It sounds circular to me: poverty itself incentivizes poverty. Are you less likely to grow up learning ambition, saving for a rainy day, and postponing gratific

It sounds circular to me: poverty itself incentivizes poverty. Are you less likely to grow up learning ambition, saving for a rainy day, and postponing gratification if your family grows up in poverty? I think the answer is, unquestionably, yes. You've gotten out of it by some combination of life experience that caused you to realize the bad choices, but also to have the ambition and imagination that better is possible. I see poverty as kind of the backside of the power curve (various examples exist, I'll use airplanes): When an airplane is in slow flight on the backside of the power curve, drag is extremely high, and it takes a lot of power to get out of it, although merely just adding power doesn't guarantee you'll get out either. You need power and you have to change the flight profile (nose down a bit). It's entirely possible UBI (and variant) trials in other countries where poverty is already low, will show higher efficacy than in the U.S. where poverty is higher and inherited, just like wealth.