents feel they have to care for their special needs adult children until they die.

For those who are lv 1 high functioning adults would you say that you have been able to compete in the marketplace despite your quirks? The reason I asked this because I recently watched a video on a mom talking about how she raised her autistic son to be independent and not rely on a woman to care for him. He's doing well for himself now, but he didn't want to work or learn a trade.

I have been accused of being lazy by family members for wanting to be a creative entrepreneur and it ended up being detrimental to my bank account, but I look back on that time and see how it led to me finding my purpose via ministry.

In America we are taught if we work hard, get an education, and believe in ourselves we can have a nice house, a family, a nice car with a white pickett fence regardless of your race, gender, or country of origin. Has that been true for you as an autistic?

I ended up doing rather well but a lot had to do with having been born with advantages others didn't and some was dumb luck if I think about it. To me it appears you succeeded without those advantages, more power to you!

Although I don't think this has much to do with what country you were born in, except that if you were raised in America in the early post-war period, America was booming because it basically made a huge profit off WWII and the rest of the Western world was still struggling to recover, so at the time it was arguably true that anyone who applied themselves could succeed. That wasn't cultural though, it just had to do with the circumstances of history at the time. America has gotten to be more comparable to the rest of the world since then, insofar as somebody could have the best intentions and do all the right things, and still fail because they're autistic or just the luck of the draw.

The US has definitely failed me. I would be so much better off in a social democracy.

The United States failed me as a disabled person. I just think the American Dream is dead. I think George Carlin said it best that they call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. I cant afford rent or apartment. I cant even afford lot rent in a trailer park. However I wouldnt of wanted to be born anywhere else in the world.

I would say the extroverted culture puts me at a disadvantage.

As far as if you work hard enough you can do anything idea, that belief is far far from universal as it once was.

I tend to be rather critical about modern capitalism in the U.S.

A large portion of "economic growth" appears to be based on simply increasing the cost of housing, apartments, health care, and college for everyone. Most people's wages don't keep up. Then society gaslights and blames the working classes and lectures you to just pull yourself up by the bootstraps harder. Some amount of capitalist activity and competition may be part of human nature. Basic needs, such as housing and health care, should be kept accessible though.

There are cities in the U.S. where the median cost of a house is more than $1 million dollars now, even up to more than $2 million in a few cities. And even in states and cities that have increased the minimum wage, it would still be less than $30,000/year after taxes.

Yes, there are countries that have serious problems with human rights, wars, access to electricity or safe drinking water, and so on. Perhaps the U.S. is at least up there among the top 50 best countries for most ordinary people. But that doesn't mean that we can't improve, or that we can't learn from other countries, whenever they are doing something better.

I don't have a problem with capitalism, but I also feel that getting an education shouldn't be the biggest expense in our average 80 year lifespan. I don't blame people skipping college because the expense is astronomical especially for those without a scholarship. Most people with bachelor's degree end up paying student loans decades after graduation even those with high end carrers.

Making it in America is hard for but achievable. I know plenty of people who came from hard circumstances and ended up being successful. For us on the spectrum the system hasn't been historically favorable toward us that's why many of us identify with the left. However, there's still plenty of us in the neurodivergent community that are crushing it in the marketplace even in the entry level positions. Some of the best employees I worked with are on the spectrum.

Life is hard, but our response to hard circumstances can make a difference in our physical and mental well-being.

I don't live in the USA, but I feel like the whole freaking human race has failed me. But the USA has always been a huge bully to Canada. It's so arrogant and domineering, it's sickening. Always telling us what to do, telling us how to live, trying to control everything. It's like having a headache that never fully goes away, or being in a hot stuffy room where everything feels sticky, or a 50 pound bowling ball on an ingrown toenail. The only thing that will lift that bowling ball is hearing that a certain pile of orange puke and a wormbrain are now both taking the permanent dirt nap.

I think the whole education platform needs to be reevaluated. For most people, it's not really an advantage. Sure, if you're going into STEM or something like that, it's needed, but if you're going to get a degree in English, or history, or something like that, you're probably just throwing money away. Most people would be better off going to a trade school and learning to be a plumber or an electrician or something like that.

I basically agree with that, although there seem to be jobs that require a 4-year undergraduate degree without much thought as to whether the degree holder actually learned anything useful during those 4 years. I think there's a trend away from that however it's slow.

Regarding education however, much like health care it's labor-intensive. If you have a full-time faculty and buildings to house lecture halls, libraries, administrative functions, etc. then you have a big payroll and a lot of those paychecks need to be large enough to keep faculty from moving to the corporate world, plus they're going to need other benefits that are competitive with private industry. There's much less opportunity to streamline an academic budget through automation etc. That's why it's so expensive. If you're going to fund it publicly, then it's going to have to come out of peoples' taxes and many of those taxpayers don't necessarily think they benefit from the existence of public educational institutions if they don't plan to enroll in them. At least with a public hospital the vast majority see the benefit which would be why there's probably more assistance for economically disadvantaged people to use public hospitals as compared to public universities.

too many people get education and training mixed up, they are totally different animals- education properly teaches people how to think for themselves, training merely teaches people how to do things for other people. we need more education in this country as well as more training but the whole educational establishment in this country has become a disorganized mixed-up racket just like everything else here.

I'd agree with that as well. Education has been dead for decades. The focus is on teaching kids what to think, not how to think.

I blame the world for failing me because it's not as if I'd be welcomed with open arms anywhere else on this miserable little planet.

f**k humanity everywhere!

I feel like America failed me as a gun owner.

ROFL