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What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

jonbischke.com

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Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#91

Post by pessimizer »

MartinCron wrote: post #79
pessimizer wrote: post #59

I think I'm going to be the only person commenting here who's going to cop to getting jobs all the time based on nothing but middle class social connections. I've gotten jobs through uncle's girlfriends/father's frat brothers/my drinking buddies. Honestly, most people I come in contact with know somebody with or have the ability to give me work, and I have the ability to get some of them work just by being a piece of…

Somewhat less cynical advice that I'll give to young people: Go to college, at least for a little while, and get a part-time job or an internship. Companies will hire a college student with little to no experience, but not a college graduate with little to no experience. Many people only figure this out when it's too late.

Agree completely.

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.

Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#92

Post by stcredzero »

hugh3 wrote: post #82
stcredzero wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does racism even mean anymore? 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 raci…

It's a form of bigotry which is also deeply aligned with hate, often violent hate. 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 " X s have characteristic P ". This, even when statistically true, is unfair…

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.

Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#93

Post by rprospero »

bane wrote: post #64

Having been poor (U.S. standard) during much of my elementary and middle school years, and then escaped to a relative level of upper middle class comfort...there is one defining characteristic between my peers from back then who made it out of that situation, and those who are still there decades later: a broken decision making process best and the inability to plan exemplified in the famous Marshmallow test. http://…

I've seen the same thing and I've experienced your frustration. However, I also want to offer a counter-point to your argument. You keep coming back to the marshmallow test and how he can't make a sacrifice today for a greater benefit tomorrow. My question is whether he would send a $5,000 banking fee to a Nigerian prince today for a million dollar money transfer next month? Would you?

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.

Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#94

Post by aarontait »

America's former working class is the new American impoverished proletariat. An economy solely based on highly educated information workers is not only unsustainable, it is social-economic bigotry in it's purist form. We need decent working class jobs, not an emphasis on education. No amount of grants, scholarships, or subsidies will fix this. We need startups that make physical goods and provide physical services, not techno-grandiosity.

Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#95

Post by mindcrime »

ctdonath wrote: post #77
iamelgringo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I respectfully suggest that there are very different kinds of poverty, and that not all kinds of poverty are due to cultural choices. 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…

Life is hard to live in a place where life is hard to live. 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 "…

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.

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.

Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#96

Post by pessimizer »

j123 wrote: post #76
programminggeek wrote: post #75

Poverty is not an academic problem. It's a human problem. There will always be poverty. It can't be solved. To solve poverty you must solve human greed.

This I think is the wisest comment I've read here. We live in an age where many people earnestly believe they can reengineer society. They identify aspects of human nature which they don't like and think it's open to reeducation. There is such a thing as human nature. Tabula rasa is a myth.

Society has been re-engineered any number of times, to good and bad effect. If you think that how it is where you are right now is how it is, has been, and always will be everywhere, you're wrong. Society is made of people, including visionaries and others who are captivated by their visions and have the ability to implement them. Contemplating human society is not the same as contemplating the stars.

Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#97

Post by api »

zacharytelschow wrote: post #86
api wrote: post #71

I've thought this for a long time. It's not the haves vs. the have-nots. It's the connecteds vs. the connected-nots.

This contentious relationship you state implies a fixed pie economy in which a person can get rich only at the sake of his fellows. Any thinking person would roundly reject such a notion. On a similar topic is an essay by Paul Graham that you may enjoy: http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html

You are technically correct. There is no finite pie. But there is a finite pie in our minds.

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.

Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#98

Post by stcredzero »

ctdonath wrote: post #42
hxa7241 wrote: post #28

Is it access to the networks, or that the networks are a fixed size? 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.

It's not access to networks. It's not doing anything with the opportunity when they do have access. I see this a lot: those who view access as a mere possession go nowhere; those who view access as a means to an end advance. This, in the popular discussions of how to aid the poor, is woefully under-addressed - probably because for all the things you can do for someone (and feel good about doing), the one critical cor…

the one critical core factor is self-motivation: you can't make someone do what they need to for their own good.

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.

Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#99

Post by stcredzero »

api wrote: post #70
solson wrote: post #35

Having been poor (not 3rd world poor, poor by American standards) I found the most difficult thing is leaving the poverty stricken network. You don't feel like you've made it until you reject the entire mindset. Until then, you feel like you've sold out. My mother still makes me feel guilty and shames me every time I see her. Until you've had a parent who shames you for doing better than they did, you'll never unders…

People will defend their self-inflicted misery. 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.

People will defend their self-inflicted misery.

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".

Re: What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

#100

Post by dbaugh »

sethg wrote: post #58
yummyfajitas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first link is full of fail. 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 card…

I’m not going to look for an answer right now in that 642-page book, but I suspect that a significant fraction of poor people live in suburban or rural areas, where owning a car is an absolute necessity for holding a job, and owning two cars would be damn near a necessity in families where both parents work outside the house.

I find that most people just don't understand what being poor and living and rural place is like. Besides the need of a car for a job it is absolutely necessary in order to have any social contact. When you live in a rural place your friends live at least 30 miles away. This is why rural "hicks" get pissed off when the gas price gets high. It takes way there ability to socialize.
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