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The article is mainly about the psychological reasons why people in poverty act the way they do. I'll add my 2 cents: The fact is people's brains are wired to
by phaedrus 19y ago
The article is mainly about the psychological reasons why people in poverty act the way they do. I'll add my 2 cents: The fact is people's brains are wired to not keep doing something when it seems hopeless. Although from an outside perspective it seems illogical to work less when you have less money, from the perspective of the person living in poverty they know that no matter how hard they work, at minimum wage they're never going to have an easy life, and that's a very powerful psychological force. For instance, as a student, I borrow money at the beginning of the semester, and I have some big expenses. I work part time, but my fixed expenses exceed the income I make from working. So I go to work knowing that no matter how hard I work, or how much I try to save, it's physically, mathematically impossible for me to ever come out ahead. By working hard, all I can do is sink into debt more slowly. At least I have solace in the fact that I will soon be graduating. What if I didn't have that hope? What if that were all there were to life? I see people every day, in rural Oklahoma, who live like that, without hope. They go through cycles where they work for a while, realize they aren't getting ahead for all their work, and give up. Wouldn't you?
- yters 19y agoProcrastination is a good example of this phenomena too.
- Tichy 19y agoWhat gets me is that few people seem to consider "find a job with better pay" as an option. It just doesn't even occur to them. On the contrary, I often hear stories where people might actually pay more for their job than they earn, for example if they drive 50 miles every day to work a minimum wage job (petrol+car maintenance might cost more than what they earn). Either they really don't get the maths straight, or they see it as a temporary thing (need one job to get another), or else I don't know... What about you, what do you study? Are you sure you could not get a better job, for example by building on the things you study? I must admit I was stupid as a student - I studied maths, but instead of taking on some programming job and earning shitloads of money on the side, I just worked standard student jobs with average (low) pay. My point: maybe many people just are not aware of the options. I suppose it is infeasible to assign personal life managers to every poor person, but perhaps information technology could be some help? For example better job boards.
- vitaminj 19y agoYep, there's a whole area of psych research on that: learned helplessnes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness). Seligman's famous experiment of conditioning dogs by electric shock demonstrated this... something you could probably get away with in 1967.