16 ms·

Bee Sting Theory of Poverty

235 points by chegra 16y ago

csomar 16y ago
>> Social conservatives have tended to argue that poor people lack the smarts or willpower to make the right choices. I think the lack of smartness is what makes people poor. I heard lot of stories of people who inherited millions and finished as poor as a blue collar employee.
Ratufa 16y ago
This sounds very much like some of the theories that one hears when talking about the causes of procrastination when faced with an overwhelming task. For example, the quoted section here: http://lifehacker.com/5508417/the-overwhelming-wave-that-makes-us-procrastinate http://lifehacker.com/5508417/the-overwhelming-wave-that-mak... One difference between the two cases is that the situation with many of the poor may be such that the problem they are facing may be unsolvable (i.e. it's not just a matter of 'getting to work') or at least unsolvable given the current framing of the problem. This means that the rational solutions that people suggest for procrastination problems, such as breaking the current task into small chunks, are not rational solutions to the problems the poor face. Hence the bee sting theory.
fanboy123 16y ago
There have been some poverty studies in India that shows that the lack in belief that "things could be different" may be the cause of some irrational behavior. What I wonder from the article is what happens if you take a poor person and pay off everything and get them started with an education. Do they fall right back into debt? I have always suspected that having a child while a teenager is too big of a cost to dig your way out of.
- techiferous 16y ago
  in India This may not translate well into the U.S., since India has a history of a strong caste system that enforced poverty. "Things could be different" was not true for the Harijans.
  - fanboy123 16y ago
    That was part of the study. Researchers observed more irrational actions compared to say rural china or vietnam. Having that feeling that things wont change will cause you to give up and do what is deemed irrational.
CWuestefeld 16y ago
"It's Econ 101 that's to blame," Karelis says. "It's created this tired, phony debate about what causes poverty." This question is based on faulty assumptions. There is no cause of poverty: it is the natural state. Tens of thousands of years ago, all of our ancestors were running around barefoot and naked. Just a few generations ago, none of our ancestors even had refrigeration nor access to antibiotics. So every one of us comes from a line of people who didn't enjoy nearly as much luxury as we've got today. The reason we're no longer in that situation is because we (that is, ourselves and our progenitors) have worked our way out of it.
- crystalis 16y ago
  The thing is, there's a difference between the poverty of a hunter-gatherer and the poverty of an urban family. Some of it is being barefoot in a paved world covered with broken glass, but a lot more is connected to the enduring effects of poverty. A child raised in poverty then has fewer barriers to overcome- in fat times, even the worst hunter could be eating as well as the best. To say they're both in poverty because they lack shoes and clothing they don't need is missing the point. Today, you have a huge number of knock on effects from e.g., lack of good schooling and "poverty decreasing" social networks that practically turn poverty into a personal attribute rather than a temporary state.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    None of that bears on the point. By referring to "the cause of poverty", the OP makes it seem that each of us is destined to riches and luxury, unless something goes wrong and condemns us to poverty. What I'm trying to illustrate is that this is actually the opposite of the truth: each of us has a lifetime of poverty in front of us, unless we do something to ensure that we do not. Granted, it's easier for some of us than others: the "silver spoon" thing. But the fact remains that riches are not the default state, at least for the vast majority of us. We are destined to be poor unless we take steps to avoid it.
    - ahoyhere 16y ago
drats 16y ago
I've always liked the idea of "learning or earning" whereby if you become unemployed you get a welfare benefit to study for 3, 6 or 12 months in university or vocational training and then guided through improving your CV and then you hit the job market again. But I come from, and live in, various countries where there is decent welfare, universal healthcare and deferred interest-free loans or token fee university education so that's in place more or less anyway although it could be formalized and streamlined more. A lot of infrastructure would need to be put in place for such a system to work in the USA.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >But I come from, and live in, various countries where there is decent welfare, universal healthcare and deferred interest-free loans or token fee university education so that's in place more or less anyway although it could be formalized and streamlined more Where?!?
edanm 16y ago
"But ultimately, he believes, the strength of his arguments is less in how they fit with the economic work that's been done to date on poverty - much of which he is suspicious of anyway - but in how familiar they feel to all of us, rich or poor." I love this statement. I'm absolutely sure that the majority of theories to do with psychology/economics are based on intuition, much more than they are based on "hard facts" (because it's very hard to get hard data on these kinds of things). I'm happy he at least admits it.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
We've seen this article before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156177 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156177 It was crap then and it's crap now. Karelis doesn't understand econ, but criticizes it because econ disagrees with his thought experiments and political leanings. His theory is nothing but traditional econ with a modified utility function. It has rather perverse implications (i.e., we should tax the poor but not the rich), and as the article notes it does not agree with experiment. The best reason for completely ignoring Karelis: "ultimately, he believes, the strength of his arguments is less in how they fit with the economic work that's been done to date on poverty - much of which he is suspicious of anyway - but in how familiar they feel to all of us, rich or poor."
- powrtoch 16y ago
  Amen. Since when do we accept arguments just because they sound nice? Hasn't a whole lot of work gone into avoiding this black hole of rationality? Hey, maybe supposedly being able see Russia from her house really DOES give Ms. Palin foreign policy experience. If a theory sounds promising, then go gather some data. If it still looks good after careful scrutiny, then go write your book.
  - anamax 16y ago
    > Hey, maybe supposedly being able see Russia from her house really DOES give Ms. Palin foreign policy experience. You do know that that's from SNL, not Palin. (Since you're suggesting, correctly, that one should go with data, it's curious that you used fiction as supporting evidence.) Border state governors do negotiate with neighboring countries, just as other governors negotiate with neighboring states. Alaska mostly deals with Canada, but there's some stuff with Russia for the Bering Strait. (Palin's house isn't near the strait so she can't see Russia from her house.)
    - studer 16y ago
      You do know that the SNL thing was a riff on something she actually said, right?
hakl 16y ago
He was on C-SPAN Book TV in 2007: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/200788-1 http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/200788-1 In true C-SPAN tradition the video has 21 views :). If you don't have flash you can get the video with RTMPDump (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu): rtmpdump -W http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay... -s http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay... -r rtmp://video.c-spanarchives.org:1935/fastplay/../trimmed/200/200788/200788-1_01.flv -o 200788-1_01.flv rtmpdump -W http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay... -s http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay... -r rtmp://video.c-spanarchives.org:1935/fastplay/../trimmed/200/200788/200788-1_02.flv -o 200788-1_02.flv
tmsh 16y ago
Bee stings is a bad analogy. It's more like trying to retain and adapt human dignity among exponentially more inefficient human processes. I agree with this article only insofar as multiple bee stings are exponentially more painful. But I disagree with it insofar as bee stings represent 'pain' instead of logistical nightmares and high risk situations, which is what poverty, the further down you go, increasingly involves. I also disagree strongly that poverty leads to irrationality. That is a very dangerous and arrogant line of thinking -- and obviously reflects a lack of understanding with the rational choices poor people face.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  My take is that irrationality (by somebody) or bad luck (by somebody) leads to poverty. Which leads to more irrationality. Which leads to more poverty. And so on. It can be a vicious cycle that is hard to escape from, mentally and financially.
10ren 16y ago
when overwhelmed, reduce your frame/perspective so you can focus on one thing at a time.
sridharvembu 16y ago
The core argument amounts to: -- quote -- "The core of the problem has not been self-discipline or a lack of opportunity," Karelis says. "My argument is that the cause of poverty has been poverty." -- end quote -- Being Indian, I have spent a lot of time observing and thinking about poverty from childhood, and in recent years, doing something about it. I believe he has hit the nail on the head with his analysis of the problem, yet I completely disagree with his solution, which is negative income tax i.e direct government cash to the poor. Here is where I believe he is right. Poverty is a "phase transition" effect: there is a point of being too-poor below which you lose all motivation to better yourself, not only because there are too many problems but also because those problems are all interlinked, so solving just one feels utterly pointless. Spend time in any very poor neighborhood and you will see this. That poverty threshold would be different for different people, and you can aggregate these thresholds for a distinctly identifiable group to come up with a "group poverty threshold", which itself is a function of the group's history and culture. Once you are below that threshold, poverty is very hard to escape. You can state that as "poverty is the cause of poverty." Yet, I also completely disagree with his solution - direct cash grant from the government. To prove the absurdity of it, imagine this on a global scale. Is the solution to Indian poverty then massive transfer of resources from the rich world? So what is the solution then? Here is a sketch: the trouble is there are so many interlinked problems it is not even clear where to start. It is utterly chaotic. To overcome it, first create a very small "Zone of Order" (one room, one household, one neighborhood, one small company, one city ... whatever) where you establish clear, orderly systems. China called this the "Special Economic Zone" which they modeled by taking advice from Hong Kong and Taiwan businessmen. Once you prove that working, scale it up. You have to bootstrap from that "Zone of Order", however small that is. At a personal level, it could be just one small corner of your shack or one hour a day of order, and for a country like India, it could be one city. You can generalize this principle: the solution to any self-referential problem ("poverty is the cause of poverty") is bootstrapping from a very small seed. In fact, I believe most intractable problems are self-referential. On a related note, read about "Charter Cities" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-poli...
- stcredzero 16y ago
stcredzero 16y ago
I think the sort of poverty I sense around big company development is of the same sort. Employees are often beset by clueless management, crushing bureaucratic paperwork, WTF bad code, useless demoralized coworkers, &c... This results in people saying stuff like, "If you find yourself in a warm tub of shit, just have the good sense to stay there where it's warm and no one's likely to attack you." Yes, I actually had a coworker say that to me once. The attitudess of such workers are very much like the attitudes of those in poverty as described by the article.
pmichaud 16y ago
This is an extremely intuitively satisfying explanation to me, and I've been on both extremes.
- oz 16y ago
  Agreed. Upvoted. When I was younger, I used to look at poor people and condemn them for being lazy and irresponsible. It's when I started paying bills that I realized that many lower middle-class lives hang by a thread - a missed paycheck can sometimes be catastrophic. I often wonder what I would do if I were poor. I'd have hope-I'm a smart kid, eloquent, so I could dig myself out of it. But what of those who, through no fault of their own, are not so lucky? To me, it is an absolute marvel that they don't engage in more mayhem. If you follow international news, you've probably watched the drama unfold here in Jamaica over the extradition of Christopher 'Dudus' Coke. A resident of Tivoli Gardens, the inner-city community where Coke was from declared on local news that 'Jesus died for us, so we will die for Dudus.' Many people I know were upset by her statement, because they don't understand. Sure he was a criminal. Sure he was involved in drugs and murders. But when he's the one sending your six kids to school, paying for medical care for your grandmother, and providing swift and effective justice, let's just say your loyalties will not be to the state that has repeatedly signaled its lack of care. Fuck the 'social contract.' Now you know why they called him "The President."
  - MartinCron 16y ago
    * To me, it is an absolute marvel that they don't engage in more mayhem.* The way the gap (chasm, really) between rich and poor keeps growing makes me worry about more mayhem in the future. People who feel persistent despair and lack of hope (regardless of if that feeling is "right") don't operate in the same universe of "rational decision making". That behavior ranges the full span of self-destructive (what the article was about, mostly) to full on sociopathic. This is not to say that I have any new or novel ideas on how to fix the problem.
    - oz 16y ago
      Exactly! The core issue is lack of hope. When hope is gone, all is lost. And then you see someone driving by in their brand new Mercedes, and you can see in their faces that they've never had to work a day in their lives, it fills you with a boiling rage at the unfairness of the world. To hell with law. To hell with society. I'm gonna get mine. To be honest, it's difficult to blame them. Note, I've never been poor. Growing up, the only times I went hungry were when I was too lazy to cook - there was always food in the house. So I was kind of naive. I remember my father (he was a pastor) once telling a congregation that he told the Lord that if he ever reached a point where he couldn't feed his family, he would just run away. So I didn't really know the facts of life. Now, the veil is being lifted. This, perhaps, is where religion is most useful. If you can convince the poor that there is some sort of 'divine plan,' then people can come to terms with their suffering. On my way to work each morning, I pass people in the streets, begging alms. They gather at the stoplights, and come to the car windows with their hands outstretched. That is their life, day in day out. Are their lives really worth living? I'm not sure. I'm just not sure. Maybe Schopenhauer was right about life. I tend toward nihilism quite often these days.
shin_lao 16y ago
The question is: why do you let your car have many dents? Why some people fall deeper into poverty and some other get out of it? Is it just a question of luck? Of help? Of energy? Of will?
- hapless 16y ago
  First, let us correct your assumptions: Very few Americans get out of poverty. Social mobility rates are surprisingly small in the United States. The American Everyman is very likely to die in the class into which he was born. Secondly, not falling into poverty in the first place really is a question of help. Wealthy people (read: almost all HN users) have networks of wealthy people to assist them when times get hard -- parents, children, siblings, friends. The poor do not. Poor folks have networks of other poor folks. If I lose my job and my house, I have a year of cash and goodwill to live on, couch-surfing and stretching savings. If a member of the working poor suffers a setback on the way out of poverty, he could be back to square one, or worse, in a matter of weeks.
  - gthank 16y ago
    Re: help networks -> poor people might not have a network that can make a house payment for them, but their networks are (IME) more likely to give a hand via couch-surfing and the like. As a person who grew up poor and made it out of the bottom quintile, I can tell you that the number of my poor friends who had the talent and opportunity to do the same but didn't actually do it is probably an order of magnitude larger than the number who did. So why don't they actually make it out? The theory in the article sounds interesting, and I hope to see more research done to test it.
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    Wealthy people (read: almost all HN users) By the metric where almost all HN users count as "wealthy", the US hardly has any poverty at all. I don't know that that's inaccurate, but it's not the usual assumption.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
jeb 16y ago
I've been in a temporary situation where I faced many of the issues I think poor people face. What happens when you are that poor is that you realise the huge mountain above you that you have to overcome to going back to where normal people are, and you just kind of accept where you are now and potter along and try to survive everyday without considering all too much how to get out. For example, I had $4000 debt. There was no way in hell I could ever pay that money back, considering that I made $900/month which did not cover my monthly expenses. So let's say a month ends where I spend $800 and only have $100 left. Am I going to stick it towards paying off the debt or just buy some new shoes or so? That debt is so huge that I know that saving $100 will still take me so many years, that I just accept the debt and go buy myself some shoes. Poverty starts when you resign yourself to being poor. A friend of mine is poor - I called him to lunch and brought out $5000 and I told him that if he can think of any idea at all for a business, I would invest these $5000 in his business. I would not check his idea, I would not bother him if it was viable, I would simply give him the money. Up until today, he has not come to me to pick up the cash. But he still complains about how he has no money. That's the thing - he is resigned to being poor. Becoming rich will mean a lot of work, it's an ardous and long task, and I really don't think he wants to do it, even when the money is offered to him in that manner.
- Flemlord 16y ago
  Part of your friend's reluctance may simply be a lack of desire to start his own business. I've made similar offers to select family members (with higher dollar amounts) and nobody has taken me up on a single offer. When I ask them why not, they tell me they don't want to take the risk of starting their own business... then go right back to complaining about their horrible boss/small salary/current situation.
  - migpwr 16y ago
    I think the two of you might be overlooking some of the social pressure involved in taking thousands of dollars from a close friend. If I made that offer to any one of my friends, they'd turn it down every time. They might say it's impossible, or come up with some other excuse, but most of the reluctance will come from having to see me again if their idea fails. If you changed your offer to something like, "Hey, I've got about $5k laying around, and I want to start a business, are you interested? What do you think we should do?", you'd probably see more action. I personally think this has more to do with your friendship than the idea of your friends being mentally "poor".
RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
Single page: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=full http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/...
megaman821 16y ago
Most of the social help programs that I have seen so far, except for unemployment, are overrun by scammers. I lived in a section 8 apartment for a while and the same people qualifying for $25/month rents were driving Escalades. For these people there is nothing at this point in their lives that is going to change they way they live and think. Educating their kids is the only way to break the cycle of poverty.
- dgabriel 16y ago
  > the same people qualifying for $25/month rents were driving Escalades I have not known this to be true. The handful of people I know who qualify for section 8 don't own cars, or have 15yo beaters.
  - megaman821 16y ago
    I can't say I have done a formal study, it is just an observation in a single city. The Mint Blog published some numbers on illegal immigrants where it was claimed that over 60% of section 8 was claimed by them. Most of them get paid in cash so it is easy to adjust whatever they make to meet the section 8 qualifications. Also a lot of the households have more than one adult working so going over the $30k qualification threshold doesn't take that good of job if it is split between 2 or 3 people. There are definitely people that have fallen on hard times and people on disability that needs the help section 8 provides, it just makes me angry that they are in the minority of people being helped.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Every time (moderate hyperbole) one of my pizza drivers (I did that for 7 years) would deliver a pizza to either a trailer park or a ghetto... there'd be a 52" plasma sitting in the living room. And then they'd apologize for being too poor to tip.
  - thomasz 16y ago
    So what? This guy probably won 500 bucks in the lottery.
uast23 16y ago
The theory of "car dent" and "no of dishes in sink" are kind of justified but the "protagonist" of the article i.e. no of bee stings does not fit with the theory of poverty at all. Does not matter if someone has one or ten bee stings, people get it cured for sure.
- dinedal 16y ago
  Suppose you get X bee stings (problems) in one day, and you have a bee string rate of Y per day normally. If you can only afford to buy cures at a rate of Z per day (let's be optimistic and assume it's greater then Y) it will take you X-(Z-Y) days to cure all your bee stings. Now, a bee sting sucks, but it doesn't kill you. In fact, life without any bee stings is, let's say, Q times better then with. Yet, the difference between 1 bee sting and N bee stings is pretty much nil, they all hurt. The only real benefit occurs when you cross the threshold that lets you have no bee stings at the end of each day. The theory, as I understand it, proposes that given a big enough X, a person with a small (Z-Y), won't bother with curing bee stings, regardless of Q.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    You may or may not do it, depending your discount rate. Suppose being bee-sting free is worth H dollars/day to you, and the cure costs C dollars/day. As long as C/H < exp(-r( days until fully cured)) (where r is your discount rate), you'll buy the the cure. Since r tends to be larger for the poor than for the middle class/rich, C/H is likely to be less than exp(-r(days until fully cured)), since the larger r gets, the smaller this constant gets. This is just standard econ, BTW.
  - uast23 16y ago
    My comment was meant for the literal meaning for "Bee sting". What if I replace "bee sting" with a "cut finger". You will say whether it is one finger off from your body or 10 fingers off... it hurts the same!!!... so no need to pay attention. In theory your/author's logic sounds good... but practically it does not make sense. I would still say that the analogy of car dents OR no of dishes in the sink is a better way to present it. Its a little impractical to count "physical/bodily" pains in numbers.
nazgulnarsil 16y ago
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/06/why_do_the_poor.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/06/why_do_the_poor....
biggitybones 16y ago
I think a lot of us can empathize with this theory. Motivation increases as a tangible milestone is in the near term and if nothing is within a reachable distance it becomes increasingly difficult to start down the path. It's similar in concept to all of the problems people have completing a project because the end goal is no where in sight. The interesting part is how you use this theory to help the impoverished. Can you just throw specific vouchers at the situation to alleviate some of the problems, as the end of the article suggests? I don't think this is feasible - it moderately resembles the Gulf coast debacle right now. Sure you can stop some of the problems, but rarely does it solve everything. The book sounds interesting, but all the reviews state that the author lacks data to back up his intuitive claims. I'd love it if he could provide some hard evidence to the theory, though I bet the most intuitive social claims often are hard to prove scientifically.
thwarted 16y ago
Guh, I can't read this on my nexus one because www.boston.com keeps redirecting me to a mobile site that doesn't have the content.
- tocomment 16y ago
  I couldn't emphasize more, I hate it when websites do this. What are they possibly thinking! GRR it really grinds my gears.
  - jpcx01 16y ago
    Agreed. Nypost does it as well. I can't even comprehend how stupid their IT dept could be to allow this to go on for so long.
- adammichaelc 16y ago
  Same on the iPhone
  - illumin8 16y ago
    Try an alternative browser like Atomic Web - you can change your user agent string to look like Safari/Webkit for desktop and get the full version of websites that try to reroute you to a mobile version.
- spamizbad 16y ago
  In your browser settings there should be an option for "Mobile view" - uncheck this option and it will display the normal version of all websites.
  - thwarted 16y ago
    There doesn't seem to be a "Mobile view" option in the browser preferences, at least on 2.1 which is what is running on my nexus.
Dove 16y ago
"Poverty causes poverty." I couldn't agree more. I think the model is exactly right: too many miseries, not enough motivation to alleviate them. But I don't like the proposed solution of giving away money; that fosters dependency. I think the best approach is a personal one. Friends I've had who were poor were sometimes poor due to circumstances beyond their control, but most often they had just never learned how to live differently. They hadn't been taught how to handle money. They didn't understand budgets. They ate fast food; we cooked. They bought tons of toys; we had fun money, but it was tracked and budgeted. They bought pre-packaged sausages; we bought potatoes. They failed to pay bills for months on end, constantly fighting fees and debt collectors. We tracked and budgeted everything. For some of these people, it was totally lifechanging just being friends with my family--seeing how we ran a clean household on a shoestring budget, and saved money. A poor person who's good friends with a not-really-poor person has a lot of advantages. Not-really-poor can alleviate some of the worst pain of poverty: help out when they need a lift or a dinner or an advocate or a place to stay. But the major advantage is lifestyle modeling. Poor can see what Not-Really-Poor does that makes it all hang together, that solves all the problems at once. And he sees how he could maybe get there himself. Economically mixed neighborhoods, a sense of neighborliness, hobby groups (say, gaming) that cut across social classes and create friendships. I have observed these things to effectively combat poverty.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >But the major advantage is lifestyle modelling. Poor can see what Not-Really-Poor does that makes it all hang together, that solves all the problems at once. And he sees how he could maybe get there himself. Hmm. We pay our mortgage and bills on time (mostly), we cook for ourselves, we use second hand washable nappies, walk rather than driving (we need a car for our work though; walking may actually cost more I've never done a complete analysis but have heard this suggested), have second hand and donated clothes and toys and furniture, cancelled our TV license, grow some of our own food, etc., but we're still poor. How poverty causes poverty for us is that we can't afford as healthy food as we'd like. We don't have time/money for entertainment (except the net which is needed for work) and we get excluded from social activities by entry costs (we can't afford to go out to meals or buy drinks at the pub, etc.). Moreover as we have a mortgage on a house we have maintenance costs which we can't afford, this is a time bomb really as dilapidation is progressive, early action avoids more cost later. I should now be doing repairs for winter but can't really afford them. We could be poorer, we can afford 3 meals a day again and even some non-essentials, and largely this has been a choice to value a particular lifestyle and promotion of creativity over material values. Basically we don't want for more education on frugal living but I can see that others do. Indeed we have friends with more money than us (and in particular a friend on benefits!) that we try and encourage to make savings when we see them wasting money.
wanderingknight 16y ago
Marx figured this out over a century ago and these people are still puzzled about the "answer"?
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Poverty is the realization of the 2nd law of thermodynamics as applied to economics. The easiest way to become poor is to do nothing, it works almost every time.
FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
Poverty will always exist, because poverty in its truest form is the perception of inequality. As timwiseman said: >With that said, the close tie in to material wealth is your place in society. A good hunter-gatherer might have none of the luxuries we take for granted now, but he probably has the respect of those around him and looks around and sees he is well off compared to his comrades. He is likely to be happy, and to feel that his work is paying off. Imagine a world where every citizen was equipped with one spoon. They only needed one spoon, and they only ever used one spoon. Now say a few citizens acquire _two_ spoons. They never use these spoons, and they don't need them. But suddenly, everyone who only has one spoon starts to feel inferior. If we woke up tomorrow and everyone had the same amount of wealth, it would be necessary to redefine poverty. The feelings that accompany poverty would still exist, albeit for a different perceptible difference between people. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3315638/Relative-wealth-makes-you-happier.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3315638/Rela... I can't find the original study, but this article references it.
dopamine 16y ago
Karelis seems to describe a psychological condition known in animal and human psychology as "learned helplessness": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness The key insight is that poor people feel that they lack control over their condition. Thus, any marginal effort is perceived to be 'useless'. If you don't feel like checking the above link, read the following excerpt and draw your own analogies: ---- In part one of Seligman and Steve Maier's experiment, three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Group One dogs were simply put in the harnesses for a period of time and later released. Groups Two and Three consisted of "yoked pairs." A dog in Group 2 would be intentionally subjected to pain by being given electric shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. A Group 3 dog was wired in parallel with a Group 2 dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and duration, but his lever didn't stop the electric shocks. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. For Group 3 dogs, the shock was apparently "inescapable." Group 1 and Group 2 dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but Group 3 dogs learned to be helpless, and exhibited symptoms similar to chronic clinical depression. In part two of the Seligman and Maier experiment, these three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus, in which the dogs could escape electric shocks by jumping over a low partition. For the most part, the Group 3 dogs, who had previously "learned" that nothing they did had any effect on the shocks, simply lay down passively and whined. Even though they could have easily escaped the shocks, the dogs didn't try. ----
losethos 16y ago
If you fix-up a poor person's house. They usually still let it fall into disrepair. Some poor people will begin to take pride, but not most. You need to get in touch with the real world and not propose governing by idealistic notions which we all want to believe.
popschedule 16y ago
interesting story: I lived in Los Angeles from the age of 19 to now age 26. My mother died this past november. Before this had happened, I was living my life in Los Angeles. I had big ambitions and I knew where they were taking me. Work was in abundance, during which I had been working for myself for three years developing websites, and working on my startups. It was picture perfect in ways that work would come to me. Now, I live in Sherman Texas, A very small town where I grew up and once dreamed of big things, expensive things which would become mine to keep. The loss of my mother was very difficult, yet I have now opened a new candy store, and leased a large office loft downtown. I've gone through every penny in the transition. One of the most important things that I realize now is that- things in life do not last, whether it be riches of material wealth, love, spirit, or my own motivation. One thing can I can be certain of is my own mindset, temporary defeat, and a loss of hope- or the ultimate poverty. I currently have a broke down car that beeps as I drive it as if it were a time bomb, too much office space, and an inheritance of real-estate that has become a burden in expenses that I can no longer keep up with. Every new project that comes my way somehow disappears before my eyes (I've never had this much trouble closing a deal). If you are poor, look up, you're still alive. This life is a series of challenges, breath a fire that ignites your soul. Live to have hope, and continue dreaming. The difference between the rich and the poor is ones drive to act upon a dream, and fight without a moment of doubt. The poor now, and the poor tomorrow are two different people, the ones who lift their own spirit, and the ones who drown in their spirit of misery.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Lots of great comments here. I tried to refrain from commenting but it is a topic close to my heart. I would simply add that as somebody who has been poor and upper-middle-class, and switched back and forth repeatedly, that there is a difference between poverty and despair. Anybody can get poor. Some folks who are poor can get out of it given the right conditions, but folks who have given over to despair cannot get out of it, no matter what you do for them or what the conditions are. People pass from poverty into despair very easily, unfortunately. This is closely related to the "what kind of reality do you want to live your life in?" question, where the issue is not what the externalities are, but rather what types of things do you want to assume and keep in your heart -- that working hard has it's own merit, that being honest is a better way to live, that educating yourself makes for a richer life, that trying new things can lead to good results. These may never ever be proven by personal experience: in fact, for many poor people it will all just result in more of the same. But by believing them, as a group, the group does better than by not believing them. The belief has an effect of its own.

235 points by chegra 16y ago

>> Social conservatives have tended to argue that poor people lack the smarts or willpower to make the right choices. I think the lack of smartness is what makes people poor. I heard lot of stories of people who inherited millions and finished as poor as a blue collar employee.

Ratufa 16y ago

This sounds very much like some of the theories that one hears when talking about the causes of procrastination when faced with an overwhelming task. For example, the quoted section here: http://lifehacker.com/5508417/the-overwhelming-wave-that-makes-us-procrastinate http://lifehacker.com/5508417/the-overwhelming-wave-that-mak... One difference between the two cases is that the situation with many of the poor may be such that the problem they are facing may be unsolvable (i.e. it's not just a matter of 'getting to work') or at least unsolvable given the current framing of the problem. This means that the rational solutions that people suggest for procrastination problems, such as breaking the current task into small chunks, are not rational solutions to the problems the poor face. Hence the bee sting theory.

fanboy123 16y ago

There have been some poverty studies in India that shows that the lack in belief that "things could be different" may be the cause of some irrational behavior. What I wonder from the article is what happens if you take a poor person and pay off everything and get them started with an education. Do they fall right back into debt? I have always suspected that having a child while a teenager is too big of a cost to dig your way out of.

techiferous 16y ago
in India This may not translate well into the U.S., since India has a history of a strong caste system that enforced poverty. "Things could be different" was not true for the Harijans.
- fanboy123 16y ago
  That was part of the study. Researchers observed more irrational actions compared to say rural china or vietnam. Having that feeling that things wont change will cause you to give up and do what is deemed irrational.

CWuestefeld 16y ago

"It's Econ 101 that's to blame," Karelis says. "It's created this tired, phony debate about what causes poverty." This question is based on faulty assumptions. There is no cause of poverty: it is the natural state. Tens of thousands of years ago, all of our ancestors were running around barefoot and naked. Just a few generations ago, none of our ancestors even had refrigeration nor access to antibiotics. So every one of us comes from a line of people who didn't enjoy nearly as much luxury as we've got today. The reason we're no longer in that situation is because we (that is, ourselves and our progenitors) have worked our way out of it.

crystalis 16y ago
The thing is, there's a difference between the poverty of a hunter-gatherer and the poverty of an urban family. Some of it is being barefoot in a paved world covered with broken glass, but a lot more is connected to the enduring effects of poverty. A child raised in poverty then has fewer barriers to overcome- in fat times, even the worst hunter could be eating as well as the best. To say they're both in poverty because they lack shoes and clothing they don't need is missing the point. Today, you have a huge number of knock on effects from e.g., lack of good schooling and "poverty decreasing" social networks that practically turn poverty into a personal attribute rather than a temporary state.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  None of that bears on the point. By referring to "the cause of poverty", the OP makes it seem that each of us is destined to riches and luxury, unless something goes wrong and condemns us to poverty. What I'm trying to illustrate is that this is actually the opposite of the truth: each of us has a lifetime of poverty in front of us, unless we do something to ensure that we do not. Granted, it's easier for some of us than others: the "silver spoon" thing. But the fact remains that riches are not the default state, at least for the vast majority of us. We are destined to be poor unless we take steps to avoid it.
  - ahoyhere 16y ago

drats 16y ago

I've always liked the idea of "learning or earning" whereby if you become unemployed you get a welfare benefit to study for 3, 6 or 12 months in university or vocational training and then guided through improving your CV and then you hit the job market again. But I come from, and live in, various countries where there is decent welfare, universal healthcare and deferred interest-free loans or token fee university education so that's in place more or less anyway although it could be formalized and streamlined more. A lot of infrastructure would need to be put in place for such a system to work in the USA.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>But I come from, and live in, various countries where there is decent welfare, universal healthcare and deferred interest-free loans or token fee university education so that's in place more or less anyway although it could be formalized and streamlined more Where?!?

edanm 16y ago

"But ultimately, he believes, the strength of his arguments is less in how they fit with the economic work that's been done to date on poverty - much of which he is suspicious of anyway - but in how familiar they feel to all of us, rich or poor." I love this statement. I'm absolutely sure that the majority of theories to do with psychology/economics are based on intuition, much more than they are based on "hard facts" (because it's very hard to get hard data on these kinds of things). I'm happy he at least admits it.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

We've seen this article before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156177 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156177 It was crap then and it's crap now. Karelis doesn't understand econ, but criticizes it because econ disagrees with his thought experiments and political leanings. His theory is nothing but traditional econ with a modified utility function. It has rather perverse implications (i.e., we should tax the poor but not the rich), and as the article notes it does not agree with experiment. The best reason for completely ignoring Karelis: "ultimately, he believes, the strength of his arguments is less in how they fit with the economic work that's been done to date on poverty - much of which he is suspicious of anyway - but in how familiar they feel to all of us, rich or poor."

powrtoch 16y ago
Amen. Since when do we accept arguments just because they sound nice? Hasn't a whole lot of work gone into avoiding this black hole of rationality? Hey, maybe supposedly being able see Russia from her house really DOES give Ms. Palin foreign policy experience. If a theory sounds promising, then go gather some data. If it still looks good after careful scrutiny, then go write your book.
- anamax 16y ago
  > Hey, maybe supposedly being able see Russia from her house really DOES give Ms. Palin foreign policy experience. You do know that that's from SNL, not Palin. (Since you're suggesting, correctly, that one should go with data, it's curious that you used fiction as supporting evidence.) Border state governors do negotiate with neighboring countries, just as other governors negotiate with neighboring states. Alaska mostly deals with Canada, but there's some stuff with Russia for the Bering Strait. (Palin's house isn't near the strait so she can't see Russia from her house.)
  - studer 16y ago
    You do know that the SNL thing was a riff on something she actually said, right?

hakl 16y ago

He was on C-SPAN Book TV in 2007: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/200788-1 http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/200788-1 In true C-SPAN tradition the video has 21 views :). If you don't have flash you can get the video with RTMPDump (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu): rtmpdump -W http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay... -s http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay... -r rtmp://video.c-spanarchives.org:1935/fastplay/../trimmed/200/200788/200788-1_01.flv -o 200788-1_01.flv rtmpdump -W http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay... -s http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay... -r rtmp://video.c-spanarchives.org:1935/fastplay/../trimmed/200/200788/200788-1_02.flv -o 200788-1_02.flv

tmsh 16y ago

Bee stings is a bad analogy. It's more like trying to retain and adapt human dignity among exponentially more inefficient human processes. I agree with this article only insofar as multiple bee stings are exponentially more painful. But I disagree with it insofar as bee stings represent 'pain' instead of logistical nightmares and high risk situations, which is what poverty, the further down you go, increasingly involves. I also disagree strongly that poverty leads to irrationality. That is a very dangerous and arrogant line of thinking -- and obviously reflects a lack of understanding with the rational choices poor people face.

mkramlich 16y ago
My take is that irrationality (by somebody) or bad luck (by somebody) leads to poverty. Which leads to more irrationality. Which leads to more poverty. And so on. It can be a vicious cycle that is hard to escape from, mentally and financially.

10ren 16y ago

when overwhelmed, reduce your frame/perspective so you can focus on one thing at a time.

sridharvembu 16y ago

The core argument amounts to: -- quote -- "The core of the problem has not been self-discipline or a lack of opportunity," Karelis says. "My argument is that the cause of poverty has been poverty." -- end quote -- Being Indian, I have spent a lot of time observing and thinking about poverty from childhood, and in recent years, doing something about it. I believe he has hit the nail on the head with his analysis of the problem, yet I completely disagree with his solution, which is negative income tax i.e direct government cash to the poor. Here is where I believe he is right. Poverty is a "phase transition" effect: there is a point of being too-poor below which you lose all motivation to better yourself, not only because there are too many problems but also because those problems are all interlinked, so solving just one feels utterly pointless. Spend time in any very poor neighborhood and you will see this. That poverty threshold would be different for different people, and you can aggregate these thresholds for a distinctly identifiable group to come up with a "group poverty threshold", which itself is a function of the group's history and culture. Once you are below that threshold, poverty is very hard to escape. You can state that as "poverty is the cause of poverty." Yet, I also completely disagree with his solution - direct cash grant from the government. To prove the absurdity of it, imagine this on a global scale. Is the solution to Indian poverty then massive transfer of resources from the rich world? So what is the solution then? Here is a sketch: the trouble is there are so many interlinked problems it is not even clear where to start. It is utterly chaotic. To overcome it, first create a very small "Zone of Order" (one room, one household, one neighborhood, one small company, one city ... whatever) where you establish clear, orderly systems. China called this the "Special Economic Zone" which they modeled by taking advice from Hong Kong and Taiwan businessmen. Once you prove that working, scale it up. You have to bootstrap from that "Zone of Order", however small that is. At a personal level, it could be just one small corner of your shack or one hour a day of order, and for a country like India, it could be one city. You can generalize this principle: the solution to any self-referential problem ("poverty is the cause of poverty") is bootstrapping from a very small seed. In fact, I believe most intractable problems are self-referential. On a related note, read about "Charter Cities" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-poli...

stcredzero 16y ago

stcredzero 16y ago

I think the sort of poverty I sense around big company development is of the same sort. Employees are often beset by clueless management, crushing bureaucratic paperwork, WTF bad code, useless demoralized coworkers, &c... This results in people saying stuff like, "If you find yourself in a warm tub of shit, just have the good sense to stay there where it's warm and no one's likely to attack you." Yes, I actually had a coworker say that to me once. The attitudess of such workers are very much like the attitudes of those in poverty as described by the article.

pmichaud 16y ago

This is an extremely intuitively satisfying explanation to me, and I've been on both extremes.

oz 16y ago
Agreed. Upvoted. When I was younger, I used to look at poor people and condemn them for being lazy and irresponsible. It's when I started paying bills that I realized that many lower middle-class lives hang by a thread - a missed paycheck can sometimes be catastrophic. I often wonder what I would do if I were poor. I'd have hope-I'm a smart kid, eloquent, so I could dig myself out of it. But what of those who, through no fault of their own, are not so lucky? To me, it is an absolute marvel that they don't engage in more mayhem. If you follow international news, you've probably watched the drama unfold here in Jamaica over the extradition of Christopher 'Dudus' Coke. A resident of Tivoli Gardens, the inner-city community where Coke was from declared on local news that 'Jesus died for us, so we will die for Dudus.' Many people I know were upset by her statement, because they don't understand. Sure he was a criminal. Sure he was involved in drugs and murders. But when he's the one sending your six kids to school, paying for medical care for your grandmother, and providing swift and effective justice, let's just say your loyalties will not be to the state that has repeatedly signaled its lack of care. Fuck the 'social contract.' Now you know why they called him "The President."
- MartinCron 16y ago
  * To me, it is an absolute marvel that they don't engage in more mayhem.* The way the gap (chasm, really) between rich and poor keeps growing makes me worry about more mayhem in the future. People who feel persistent despair and lack of hope (regardless of if that feeling is "right") don't operate in the same universe of "rational decision making". That behavior ranges the full span of self-destructive (what the article was about, mostly) to full on sociopathic. This is not to say that I have any new or novel ideas on how to fix the problem.
  - oz 16y ago
    Exactly! The core issue is lack of hope. When hope is gone, all is lost. And then you see someone driving by in their brand new Mercedes, and you can see in their faces that they've never had to work a day in their lives, it fills you with a boiling rage at the unfairness of the world. To hell with law. To hell with society. I'm gonna get mine. To be honest, it's difficult to blame them. Note, I've never been poor. Growing up, the only times I went hungry were when I was too lazy to cook - there was always food in the house. So I was kind of naive. I remember my father (he was a pastor) once telling a congregation that he told the Lord that if he ever reached a point where he couldn't feed his family, he would just run away. So I didn't really know the facts of life. Now, the veil is being lifted. This, perhaps, is where religion is most useful. If you can convince the poor that there is some sort of 'divine plan,' then people can come to terms with their suffering. On my way to work each morning, I pass people in the streets, begging alms. They gather at the stoplights, and come to the car windows with their hands outstretched. That is their life, day in day out. Are their lives really worth living? I'm not sure. I'm just not sure. Maybe Schopenhauer was right about life. I tend toward nihilism quite often these days.

shin_lao 16y ago

The question is: why do you let your car have many dents? Why some people fall deeper into poverty and some other get out of it? Is it just a question of luck? Of help? Of energy? Of will?

hapless 16y ago
First, let us correct your assumptions: Very few Americans get out of poverty. Social mobility rates are surprisingly small in the United States. The American Everyman is very likely to die in the class into which he was born. Secondly, not falling into poverty in the first place really is a question of help. Wealthy people (read: almost all HN users) have networks of wealthy people to assist them when times get hard -- parents, children, siblings, friends. The poor do not. Poor folks have networks of other poor folks. If I lose my job and my house, I have a year of cash and goodwill to live on, couch-surfing and stretching savings. If a member of the working poor suffers a setback on the way out of poverty, he could be back to square one, or worse, in a matter of weeks.
- gthank 16y ago
  Re: help networks -> poor people might not have a network that can make a house payment for them, but their networks are (IME) more likely to give a hand via couch-surfing and the like. As a person who grew up poor and made it out of the bottom quintile, I can tell you that the number of my poor friends who had the talent and opportunity to do the same but didn't actually do it is probably an order of magnitude larger than the number who did. So why don't they actually make it out? The theory in the article sounds interesting, and I hope to see more research done to test it.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  Wealthy people (read: almost all HN users) By the metric where almost all HN users count as "wealthy", the US hardly has any poverty at all. I don't know that that's inaccurate, but it's not the usual assumption.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

jeb 16y ago

I've been in a temporary situation where I faced many of the issues I think poor people face. What happens when you are that poor is that you realise the huge mountain above you that you have to overcome to going back to where normal people are, and you just kind of accept where you are now and potter along and try to survive everyday without considering all too much how to get out. For example, I had $4000 debt. There was no way in hell I could ever pay that money back, considering that I made $900/month which did not cover my monthly expenses. So let's say a month ends where I spend $800 and only have $100 left. Am I going to stick it towards paying off the debt or just buy some new shoes or so? That debt is so huge that I know that saving $100 will still take me so many years, that I just accept the debt and go buy myself some shoes. Poverty starts when you resign yourself to being poor. A friend of mine is poor - I called him to lunch and brought out $5000 and I told him that if he can think of any idea at all for a business, I would invest these $5000 in his business. I would not check his idea, I would not bother him if it was viable, I would simply give him the money. Up until today, he has not come to me to pick up the cash. But he still complains about how he has no money. That's the thing - he is resigned to being poor. Becoming rich will mean a lot of work, it's an ardous and long task, and I really don't think he wants to do it, even when the money is offered to him in that manner.

Flemlord 16y ago
Part of your friend's reluctance may simply be a lack of desire to start his own business. I've made similar offers to select family members (with higher dollar amounts) and nobody has taken me up on a single offer. When I ask them why not, they tell me they don't want to take the risk of starting their own business... then go right back to complaining about their horrible boss/small salary/current situation.
- migpwr 16y ago
  I think the two of you might be overlooking some of the social pressure involved in taking thousands of dollars from a close friend. If I made that offer to any one of my friends, they'd turn it down every time. They might say it's impossible, or come up with some other excuse, but most of the reluctance will come from having to see me again if their idea fails. If you changed your offer to something like, "Hey, I've got about $5k laying around, and I want to start a business, are you interested? What do you think we should do?", you'd probably see more action. I personally think this has more to do with your friendship than the idea of your friends being mentally "poor".

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

Single page: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=full http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/...

megaman821 16y ago

Most of the social help programs that I have seen so far, except for unemployment, are overrun by scammers. I lived in a section 8 apartment for a while and the same people qualifying for $25/month rents were driving Escalades. For these people there is nothing at this point in their lives that is going to change they way they live and think. Educating their kids is the only way to break the cycle of poverty.

dgabriel 16y ago
> the same people qualifying for $25/month rents were driving Escalades I have not known this to be true. The handful of people I know who qualify for section 8 don't own cars, or have 15yo beaters.
- megaman821 16y ago
  I can't say I have done a formal study, it is just an observation in a single city. The Mint Blog published some numbers on illegal immigrants where it was claimed that over 60% of section 8 was claimed by them. Most of them get paid in cash so it is easy to adjust whatever they make to meet the section 8 qualifications. Also a lot of the households have more than one adult working so going over the $30k qualification threshold doesn't take that good of job if it is split between 2 or 3 people. There are definitely people that have fallen on hard times and people on disability that needs the help section 8 provides, it just makes me angry that they are in the minority of people being helped.
steveklabnik 16y ago
Every time (moderate hyperbole) one of my pizza drivers (I did that for 7 years) would deliver a pizza to either a trailer park or a ghetto... there'd be a 52" plasma sitting in the living room. And then they'd apologize for being too poor to tip.
- thomasz 16y ago
  So what? This guy probably won 500 bucks in the lottery.

uast23 16y ago

The theory of "car dent" and "no of dishes in sink" are kind of justified but the "protagonist" of the article i.e. no of bee stings does not fit with the theory of poverty at all. Does not matter if someone has one or ten bee stings, people get it cured for sure.

dinedal 16y ago
Suppose you get X bee stings (problems) in one day, and you have a bee string rate of Y per day normally. If you can only afford to buy cures at a rate of Z per day (let's be optimistic and assume it's greater then Y) it will take you X-(Z-Y) days to cure all your bee stings. Now, a bee sting sucks, but it doesn't kill you. In fact, life without any bee stings is, let's say, Q times better then with. Yet, the difference between 1 bee sting and N bee stings is pretty much nil, they all hurt. The only real benefit occurs when you cross the threshold that lets you have no bee stings at the end of each day. The theory, as I understand it, proposes that given a big enough X, a person with a small (Z-Y), won't bother with curing bee stings, regardless of Q.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  You may or may not do it, depending your discount rate. Suppose being bee-sting free is worth H dollars/day to you, and the cure costs C dollars/day. As long as C/H < exp(-r( days until fully cured)) (where r is your discount rate), you'll buy the the cure. Since r tends to be larger for the poor than for the middle class/rich, C/H is likely to be less than exp(-r(days until fully cured)), since the larger r gets, the smaller this constant gets. This is just standard econ, BTW.
- uast23 16y ago
  My comment was meant for the literal meaning for "Bee sting". What if I replace "bee sting" with a "cut finger". You will say whether it is one finger off from your body or 10 fingers off... it hurts the same!!!... so no need to pay attention. In theory your/author's logic sounds good... but practically it does not make sense. I would still say that the analogy of car dents OR no of dishes in the sink is a better way to present it. Its a little impractical to count "physical/bodily" pains in numbers.

nazgulnarsil 16y ago

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/06/why_do_the_poor.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/06/why_do_the_poor....

biggitybones 16y ago

I think a lot of us can empathize with this theory. Motivation increases as a tangible milestone is in the near term and if nothing is within a reachable distance it becomes increasingly difficult to start down the path. It's similar in concept to all of the problems people have completing a project because the end goal is no where in sight. The interesting part is how you use this theory to help the impoverished. Can you just throw specific vouchers at the situation to alleviate some of the problems, as the end of the article suggests? I don't think this is feasible - it moderately resembles the Gulf coast debacle right now. Sure you can stop some of the problems, but rarely does it solve everything. The book sounds interesting, but all the reviews state that the author lacks data to back up his intuitive claims. I'd love it if he could provide some hard evidence to the theory, though I bet the most intuitive social claims often are hard to prove scientifically.

thwarted 16y ago

Guh, I can't read this on my nexus one because www.boston.com keeps redirecting me to a mobile site that doesn't have the content.

tocomment 16y ago
I couldn't emphasize more, I hate it when websites do this. What are they possibly thinking! GRR it really grinds my gears.
- jpcx01 16y ago
  Agreed. Nypost does it as well. I can't even comprehend how stupid their IT dept could be to allow this to go on for so long.
adammichaelc 16y ago
Same on the iPhone
- illumin8 16y ago
  Try an alternative browser like Atomic Web - you can change your user agent string to look like Safari/Webkit for desktop and get the full version of websites that try to reroute you to a mobile version.
spamizbad 16y ago
In your browser settings there should be an option for "Mobile view" - uncheck this option and it will display the normal version of all websites.
- thwarted 16y ago
  There doesn't seem to be a "Mobile view" option in the browser preferences, at least on 2.1 which is what is running on my nexus.

Dove 16y ago

"Poverty causes poverty." I couldn't agree more. I think the model is exactly right: too many miseries, not enough motivation to alleviate them. But I don't like the proposed solution of giving away money; that fosters dependency. I think the best approach is a personal one. Friends I've had who were poor were sometimes poor due to circumstances beyond their control, but most often they had just never learned how to live differently. They hadn't been taught how to handle money. They didn't understand budgets. They ate fast food; we cooked. They bought tons of toys; we had fun money, but it was tracked and budgeted. They bought pre-packaged sausages; we bought potatoes. They failed to pay bills for months on end, constantly fighting fees and debt collectors. We tracked and budgeted everything. For some of these people, it was totally lifechanging just being friends with my family--seeing how we ran a clean household on a shoestring budget, and saved money. A poor person who's good friends with a not-really-poor person has a lot of advantages. Not-really-poor can alleviate some of the worst pain of poverty: help out when they need a lift or a dinner or an advocate or a place to stay. But the major advantage is lifestyle modeling. Poor can see what Not-Really-Poor does that makes it all hang together, that solves all the problems at once. And he sees how he could maybe get there himself. Economically mixed neighborhoods, a sense of neighborliness, hobby groups (say, gaming) that cut across social classes and create friendships. I have observed these things to effectively combat poverty.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>But the major advantage is lifestyle modelling. Poor can see what Not-Really-Poor does that makes it all hang together, that solves all the problems at once. And he sees how he could maybe get there himself. Hmm. We pay our mortgage and bills on time (mostly), we cook for ourselves, we use second hand washable nappies, walk rather than driving (we need a car for our work though; walking may actually cost more I've never done a complete analysis but have heard this suggested), have second hand and donated clothes and toys and furniture, cancelled our TV license, grow some of our own food, etc., but we're still poor. How poverty causes poverty for us is that we can't afford as healthy food as we'd like. We don't have time/money for entertainment (except the net which is needed for work) and we get excluded from social activities by entry costs (we can't afford to go out to meals or buy drinks at the pub, etc.). Moreover as we have a mortgage on a house we have maintenance costs which we can't afford, this is a time bomb really as dilapidation is progressive, early action avoids more cost later. I should now be doing repairs for winter but can't really afford them. We could be poorer, we can afford 3 meals a day again and even some non-essentials, and largely this has been a choice to value a particular lifestyle and promotion of creativity over material values. Basically we don't want for more education on frugal living but I can see that others do. Indeed we have friends with more money than us (and in particular a friend on benefits!) that we try and encourage to make savings when we see them wasting money.

wanderingknight 16y ago

Marx figured this out over a century ago and these people are still puzzled about the "answer"?

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Poverty is the realization of the 2nd law of thermodynamics as applied to economics. The easiest way to become poor is to do nothing, it works almost every time.

FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago

Poverty will always exist, because poverty in its truest form is the perception of inequality. As timwiseman said: >With that said, the close tie in to material wealth is your place in society. A good hunter-gatherer might have none of the luxuries we take for granted now, but he probably has the respect of those around him and looks around and sees he is well off compared to his comrades. He is likely to be happy, and to feel that his work is paying off. Imagine a world where every citizen was equipped with one spoon. They only needed one spoon, and they only ever used one spoon. Now say a few citizens acquire _two_ spoons. They never use these spoons, and they don't need them. But suddenly, everyone who only has one spoon starts to feel inferior. If we woke up tomorrow and everyone had the same amount of wealth, it would be necessary to redefine poverty. The feelings that accompany poverty would still exist, albeit for a different perceptible difference between people. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3315638/Relative-wealth-makes-you-happier.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3315638/Rela... I can't find the original study, but this article references it.

dopamine 16y ago

Karelis seems to describe a psychological condition known in animal and human psychology as "learned helplessness": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness The key insight is that poor people feel that they lack control over their condition. Thus, any marginal effort is perceived to be 'useless'. If you don't feel like checking the above link, read the following excerpt and draw your own analogies: ---- In part one of Seligman and Steve Maier's experiment, three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Group One dogs were simply put in the harnesses for a period of time and later released. Groups Two and Three consisted of "yoked pairs." A dog in Group 2 would be intentionally subjected to pain by being given electric shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. A Group 3 dog was wired in parallel with a Group 2 dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and duration, but his lever didn't stop the electric shocks. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. For Group 3 dogs, the shock was apparently "inescapable." Group 1 and Group 2 dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but Group 3 dogs learned to be helpless, and exhibited symptoms similar to chronic clinical depression. In part two of the Seligman and Maier experiment, these three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus, in which the dogs could escape electric shocks by jumping over a low partition. For the most part, the Group 3 dogs, who had previously "learned" that nothing they did had any effect on the shocks, simply lay down passively and whined. Even though they could have easily escaped the shocks, the dogs didn't try. ----

losethos 16y ago

If you fix-up a poor person's house. They usually still let it fall into disrepair. Some poor people will begin to take pride, but not most. You need to get in touch with the real world and not propose governing by idealistic notions which we all want to believe.

popschedule 16y ago

interesting story: I lived in Los Angeles from the age of 19 to now age 26. My mother died this past november. Before this had happened, I was living my life in Los Angeles. I had big ambitions and I knew where they were taking me. Work was in abundance, during which I had been working for myself for three years developing websites, and working on my startups. It was picture perfect in ways that work would come to me. Now, I live in Sherman Texas, A very small town where I grew up and once dreamed of big things, expensive things which would become mine to keep. The loss of my mother was very difficult, yet I have now opened a new candy store, and leased a large office loft downtown. I've gone through every penny in the transition. One of the most important things that I realize now is that- things in life do not last, whether it be riches of material wealth, love, spirit, or my own motivation. One thing can I can be certain of is my own mindset, temporary defeat, and a loss of hope- or the ultimate poverty. I currently have a broke down car that beeps as I drive it as if it were a time bomb, too much office space, and an inheritance of real-estate that has become a burden in expenses that I can no longer keep up with. Every new project that comes my way somehow disappears before my eyes (I've never had this much trouble closing a deal). If you are poor, look up, you're still alive. This life is a series of challenges, breath a fire that ignites your soul. Live to have hope, and continue dreaming. The difference between the rich and the poor is ones drive to act upon a dream, and fight without a moment of doubt. The poor now, and the poor tomorrow are two different people, the ones who lift their own spirit, and the ones who drown in their spirit of misery.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Lots of great comments here. I tried to refrain from commenting but it is a topic close to my heart. I would simply add that as somebody who has been poor and upper-middle-class, and switched back and forth repeatedly, that there is a difference between poverty and despair. Anybody can get poor. Some folks who are poor can get out of it given the right conditions, but folks who have given over to despair cannot get out of it, no matter what you do for them or what the conditions are. People pass from poverty into despair very easily, unfortunately. This is closely related to the "what kind of reality do you want to live your life in?" question, where the issue is not what the externalities are, but rather what types of things do you want to assume and keep in your heart -- that working hard has it's own merit, that being honest is a better way to live, that educating yourself makes for a richer life, that trying new things can lead to good results. These may never ever be proven by personal experience: in fact, for many poor people it will all just result in more of the same. But by believing them, as a group, the group does better than by not believing them. The belief has an effect of its own.