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Comment by tetraodonpuffer | Hacker News Reader

I think it's more that if your life really sucks you are a lot more likely to try to escape from it (even if the odds of it happening are pretty low), if you have a comfortable middle class lifestyle you can debate pros/cons and odds.

If you are on fire and there are a bunch of extinguishers for sale but only one of them works, you are not going to debate the price/odds, you are going to buy as many as you can afford to

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I think the cause and effect are reversed. Having destructive financial habits are going to cause you to have "life that sucks." Whether it's buying too many lotto tickets, smoking, driving buzzed drunk on a regular basis, ect.

I grew up in low class area/family and saw that there is a pretty clear difference between a lower class and middle class mindset.

I think it's reasonable to argue that it's less of an either/or and more of a self-defeating cycle.

Lower class life -> desire to escape -> worse habits -> lower class life

and so on.

I think it has more to do with society being class segregated, and the habits that could raise your class (or raise your chances of getting out anyways) are not the social norms in the lower classes.

Then desire to escape step isn't even necessary.

There's a confirmation bias in that kind of logic, since people who start out poor and work their way into the middle class (or higher) don't "count" any more.

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