Why not go to school or get a job?

"Anybody who wants to succeed in America can" is such a naive thing to say it's actually adorable.

Okay, picture the scene: she goes to college (which in itself is unlikely if she doesn't have the funds or a decent enough high school education, but whatever) and takes out a loan. Four years later, she graduates with honours. Now she has to find a real job. In the current economic climate, this could literally take years. She needs some form of income until then, right? So gets a job, say, flipping burgers. Just to tide herself over until she finds something better (ie. related to her degree). Well, have you ever actually job hunted before? If you're naive enough to say something like "Anybody who wants to succeed in America can", then I'll assume probably not. Or maybe you got exceptionally lucky and just naively assumed this was the case for everybody. Whatever. Point is, no one who works some *beep* minimum wage service job is there out of choice, and few are there out of simple laziness.

In any case, finding a post grad job is not easy. Matter of fact it's basically a full time job in itself. Meanwhile she already has a full time job, except oh wait, it's minimum wage. And This is 'Murica, so she's trying to get by on one of the lowest minimum wages in the developed world, no less. She's probably working 40+ hours a week MINIMUM, to cover not only the basic cost of living, but also to repay her student loans, and, I'll assume, to look after her sister, since there's no way her junkie mother is raising a finger. Meanwhile, it's also suggested in the movie that she has to support her mother financially, so that's even more down the drain every month (and before you argue that she could refuse, would you want to get on the wrong side of that boyfriend?). And because she's working such insane hours, and effectively trying to raise her sister, she barely has time to look for another job. The end result? She's stuck wasting the overwhelming majority of her life in a dead end job with no money, no future, no prospects, and no sign that it's going to get better. I'm not condoning burglary, but I get why she does it, and you either have to be stupidly naive or have an almost psychopathic lack of compassion to not get it yourself. Which would you rather?

TLDR; OP is grossly misinformed on how the real world works.