A lot of poor people resent society due to their poverty. There's a constant meme that their poverty is some one else's fault ("the man", "the rich", "white people", "government", "minorities", "foreigners" are all common ones, depending who you're talking to). It's a defeatist point of view, but it does two things. It allows them to protect their egos by directing blame for their situation at other people. It also allows them to justify poor decisions, because the world is setup against them, so why bother? You will often see this kind of rhetoric if you spend casual time with people in poverty.
You'll also see a slightly different permutation of this, where some people in poverty see the way out as only possible through someone else's actions. Whether that be a charity, the government, or just a personal relationship. They feel very disempowered and defeated, and often look for events out of their control to "save" them, rather than taking actions to correct their situation. Again, why bother saving money if you can't fix the situation. You might as well have a good time while you wait for someone else to save you.
I, personally, believe these mental traps to be a non-trivial part of what keeps people in poverty.
Yep, you nailed it. A friend of mine was ranting on how the poor people(in Europe) spend their money on iPhones, cigars, alcohol and cable TV instead of saving it. Lately, I realized that poor people spend their money on those things since it's their way of short term escapism from feeling poor and if they were to save it, the amount would be too small to suddenly lift them out of poverty so they don't even bother.
However, if poor people were clever, or had good mentorship, they would save that money and spend it on some courses in tech like sys-admin or getting certified as a professional plumber for example and get a better paying job, leading to a path out of poverty.
Unfortunately, most popele don't have the will or the guidance to figure this out by themselves.
Edit: Sorry, replied to the wrong parent
That is an incredibly naive way of looking at the problem.
Whether poverty causes ignorance and complacency or the relationship is reversed (it probably goes both ways and depends on the person) there's no question that a sizable minority, if not the majority, of people in poverty are quite content to live off of the government and spend their days idle. Partly because of the mentioned lack of guidance, partly because of ignorance, and partly because not all people have ambitions beyond having their basic needs met.
You have to put yourself into the shoes of someone who did not pay any attention in school, if they attended. Has no real grasp of the utility of math or science or knowledge in general. No intrinsic thirst for learning or accomplishment. Take food, cigarettes, maybe other drugs (alcohol included) as funds permit, cheap entertainment (TV, Facebook, Instagram), and sex, and you have a recipe for millions of content lives which are a net cost to greater society.
And what's worse is that the children of these types of people grow up in a similar environment and pick up the same fundamentally rotten culture. Sorry to be harsh but this is the reality - no amount of funds will fix broken culture.
I was one of those people born into poverty. Your post is remarkably ignorant of the circumstances we faced and dealt with, and why cheap entertainment is used as an escape from the crushing levels of bullshit we had to deal with on a daily basis.
For someone who says to put yourself into the shoes of the poor, you could do with a reality check yourself.
It's easy to interpret an emotional context in the parent's comment that may not be present. It could absolutely be read as a condescending comment which looks down upon poor people as less than. However, a charitable reading which takes a step back should be able to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth in their statements.
Nobody is saying that the circumstances of poverty are not absolutely soul crushing, it's rather a statement on how people react to those circumstances lead them farther down a dark path rather than into the light, and as poverty becomes generational it forms its own culture. There is absolutely a culture of poverty (technically multiple cultures of poverty) in the US, at the very least.
It's the exact same 'those dirty poors are poor because they're lazy' nonsense I've heard over and over again just dressed up slightly. The emotional context is that he's outright calling those people a drain on society.
And when I look back on poverty and escapism, for a lot of people it's the one thing giving them a temporary out from the crushing depression of realizing that you're trapped in a situation that you'll likely never escape. I refuse to accept their commentary as any sort of objective analysis because it reeks of someone passing judgment on something they have never experienced.
But that is also not the way out, not from a rational perspective. We have to wrangle with the fact that the rationally best actions someone in poverty can take with what little money they have, especially large lump sums like tax returns, is not the way most people behave because human beings are emotional creatures. I don't think it requires looking down upon the poor to acknowledge that their choices are driven by internal factors (mental health, despair) as well as external cultural factors (consumerism, social status among the poor being driven by luxury brands, et al).
I'm just as guilty of practicing escapism as anyone else when I was in poor circumstances, it was just a random chance my escapism was into books which in turn helped increase my knowledge and ability to converse intelligently, rather than into lottery tickets, junk food, and entertainment. But it was still a form of escapism, and it was driven by many of the same factors. Books were more valuable in the long-term (knowledge, skills), and they were less costly in the short-term (used market, libraries), and in the end it helped provide me a way out.
While my family wasn't wealthy and after leaving home I was even more poor for awhile, I came out of a culture that emphasized reading, literacy, and learning and used the television only for public broadcasting/documentaries. That's just as cultural as other families who emphasize social hierarchies/machismo, strength/being hard, and taking what you want, and uses television for escapism and entertainment. Saying something is cultural isn't an insult, it's an observation. Whether it started that way is irrelevant, it's cultural now that generations have gone by.
I'd much rather see a conversation that tries to understand how we can break the cycle of poverty by helping people make better more rational choices and using forms of escapism that lead to positive outcomes instead of those that reinforce negative feedback loops. I think offense-taking and trying to find the worst possible interpretation of someone making a relevant observation isn't going to solve the problem.
Maybe it's a touchy point of its own with me, but it seems so many of the really serious problems of our modern life can't be discussed in anything approaching an objective manner because there's always someone who wants to use it as an opportunity to take offense, rather than to understand and empathize, and return with something that changes the perspective of the person by creating empathy for themselves. Offense-taking doesn't build empathy, it just shuts down conversation.
Do you spend your money on those things instead of saving it?
Since I don't come from money, I try to save as much as I can so I can buy my own place and start my own business in the future.
Meanwhile one of my youngest friends who works as a bike food delivery agent, owns a MacBook Pro, the latest iPhone, a PS4 with an ever increasing library of games, goes clubbing a lot and complains he can't find a good job.<face:palm>
Unfortunately, the latter example is an ever growing category in Europe of future failures since youngsters are told they can be and do whatever they want and opportunities will just come to you if you're patient and if that fails, the government is there to support you.
Not saying I'm a poster child for financial success, far from it, I have my own guilty pleasures that keep my sanity intact, everybody has, but most people born in lower class families seem to be clueless about how to get out and it ain't by frivolous spending.
A number of years ago my parents heard of a very young single mother in their community. She was being housed at a local woman's shelter, but was kicked out for continually breaking the rules regarding use of the stipend that was provided for each mother. She had two kids and nowhere to go, so my parents took her in for what they thought would be a couple weeks.
The weeks bled into months, and by the time that my parents thought she would be fine moving out, they had housed her for close to half a year.
My parents learned many new things about poverty by having her and her kids there for so long. One of the most significant was the severity of the mental/emotional/psychological strain that someone who is destitute is burdened with. My parents were able to find her a part-time job, they paid for everything, and cooked most of the meals. She struggled though to even just get up in the morning, let alone make it to work on time or even go at all. She lost the job. And sometimes all she could do was sit on the porch and chain smoke.
About a half a year later my parents decided that she was probably well enough to be independent. They worked with some other families in the community to get her an apartment, a car, and a new job (good pay and part-time). She still has a lot of struggles, but can now fend for herself.
I'm guessing some people who lift themselves from poverty are both lucky and have a psychological makeup which keeps them stable enough to do the necessary work in getting there. We either forget, ignore, or are ignorant of others that need a lot more hand-holding along the way.
Negative impacts of that disposition can be compounding, and psychologically harmful without a break.
I think there’s a psychology term for that, Learned Helplessness:
I believe the psychological term for this is 'learned helplessness'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness