I think this rant is similar to the analogy of a fat person vs a muscular person.

The fat person gives reasons why they can’t eat healthier or exercise more; they can’t afford fresh food, don’t have time to prep healthy food, or their joints ache too much to exercise. The muscular person says “just do it”, run 10km or only eat 1000 calories a day. Both are extreme to the other and can’t relate to each other’s situation, but there is some truth from both sides.

If you’re not in the place to save / invest money every month, then you should be spending your time to get to that place. In all your free time, you should be learning something that you find fairly interesting, that’s most importantly a skill that is desirable in a job market and pays more than what you earn now. If you’re working 16hrs a day and sleeping 8, you should be doing your best to learn as much as you can when you’re working. Have a break time? Study and eat at the same time. Commuting? Time to catch up on reading. Working the fryer at a fast food restaurant? Ask your manager what else you can learn to help the restaurant. The point is, you need to be improving yourself everyday (Kaizen) and hopefully those skills & experiences will help you get a better paying job, or at worst will give you more confidence in a variety of things, which is likely to help you earn more. Don’t stay in one place for too long - learn as much as possible about your job and start looking for something better, leveraging those experiences.

It’s rough and everyone’s situation varies - I ended up moving around multiple countries following money. Originally starting on minimum wage selling bathrooms, to eventually working in Finance and recently getting a promotion that apparently puts me in the top 10% earners in my country. That required a ton of sacrifice, not seeing my family for multiple years at a time, and having to leave friends behind constantly, but it was worth it. It can be done, but no one is waiting for you to do it, it’s just up to you if you want to make those changes.