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Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

It could be most beneficial to people currently in poverty, to try out strategies for escaping it.

That sounds like practicing standing up to school bullies by playing Street Fighter

I'm not sure exactly how you're meaning this, but I think there is widespread ignorance around how people whom are poor are simply unable to improve their lot. It's often not about making the right choices and more there not being any choices.

Yes poverty is caused by people not knowing certain strategies, and those strategies are of course known by people who are not poor... come on.

The strategies for the first steps out of poverty are different from strategies to rise within the middle class. So they're mostly not known by people who aren't poor.

For example, many government aid programs are (intentionally) obscure. Signing up for food stamps is so complicated, there's a charity that just helps people do it (https://www.mrelief.com). And there are plenty more strategies that help people, like for making cheap nutritious food. Any of these can be taught.

That's a good example of the kind of practical thing that people in poverty are more likely to know. Of course it's an example of a strategy for coping with poverty, rather than a step out of poverty.

(A common misconception is that by avoiding spending, one can escape poverty, but this is not the case, because poverty is a lack of income.)

exposure to / awareness of what I would call "financial horizons" is the biggest thing for me.

In poverty there is neither reason nor energy to waste beyond a conceivably actionable point. Learning to overcome that horizon is critical and I think it becomes more difficult the older we get.

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