What Really Keeps Poor People Poor
jonbischke.com
jonbischke.com
I came to the conclusion many years ago that in America poverty is a contagious mindset, nothing more. But I do understand that it is a difficult mindset to escape due to social issues. In all honesty, in most cases the middle class and rich have good reason not to network with the poor.
This modern bugbear of racism is getting ridiculous. Did you really just equate "racism" with sexual abuse? What does racism even mean anymore? Is it only institutional discrimination, e.g. the refusal of the publicly funded government to hire some races? That's where it started. Now, you can be a racist if you have a type you prefer to date that doesn't suit the whims of your accuser.
Way to not "risk racism."
But quoting only that part makes it sound like he is blaming racism as the cause for poverty, which he clearly isn't.
If I had a penny for every time I heard something to the effect of 'if only poor people stopped complaining/blaming racism and started pulling themselves out of poverty, there would be no more poverty', I'd have enough to help people get out of poverty.
Although I guess there is no point in arguing with throw-away accounts.
Actually, overeating and obesity have been shown to have a social transmission component.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919885,00.ht...
If the word racism had not been in that post, would you have commented on it at all? Would you have still felt the need to make a throw-away account for the comment?
It's a form of bigotry which is also deeply aligned with hate, often violent hate. It's probably the same thing that sparks sectarian violence.
It can also reside, in a form without overt violent manifestation.
Now, you can be a racist if you have a type you prefer to date that doesn't suit the whims of your accuser.
I would admit that this isn't sufficient to label someone of racism. The question to ask would be: Does the vivid thought of a loved one (a parent or a child) dating a member of a given race cause a strong emotional reaction?
I'm not sure what racism is. I'm not sure academics have a good handle on all of the mechanisms by which it operates, but, in the words of the Penny Arcade guys, it is a thing. Its operation in the real world is undeniable. For many in the context of minority, it is very palpable.
EDIT: It's probably connected to some suite of group organization/defense instincts. It probably operates on the same level that religion operates on.
Meh, the vast majority of practical racism isn't really about hate. The most common form of racism is the over-generalization type -- most of the people of race X that you meet or see in the street have characteristic P, so you form in your mind the idea that "Xs have characteristic P". This, even when statistically true, is unfair to the Xs out there who don't have characteristic P, especially when P is negative, so it's a trap we need to avoid.
For every racist who actively hates another race, there's fifty who don't hate 'em but merely have negative beliefs about 'em, the same way I have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about (but don't actually hate) people who wear Ed Hardy t-shirts.
I think both kinds you mention are actually part of the same mechanism. I'm beginning to suspect that the mechanisms of tribal organization (human social organization) are paramount for human psychology in the same way that pack organization is paramount for dog psychology.
http://www.hiiraan.com/2005/july/op/Abdishakur_Jawhar_PartFi...
Many organizations exploit tribal psychology for group cohesion and control. Marketing is clearly dominated by tribal psychology. I think programming language communities are organized on mechanisms for tribal cohesion.
Is it possible to hate someone and not "have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about" them? How common is it to "have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about" someone and not hate them? Interesting questions, I think.
I think this is the official leftist dogma, but I actually fail to see any obvious causality.
I think it assumes that structural lack of opportunity (ie you qualified to be a surgeon, but the y only job you can get is shoeshine boy because you are black) leads to resentment leads to bad behavior. And that there is no feedback from bad behavior to lack of opportunity. And that cultural diffusion just doesn't exist or doesn't matter.
Am I getting this right? Not a sarcastic question, I think there are massive amounts of assumption that creep in unnoticed in all these discussions, by me as much as anyone.
And just for the record, (1) I didn't downvote you, even though I think you are wrong, and wrong in a way that is holding the USA back, and (2) I would consider myself a socialist.
I just think socialism should get away from "fight the rich! bad rich people!" to working on how to enculturate and change the poor so the rich just go poof and disappear; OF COURSE there is the danger we go too far in this, and there is also the fact that we need to make careful and tentative value judgements about good versus bad behavior, something the left is, reasonably given history, loathe to do. (ramble, ramble, ... sorry...)
That and him being so hard on the attitudes of the poor, and all the talk of it holding him back. I'm not saying the poor can't also develop good habits (many learn to work really hard for little reward), but they clearly don't develop whatever attitude it is the parent commenter was looking for in order to not be held back. And that is probably largely related to not being around that particular mindset in the first place, because it's more of a mindset of the non-poor.
From your second paragraph (with "that is probably related to not being around that particular mindset"), I think we all agree on the value of enculturation in a person's success, though we are all different in our connotations. I think he is playing "let's call a spade a spade" in his post.
I also don't think you are advocating fight the rich, but I do think you are channeling arguments that others have made uncritically. It's ok, we all do it, all the time.
While I was criticizing you for it, in good faith, I do it myself all the time. It isn't that you should stop repeating other people's ideas, just that you (and I) should be in the habit of wondering "where did that come from? what does it imply that I might not be thinking of? who benefits by the propagation of that idea?" etc
In the case of the leftist dogma, I think there are incorrect assumptions about (1) resentment, (2) cultural diffusion, and (3) fault. Even if you don't share them when you examine it, that argument has a lot of baggage.
This statement assumes that there is a fixed amount of wealth that must be protected; it's prevalent in socialist thinking, as well as in the thinking of the poor (it's part of the contagion).
It's also 100% incorrect. The creation of wealth is not a zero-sum game.
It's making the opposite point than the article does: You don't improve the lot of the poor by introducing them to some master network of elites, you improve it by removing them from the network that reinforces the bad behaviour.
I hope God appreciates humor, because if I say grace, it always includes something like "and thanks for giving me an upper middle class cultural background", because, well, I would be f*ed with out it (as are LOTS AND LOTS of people in the US).
Also -- note that I have not mentioned race. I think it has become largely irrelevant to the dynamics of poverty, thank god, but only because my experience shows me that you can be totally screwed by the above culture of poverty and be of the same british isle/ german descent as my upper middle NYC friends.
EDIT: And I think we should be throwing our weight into fixing this massive cultural problem, along with the wasted human potential it causes (really expensive to hire prison guards and social workers). However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault", even while the US rots from the inside.
Not for all of them, but for disturbingly many. The problem is exacerbated by peer pressure: as soon as one tries to change something, one is booed and labeled a social climber. Because many people base their morals on what their surrounding group believes to be right, becoming rich starts being perceived as immoral.
> However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault"
Far left says there is no cultural problem because it is infatuated with the culture of poverty itself. There is this belief among many leftists that being poor is "moral" while being rich is not. So the left considers the culture of the poor to be superior and more "authentic". Similarly, in a perverse twist, the far right believes that being rich is almost equal to being moral (because wealth is God's gift to men or some other such nonsense). Basically people like to imagine their corresponding social groups as being the most moral of all.
I am under the impression that other cultural traditions don't have the same value on the "transcendent subject" -- it is easier for them to support training regimes that internalize outside values. Both viewpoints -- ok, not ok -- have their pluses and minuses. We can eradicate cultures and personal viewpoints with enough training, but it is hard to decide when a culture or personality should be eradicated or not. And the left knee-jerks to don't eradicate, period (protecting some really wacked criminal shit along with that). The right knee-jerks to there is only one correct, traditional way, screwing over those who disagree (train alternative viewpoints out of them, or kill/ marginalize them).
I hope readers will understand that not everyone on either side ignores the complexity and relies and their reflexes, but, sadly, the term "knee-jerk" applies to most.
I came to the conclusion many years ago that in America poverty is a contagious mindset, nothing more.
You are making very, very broad generalizations and stereotyping an entire socio-economic category of people.
My parents grew up in rural Minnesota in absolute poverty. My father didn't use a toilet or shower until he was 17 and moved to a "large" high school where they could shower after gym class. He worked his way through 3 Bachelor's degrees and a Master's degree in Education, and then chose a live of relative poverty to become a minister and work in Central America.
I've had to be financially independent since I was 17. I've worked a job to pay my own bills since I was 14. I grew up rarely buying clothes at a store, and wearing hand me downs.
None of that was a matter of contagious mindset.
I worked in the ghetto in Chicago as an ER and trauma nurse for years, and yes, there are definitely choices that people make that make them continue in poverty, but there are also systemic issues that make escaping poverty in the inner city extremely difficult.
In the inner city, it takes a lot more time to take a bus to the grocery store, purchase food and bring it back home and cook it. Groceries are _tons more expensive in large cities. Access to banking is more difficult because of similar reasons, so people use check cashing services, which cost exorbitant amounts. Transportation is much more difficult, because you end up having to take expensive public transportation back and forth to work.
Banks make Billions of dollars a year on bounced check fees and overdraft charges. That means that banking is much more expensive for those people that can least afford it. Credit card companies make Billions of dollars each year in over limit fees, and late fees. In fact, people who max out their credit cards are a creditor's best customer. These are systemic problems that keep people in poverty. That's not a cultural mindset.
Who would ever dream of commuting 2 hours a day for a minimum wage job. I worked with plenty of people at Walgreens on Rush and Division in Chicago that did just that. Those were the jobs available to them.
Yes, people make choices that keep them in poverty. Yes, there are mindsets that keep people in poverty. But, to ignore systemic, structural problems that keep people in poverty in America is just plain wrong.
There is some push to discuss "food deserts" as a social problem subject to sociopolitical solutions. Thing is, a desert is what it is because there is little there to sustain life - and the prime way to deal with that, short of either imposing expensive infrastructure or accepting grinding bare-sustenance living, is MOVE: don't be there. Ditto these urban "food deserts" (or "banking deserts", or ...): the solution isn't trying to impose an infrastructure on a system which has a natural resistance thereto, and will require enormous costs with little payback, the solution is to recognize "this is a bad place to exist in" and get out. Yes, it can be hard to move for many reasons; which is cumulatively harder - leaving, or staying?
If you're going to commute 2 hours every day, you've already proven you can move. And people do! There are plenty of towns and cities (Detroit a good current example) where people finally realized "this isn't working, I'm outta here" and left, leaving the systemic structural problems behind.
My recurring conclusion on the issue: the problem isn't opportunity, the problem is people not acting on opportunity. You can't force them to, and if they won't then nothing will change for them.
I wanted to work in high-tech and eventually be a tech entrepreneur. I lived in rural East Bumfuck, NC, where the dominant industries were: tobacco farming, golf courses, shrimping, fishing, and logging. We had no broadband availability, no (or little) access to VC money, angel money, mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs, and a limited pool of technology aware people.
I could have stayed there, and moaned about how "we don't have broadband" or "I can't find any other techies to work with," etc. Instead, I packed up my stuff and moved to the RTP area which is an environment much more suited to the kind of life I wanted. (No, it's not silicon valley, but it's better than where I was).
I know some people don't like to hear "move" as an option, whether it's because of a sense of entitlement, lack of ambition, or just lack of resources to move. But it's simply true that - for many people - picking up and moving is exactly the right choice (maybe a necessary choice) if they want a different kind of life.
My bigger point though, is to be very careful of people who say "I grew up in BFE, Kentucky" and then clarify that to say "really, on a farm, BFE was just the nearest town." Because the whole context changes when you find out they grew up on a Kentucky racehorse breeding farm.
In healthcare and the military, you find out that this whole thing about "moving" implies realizing that's an option. You're off in the toolshed telling your friends how other people would be better off shoveling snow with a sand shovel instead of a snow shovel. Meanwhile, our ancestors drawing animals in caves shepherded those genes to us through countless winters without ever knowing about the entire class called shovels. Never mind that shovels aren't very good for a lot hunting problems, berry-gathering problems, etc.
I understand that moving is legitimate way to recast your social network, but it's a long way from optimal for a lot of people.
You're making it sound like these are two alternative solutions by setting them next to each other, but they aren't. No agent faces the dilemma of improving the desert infrastructure or moving someplace better.
City planners, legislators, etc. can choose to improve living conditions in deserts. Desert residents can choose to leave (of course, even if this does eventually better their situation, the short-term result will be a decrease in living standards).
Social and systemic factors play an extremely important role in an individual's momentary poverty, but I'd bet a lot that those who believe otherwise are far more likely to overcome it. Mainly, the folks I've known personally who blame their bad situations on social and systemic factors were losers.
I have noticed two distinct types of poverty. The first is the OP type: generational poverty based on dependence and a mind-set of either victimization or unbreakable poor choice habits. They are stuck. Getting these kids out of the situation, is as he says, nigh impossible. I've taught 1000s of these kids, and their upbringing, the habits they learn, and don't learn, the role models they have, are difficult to escape and change. A handful of students out of each grade somehow leave - and never come back. The one characteristic they all seem to share is that somewhere along the line (genetics or personality) they have a work ethic or type A character. Even so, they do not have the social skills to advance very far in their careers past college and entry-level job.
The second type is the working poor. They don't really exist anymore as I know them in my parent's generation. They bust ass in 16 hour days of hard labor, save money and penny pinch, always planning for the future. Now days, this attitude is found in many middle class families. My uncle won't even collect his SS check because "he doesn't need it." My relatives would rather starve than take anything from the government or even their local church.
The first type learns how to do the opposite: game the welfare and social system for every penny and benefit and get, even if it requires dishonesty. These people coach their children on what to say at school to the adults to ensure they get all of the free benefits, and to ensure we don't call welfare for an inspection of their homes or income.
/rant off
This is a big part of the dynamic of alcoholism, drug addiction, bad relationships, and stupid dogmatic ideologies.
I've always thought that hell would be a place where everyone burns for eternity, but there's a way to turn off the flames. They never do because they are afraid of change, and because burning for eternity is a part of their self-identity.
This is a big part of the dynamic of alcoholism, drug addiction, bad relationships, and stupid dogmatic ideologies.
I bet it plays into working life and the various "geek scenes".
Btw, I lost 20 pounds in the last 6 months, so I know what it's like. That said, once you make it a habit, it's not that bad. The hardest thing with food is avoiding "just one cigarette". Just takes a few days of crappy eating / not exercising for your old habits to take over again. You really have to watch out for that.
He ended up teaching me Scheme, getting me to commit to an open-source 3D engine and work on computer vision stuff over the course of my early high school years. I ended getting into a top collegiate CS program with a very low high school GPA - primarily because the work I was doing outside of the classroom was pretty good. This degree opened the door to a masters degree and made finding a job much easier.
Today, I'm 23 and working full-time. My dad has started reminding me why I got to where I am, and that I need to give back and do what was done for me - find an aspiring kid who wants to learn, and teach them.
Maybe there are some problems with the mindset of the poor, but I think that part of the problem is that I am probably going to find this kid through my own middle-class network and continue to perpetuate a culture of mentorship that is often inaccessible to the poor.
So don't... make it a point to consciously seek out a way to connect with someone who wouldn't usually have a chance to work with someone like you. Find the poorest neighborhood near where you live, find out what high-school is there, call the principal and see if there's some way you can engage with them to do some kind of mentoring or whatever. Of course that's just an example, but hopefully you get the drift: if this point matters to you, do something specific to break that cycle and help someone poor.
The only cure for poverty (in western countries), ultimately, is the person that is poor. While there are many ways and unfortunate circumstances that one can find themselves poor - and as a society I believe it is incumbent on us to provide the assistance to lessen the occurrence and/or effects of such events - the ultimate recovery is in the hands of the individual.
They are actually hindered in this by the collective network of the permanently poor - supported by political movements on the far left that stem from this same collective belief system.
Programs should be tailored to address poverty in two ways: 1. Preventing new members of the network, by mitigating the circumstances that create poverty, and, however unpopular; 2. Disrupting the network itself, by purposely setting things up in a way that the person in poverty is isolated from other poor people and surrounded with a network that encourages them to adjust their thinking.
I'm not holding my breath, but I'd love to see some experiments along this line.
http://www.amazon.com/Limbo-Blue-Collar-Roots-White-Collar-D...
I am an oddity. Although I grew up in a blue collar town and my dad was a factory worker/janitor, all four of my grandparents had college degrees. So, I identified with the book's stories in odd ways -- sometimes understanding the working class guy and sometimes understanding the upper middle class one.
[BTW, someone here on HN recommended this book. To that person, thanks!]
I remember reading a quote from Bono where he talked about the crab mentality of his home town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality). One of the reasons I avoid Facebook is that it is just an easier way for that network and the poison thinking that you mentioned to flourish.
Math: The fact is that it's much more difficult to make $10,000 from nothing than it is to make $1M when you have $1B to use.
Experience: When you're poor, the odds are very good that you don't know anyone who is successful(let alone "rich") so there isn't the chance to find out what it takes to be successful. Plus, when you have no experience you need to work your way up from nothing. If you come from a rich family, odds are you know people who are willing to take a chance on you based on the references you have.
Mindset: I came from a very poor family. I always assumed that I would start work at some horrible entry level job, and work my way up. That's what everyone in my family had done. It never occurred to me that there was another way until my mid 20's. Now I'm approaching 30 and I feel like I'm finally on my way to working for myself.
and 6 million pounds. Today, I have a business empire, the like of which... the world has never seen the like of which. Hope it doesn't sound arrogant when I say... that I am the greatest man in the world!
I blogged about Bowles & his work here: http://londoncreativelabs.com/blog/2010/3/28/insights-into-e...
It is possible to make money with work ethic and no capital.
I'll go further than that. Hard work doesn't actually correlate with salary. I know this becuase I have an incredibly easy job while my cousin busts his ass everyday at two jobs. He works more hours than me a week, and each of those hours is far harder, and one of his jobs actually involves risk of personal injury. All of them are outside in the heat. He gets pissed off at me because he works so hard and I seem to not have to work at all, but at the end of the day, hard work is not a recipe for sucess. He does stuff that plenty of other people are willing to do, while I do stuff that a lot of people never bothered to learn (at some point, they probably decided that they 'didn't like math' and closed the door for themselves).
Hard work is a necessary but insufficient condition for sucess. Yes, you have to work your butt off in order to suceed; but you can toil everyday and get nowhere very easily. You have to work hard on the right things in order to get ahead.
That realization has a lot of implications. One of them is relevant for this conversation: working hard may or may not lift you out of poverty. You can't extrapolate from "he lives in poverty" to "he isn't working hard". I've worked at a McDonalds, I've pumped gas, I've mowed lawns. All of those jobs were significantly harder than what I do today, and all of them paid barely enough to support myself, much less work towards a better future.
You could work full time at McDonalds and then put in an extra 20 or 30 hours a week at another minimum wage job, and not get ahead. Or you can work full time at McDonalds and go to a vocational school at nights and probably get ahead. They are both equally hard work, but one will likely lead you to a better life and one won't. But that doesn't mean the people in the first group aren't working hard.
Other people never seem to realize they are running in place, or if they do, they don't have the drive to make any changes and just accept it.
(FYI, I hired a kid last year to mow my lawn a few times, he had a used push mower, no car, trailer or truck, he simply pushed the mower from house to house. He made $2000 over a summer after subtracting the $150 for the mower and the $50 in gas he used)
It doesn't have to be skilled. Think shoveling dog poop http://www.azcentral.com/ent/pop/articles/0420doody0420.html . If you can't find an equivalent where you live, you either live in a paradise where no one has annoying chores, or you aren't looking very hard.
Not if you live in the inner city, and there aren't any lawns to mow, or gardens to weed.
McDonald's just had 1 Million job applications for 62,000 jobs.
- Constant verbal, physical, sometimes sexual abuse--the stuff that really traumatizes people into doing these same things across generations. This isn't the stuff you learn about in the news because, sadly, to many people living in those conditions, it's part of life. - Simply not have any positive role models at all to look up to. Their role-models are their parents, or their neighbors who have basically grown accustomed to living in poverty and can offer no guidance.
And I can go on and on.
My girlfriend and I have simply concluded: "some of these people don't know any better." If they had better role-models, they'd have a better shot.
So it is about the network in a way, but the author doesn't go enough to explain why. I'd like to give it a shot based on my observations: the network effect matters. Escaping one network to join a knowledgeable and competitive one exposes you to different ways of thinking, makes you question preconceived notions you have, makes you realize just how badly things really were, etc. I'm sure others here can relate even more, but coming from a modest background, it has been truly eye opening to be in the bay area, for example. There are so many talented, ambitious young people that inspire you every day to push your selves to the limits, that question your abilities, etc. Most people, I must say are unfortunate to not even know what YC is, entrepreneurship is all about, etc.
So for anyone who doesn't really understand poverty (I myself, included), I really recommend you visit a third-world country and actually live amidst them. Find a friend who comes from such a background and go stay with his/her family and him/her. You'll realize just how fortunate you are. By all means, don't feel bad about this, just gain some conscious about the fact that there are less fortunate people out there and begin to question what you can do with your companies, at your job to educate these people.
To finish, for anyone that questions a university's worth... remember this, an education isn't just the material you learn during lectures or books, it's what you learn about others and from others that really , also. And this latter component, I think is the secret to reducing poverty: simple exposure to new ways of life.
The problem with being poor is that everybody else you know is poor and also doesn't have an iota how to get out of it.
Would you make friends with a guy who wants to study in another zip code, or a guy who wants to stay in the 'hood? If you think you are going to stay in the 'hood, then you are best hanging out with a fellow drop-out.
That's the economic explanation for the jealousy and sometimes hostility that social climbers get.
Whether or not the economic explanation is correct, it's hard to argue that a black kid in a black school who acts white may get beat up for it.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beli...
As a trivial example, in Sri Lankan culture, you don't say "thank you", "you're welcome" or give anycompliments. Instead, it is common to tell someone they look fat when you see them after a long time.
Interestingly, the Internet is changing this. My wife has a lot of her school friends in her Facebook, and people are starting to complement each other on the uploaded photos. I believe this is a result of internationalization (many Sri Lankans have moved to Australia, Italy and France) and the percieved freedom when not having to talk face-to-face.
I am not sure what you mean by your example. Telling someone they look fat when you haven't seen them for a while is a kin to saying you have done well for yourself and would be a complement. Mostly it just sounds like a difference in culture that changes when the culture around you changes.
The most intuitive way to explain why 'being fatter' is regarded as a complement is this: People often say 'you look different' when they see each other after a long time. Now of course there are two way provided the person looks relatively okay, that is being fatter or thinner. However, thinner might imply that he/she was sick or something that caused him/her to lose weight. So saying 'you look fatter' is a way of saying you're doing well. In fact, Asian people tend to be thinner -- even in the US -- gttp://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparebar.jsp?ind=91&cat=2 . So it's _understandable_ why such Asian countries don't consider 'getting fat' as an offensive thing. Also it's more like a figure of speech now.
Also the pro-economic network will create & broker economic opportunities, whether they be internships, jobs, startup co-founding, access to investment etc.
The work of Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis touch on this.
How else are you expected to get the million years of experience on everything expected at every job? The only entry-level jobs I see advertised are for entry-level geniuses.
I don't think that this can be artificially created by a third party for adults.
The advice that I would give to actual poor people: make friends with people with money. Wrack your brains to think of ways to do things for them for free so you can become a part of the favor trading network. Drink with them a lot - unless they're religious people, then pray with them. Only date people who have a family that has money. More money is better than less money. Avoid people with no money.
Many people only figure this out when it's too late.
Also, college and internships are the best places to create social relationships with people with money. Remember that even though you may be intimidated by all of the fanciness and money around you in those environments, this is a period of time that rich people are actually slumming (assuming you're not at an expensive private/ivy league college) and will likely come into contact with more people that are out of their class than at any other point in their lives. A good number of people you can meet in highly contested internships are in the last non-managerial/executive job they'll ever have.
I was thinking of one's college internship as an opportunity to get practical experience and prove yourself as a competent person instead of just a place to add rich folks to your network.
I think it would be nice to have high expectations for our highest colleges to admit a large amount from the lowest quartile of society, but this is not the natural next step in the process of solving poverty. The next step is how do we get more of those individuals to graduate from high school, go to vocational schools, etc. This is just another example of the intellectual elite trying to overlay their standards on problems, resulting in impractical policies and priorities, that do nothing to solve underlying problems.
If you want to make money and stop being poor you have to stick with a tight budget. Stop spending more than you make, and evaluate whether or not you need that super-cool iPhone you just adore. At $70 a month a single iPhone could put food on your table, or the money you save by downgrading to a clamshell "stupid phone" could help pay off the credit card.
Money doesn't solve money management problems. Solve how you manage your money and you automatically keep more. A spendthrift with great social connections is still poor.
My grandparents generation had a very acute understanding of social class, and it played a central role in their lives in a variety of ways. I think the kinds of issues which they faced are now returning.
The High Cost of Poverty: Why the Poor Pay More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05...
Poor people spend 9% of income on lottery tickets; here's why: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/05/31/poor-people-spend-9...
Missing poverty's new reality: There's a lot less of it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01...
You [a hypothetical poor person] don't have a car to get to a supermarket...
70% of the poor own a car, 25% own two cars.
When you are poor, you don't have the luxury of throwing a load into the washing machine...
64% of the poor do have that luxury.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf
It only gets worse from that point on. The poor can't get free supermarket discount cards?
Those particular numbers don't tell the whole story.
There are many ways to "not have a car", including "the car has broken down and they don't have the $300 to get it fixed, just like what happened last month because the car is fundamentally unreliable after owning it for 15 years (or getting a 10-year-old used one because they had a windfall one month, five years ago) but they can't amass enough cash to get another one, because they're living hand-to-mouth."
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB59/EIB59.pdf
Some quick math suggests about 30% of poor people live in nonmetro areas.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Population/
Since you seem unwilling to browse any sources I cite, I'm not going to bother looking up suburban poverty.
If you are interested in understanding poverty in the US, you should skim that 642 page report. It's a fantastic report and it answers many questions one might have about the material conditions of the poor (and many other categories of people).
To put it another way: one might say the reason people cannot get into university is they score too low on their grades -- so the solution is to get everyone the training to enable them to score higher. Except then the universities will simply set the entrance threshold higher.
This nation provides tremendous access to networks and other opportunities for the poor. Maybe not unlimited access to the top networks from the bottom (the classic "can't afford Harvard" red herring), but there is more than enough access to get out of poverty. The funding is there, the doors are open, the paths are clear, assistance is eager - but if someone won't take the steps that only they themselves can take, they won't get anywhere.
I see stark examples of this over and over. It's not lack of access, it's lack of personal motivation.
I doubt that all of the poor lack all personal motivation. For one thing, there is considerable social disincentive for people who unintentionally signal that they are poor.
I remember reading one account of a poor woman who had no idea she could walk into a downtown skyscraper. She always thought that she'd have to check in at the desk or present some sort of ID. This is true for some buildings, but not for all of them.
In the case of attractive women, I'm sure the number of guys who would actually talk to her and ask for her number are much smaller than the number of guys that want to.
1. You have a connection with a successful professional and so you're closer to promising job opportunities.
2. Your social circle contains a lot of rich people who have the habits and lifestyle typical of the rich, and you absorb a lot of their behavior by osmosis, which helps you succeed.
It's really hard to extend the benefits of the second kind of "networking" to more than a few poor people, and usually they have to be children. (Prep for Prep, college admissions decisions.)
On the other hand, it would be quite possible to develop online institutions to help with the first kind of networking. Create alternative, non-college ways to signal ability, and create ways for employers to connect with those able but isolated people. (I'm working on a project that has applications in that direction.)
I don't know how many "favorable" offerings are presented each year or what their performances are, but if the IPO is purposelessly undervalued to make their clients richer, how does one compete with that? I doubt a $100 or 10k account would draw enough interest to gain access to these "Favorable" offerings.
In this context, an undervalued IPO every once in a while is more like a perk to a valued customer -- it's the equivalent of the bouquet of flowers or bottle of wine a company might send to a regular Joe.
Yes, but that perk is paid for by LinkedIn.
(These stories about the IPO pricing, where LinkedIn gets to be portrayed as honest entrepreneurs ripped off by an evil bank, surely is an additional PR victory they gained from this move.)
Everybody says the way to become wealthy is to let money make money for you, but you can find yourself locked out of most of the opportunities where that might happen at a growth percentage to be interesting simply because you don't start with enough money to get in the game.
I don't think so. I guess it depends on what you mean by "wealthy", but I'd say that's the way to go from "rich" to "super rich".
The way to become wealthy is to spend less than you earn. A lot less. When you have savings on the order of several years' worth of income, then a healthy return is real money. Until then, your budget matters a lot more.
Then he uses "network" to mean what you get at Harvard or Yale, and suggests that this is a gating factor, that masses of people have everything they need to rise out of the bottom quartile, if only we could give them a letter of admission to Harvard. This seems odd.
There's a big difference between knowing small business owners in the neighborhood and knowing friends of wealthy and or well connected people. When you're poor you are isolated. You have to do everything from scratch and it takes a LONG time to figure out by yourself, what generations of people have already figured out.
The Harvard example could easily be a proxy for other institutions frequented by the elite.
Beginner positions, almost by definition, are lower responsibility and offer some leeway. Networks may expand returns on ability, but they can only guess at the real ability of a new person. Resumes anyone? Many startups right now say they are looking for "cultural fit" first and foremost, so even ability has limits. It would be convenient to assume that there are so many high skilled and irreplaceable people, but they're probably at the top of organizations, not the entry-level.
We're talking about people getting first chances which requires the networks to take a chance as well. No one knows how good anyone is until they're actually working.
First, my point was that people don't succeed simply on network entry. I hope this is understood but I don't see it much reflected in the comments.
Second, the point of networks is to reduce the guesswork. The network knows if Joe carried his college workgroups but sucked at tests, or if he aces tests but flakes out. It knows how his sense of commitments and responsibilities matches up against network norms. A lot of people "in the Harvard network" have been _rejected_ by that network b/c it knows them and doesn't like what it sees.
I'm only arguing your first point that networks expand returns on ability. This is just like VC's in the startup world. There are some very good startups that get few meetings with big investors because they have no connections. Even if you have a good product (or are smart), you can go unnoticed. Network expands ability, but the network's vision is limited to the acquaintances of the few people who are in it.
Gladwell effectively claims that success in life is due in part to finding the right opportunities at the right time, and the networks you get at Harvard and Yale (and many other potential places, Gladwell doesn't focus on universities the way this post does) provide you with a mechanism for finding those opportunities. And this is "opportunities" in the broadest sense.
I'd believe that if you and everyone you know works low-paying service jobs, that it's then going to be harder to discover opportunities for pursuing passions and career advancement.
I'm pretty sure the problem is more complex than just lack of awareness of the importance of a certain approach to networking... and I'm someone who has been down this path - having grown up "dirt poor" in rural southeast NC, and having escaped to a solidly middle-class lifestyle. But I absolutely agree that this is one component of helping people escape poverty, and I'd definitely like to see (and perhaps participate in) some sort of initiative to help raise awareness of this point, especially among younger folks.
Some sort of program, directed at high-school kids, that teaches skills specifically related to networking, economics, entrepreneurship, and all the "stuff" needed to advance economically, would be - IMO - tremendously beneficial.
That said, I believe the point that solson made about mindsets does stand. I grew up with plenty of people who were as poor as I was, and I was willing to make certain sacrifices, and commit to doing things in order to raise my standard of living... many of my peers weren't, and they still live in the sticks and they're still poor. And I honestly don't believe that I'm necessarily (smarter|more talented|more insightful|whatever) than most of them. But I had a different attitude and different ambitions, and - to my mind - that was the single biggest difference.
Edit:
As an aside, though, I'll throw this out... some of my friends who are still "poorer" than me in the financial sense, may actually be happier. I, for example, have never married or had kids, because I was too busy working and trying to make a better life for myself. And now that I'm working on a startup, I work more than ever and have basically quit worrying about dating or anything for a while... OTOH, my friends back home have wives and kids to come home to, play with, go out with, etc. But I have more money. So who's really better off? I would say that's a real grey area. <shrug />
Whenever I see a statistic like that, the first question I want answered is: what is the trend over time? Maybe this is actually a big change with only 1% coming from the bottom quartile 10 years ago, indicating the future situation, etc.
"Two percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in a university at the beginning of the 20th century. At nearly the end of the 20th century, beyond 60 percent, or 14 million students, were enrolled in 3500 four year or two year colleges."
http://ajha.org/early-history-of-universities-in-america.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow_experiment
It brings to mind a very recent discussion I had with a close friend from those days, one who hasn't managed to break out of a cycle of being poor. He was telling me how excited he was about a new idea where he was going to enroll himself and and his 12 year old son into an expensive martial arts school for some father-son bonding time every week.
I remarked back, "but you barely make rent every month (and you split rent with 3 other adults in a relatively inexpensive area), your cell phone is routinely shut off for non-payment, your credit is so bad you can't even qualify for the highest interest lowest balance credit cards allowed by law, your cars are perpetually broken down/repossessed etc. you have a pending lawsuit for non-payment to a doctor because you couldn't pay your medical bills, etc. etc. etc. how on earth do you expect to pay for this? If I were you, I'd figure out how to resolve my financial situation first so that you can then do those kinds of father-son things you want at your leisure."
"Well how do I do that?"
"Instead of spending $250 a month on this, why don't you spend half as much and go to the local community college and finish up your associates (he's already finished a semester, so it was only another year, year and half left), translate that into a higher paying job or promotion or whatever, pay off your crap, buy Dad and Son Kung Fu?"
"Look, I only have a short window of opportunity here."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, the lease on the house me and 3 other adults split the rent on is up in 2 years, and because of my money issues I don't know if I can afford to stay living close to my son after that, I may have to move out of state to a cheaper area, I'm seriously considering the Detroit area since the cost of living is low. So I want to do this now, while I can."
This has been a typical conversation over the last 20 years with my friend. A decision point comes up, we'll talk about it, on one hand he'll have an opportunity to improve his lot in life, but he'll have to sacrifice a little now in order to reap rewards later, on the other hand, an emotionally satisfying marshmallow.
Invariable he'll always pick the marshmallow. He's interested in the immediate "feeling" of a decision, unable to project an expectation of a better "feeling" later on. The result is, 20 years later, an otherwise intelligent, honest, good guy nearing middle age has:
- no career progression of any sort, he's actually never worked a full-time job
- he's been fired many times from promising jobs because he was "bored" and pretended to be sick from a mystery illness until they let him go
- has a couple kids he can't support properly
- can't afford a place on his own with living arrangements so complex it would take 4 or 5 long blog posts to explain
- has had a handful of cars repossessed or sold off out of his control
- continues to buy known unreliable vehicles that require constant repair, costing him precious money and time away from work
- did a solid semester at college (with decentish grades) before dropping out because he didn't have enough time to play WoW - he was very proud of having finally cancelled his account...for the 3rd time.
- spends considerable portions of his income on videogames and online subscriptions
- buys random unnecessary crap all the time, "yes that RC helicopter is cool, why is your phone shut off again?"
- has innumerable small medical bills currently in collections, with one pending lawsuit (btw, the one he's getting sued for? Almost the exact cost of a WoW account for a year)
- etc.
Each of these issues can be explained by the Marshmallow test, because to properly deal with any of them requires the ability to defer gratification in the immediate as part of a plan, something, even with decades of coaching, he's unable to do, and thus remains poor.
I'm thinking children here because at least in my anecdotal experience, I've had no luck getting any of the poor adults I know to show even the most basic ability. Children can be more malleable in this way.
Delayed gratification is only effective if you believe that you will be rewarded for it. I'm betting that you've never sacrificed a calf to Zeus. That's not because you lack self control, but because you don't believe that you would receive any benefit, not to mention one that would out weigh the cost of the calf. In the same way, your friend is "rationally" choosing to spend $250 a month on a bonding experience with his son instead of spending $125 a month on a failed degree that won't land him a better job. Either way, he's going to get fired, lose his house, and be forced to move to Detroit, but the first lets him move to Detroit with some happy family memories while the other has him moving to Detroit with a worthless piece of paper.
Now, we know that he can prevent his constant economic crises. We've done it for ourselves. Your friend, though, knows that correlation is not causation and the relationship between our self-sacrifice and our economic well being is as tenuous as the relationship between uncle Ernie's lucky Elvis shirt and that time hit the jackpot on the penny slots. As long as financial disaster is "unavoidable", he'll continue to make the only "smart" choice and immediately spend the little money that he does have before he loses that, too.
I think this is a great insight into why making sound decisions and delaying gratification seems to be such a problem for him and many people stuck in an endless cycle of bring poor.
Mr. Marx's job is educating, hopefully as well as possible, people who already have a great educational advantage. Anyone working at Amherst or any other elite college who thinks they can be part of the solution by directly educating underprivileged kids is indulging in fantasy. Access to higher education is not the problem; preparation is. A poor person who is prepared to succeed at an elite college has already risen beyond "underprivileged" and is on a trajectory to the upper middle class.
More precisely, if Mr. Marx is wrong to imply that there is some kind of "merit" and "talent" that makes one capable of handling higher education but is not affected by a child's opportunities and environmental influences. Amherst does not admit people based on their genetic potential or even their winning personality. They try to take social disadvantage into account when judging applicants' academic preparation, but in the end they limit admissions to students who can succeed at Amherst. If Mr. Marx wants to directly help people who are disadvantaged then he should quit Amherst and join some organization that works with people who are not and could not be Amherst students.
All too often I see, from first hand experience, the poor and the middle class having the same opportunities: broadly speaking, the latter take advantage thereof, the former don't.
Sure, some networks are not accessible. Many are, and if one does not take advantage of what opportunities one does have, then more will not become available.
Is your college a meritocracy based on talent or a means of attempting to right social wrongs, Mr Marx? If it's the former, then the income of student's parents should be irrelevant and you should only be wringing your hands over lesser talented pupils getting in over more talented ones. If it's the latter, I can see your concern - patterns of behavior beget success and children often emulate their parents, leaving you stuck with those blasted high achievers. Tough break, that.
http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-smart-people-defend...
It's not the haves vs. the have-nots. It's the connecteds vs. the connected-nots.
On a similar topic is an essay by Paul Graham that you may enjoy: http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html
We behave instinctively as if there is a finite pie. We push our boots in others' faces instinctively, try to keep them down, shut them out, push them away, because our genes think the pie is finite.
Social networks do act so as to keep outsiders down. Not because it's rational, but they do.
Primary example: society is continually engineered to eliminate poverty, and yet poverty persists.
Anyway, regarding this topic, there's an entire field of academia which regularly studies intergenerational economic mobility (Sociology). Would anyone familiar enough with the field like to provide us with a paper on this topic? (Preferably about the US)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8540055/Schools-win-rig...
I'm neither white nor black, but I was definitely poor. Grew up in the ghetto with gang violence. The problem isn't "access" or outreach programs for poor people—the problem is and always will be the parents. My parents stressed the importance of education and now I do well. My friends' parents didnt, and most of them barely graduated high school. Some even dropped out.
Growing up poor, I know firsthand that parents don't stress education enough, in my opinion. Most of those parents have no idea about how to change their situations or they would do it themselves. This is what the outreach programs and access to different ways of thinking, a view of how easy it is to get ahead, and access to opportunities that their parent may have never even knew about address.
The post argues that the income-boosting effect of going to a top college isn't due to the education one receives, but instead is due to the possibility of inclusion in a network of people who are all more likely to find success. In other words the friends you meet at a top college are a much better influence than the friends you meet in the hood, and having a good network of friends is more beneficial to your career than what you learn in the classroom.
Of course if you escaped the ghetto to do well you probably know everything there is to know about how poverty works. Other people's thoughts are just sort of a speedbump on your way to let the truth shine here on hn.
I recently looked into the University of Washington Technical Management MBA program and the University was pretty brazen about admitting this. They spent far more time talking about networks and ROI than academic rigor.
Business schools are all about networking and the social aspect. I feel that as an introvert, I got a lot less out of my undergraduate business education than many of my classmates did.