"It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach, or no piano lessons for the kids, or worse, having to put it on the Credit Card"
That's your example of facing adversity?
Did you read the article? If you're lying awake at night worrying whether you can afford little Timmy's piano lessons you aren't in the same boat as a cave man that's worried about getting eaten by a lion.
There's more. If Timmy does not make the competitive job market he might as well have been eaten by the lion. Which depends on access to right tutoring and right connections more than right skills.
Getting eaten by a lion is less misery. And a lion you can fight with a few guys. Job market? Might as well be hitting a tank with your bare fists.
If anything, it's the lack of control and not the level of adversity that is the problem.
Getting eaten by a lion is in no way similar to not getting a 'good' job, in fact I'll go further and say it's not similar to not getting a job at all.
It actually is way worse than being eaten by a lion. Like long torture of varying degrees. There are worse kinds of torture but it is one of the most common, the other being social exclusion, and finally chronic illnesses.
Except this one nobody can really fix. The drawback of invisible poorly understood market processes with many inputs. The only thing you can try to do is make your chances better, be adaptable and adapt.
Even bad illness can often be abated with a few (commonly known as terrible) exceptions.
So if your threshold for 'adversity' is getting 'eaten by Lions' I would imagine you're trolling?
My point was to illustrate a family that might have next to nothing - and who's only aspirational escape from slinging coffee at the Waffle House is a low-budget weekender at a slimly dive like Myrtle Beach, will with one tiny blip of a minor medical issue, have that taken away, and possibly go into debt.
Could you imagine a life of serving at a restaurant, never able to afford even the most basic getaway, going ever deeper into debt for basic things like 'visits to the dentist'? When you tack on just a couple of 'issues', it all comes apart.
Those families have $500 'net worth' and are at any time inches away from ruin, no retirement savings, no way to send their kids to college. If they have a bad day at work, or if their boss doesn't like them they could lose their jobs. If they inure themselves playing softball - it's calamity. Getting one credit card to pay off the other. 'Pay day loans'. Unable to cobble together 'first and last months' rent. Bad credit. A minor offence and unable to make bail. A car that breaks down, no way to get to work, and a boss that doesn't care one bit. Coming down with something as minor as 'late onset Asthma' which is $50/month of meds they cannot afford.
That is the grinding adversity that about 1/2 of America faces with no way out.
That's your example of facing adversity?
Did you read the article? If you're lying awake at night worrying whether you can afford little Timmy's piano lessons you aren't in the same boat as a cave man that's worried about getting eaten by a lion.