Oy, all I can say is that grinding poverty changes your mental state. I've seen both sides: my father grew up middle class and my mother grew up poor. My grandp

Oy, all I can say is that grinding poverty changes your mental state. I've seen both sides: my father grew up middle class and my mother grew up poor. My grandparents were the "frugal poor" that you think about -- my grandfather ended up having a heart attack in his 30s and never quite recovered. The difference is that both of them were intelligent, in spite of not having a high school education, and they lived in an era where you could get a job in that environment. (My grandfather grew up in a farming community where people were taken out of school after the 4th grade to work the fields.) But not everyone is lucky like that. Poor people often grow up malnourished, and their IQ suffers. Everyone here is blessed with above average intelligence, but many don't have the educational foundation to develop the skills to make the right choices, and we don't exactly have frugality shows on TV to explain how to be an informed consumer. Being poor is having the nearest grocery store a 30 minute bus ride and walk away from you and your kid. http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/news/grocery_gap.html http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/news/grocery_gap.html The thing is, everyone agrees that poor people should do all those things. But, like most things in life, the reality is harder than the ideal. My grandparents were able to do it. In IT, we talk about stupid users. Many of the people we complain about are IQ 100, and many of the poor we're talking about are as close to them in intelligence as the average IT worker to the clueless worker. How do you teach an 80 IQ mother the skills necessary? (Remember, the malnourishment throughout her own childhood, combined with the poor decisions of her parents, contributed to this problem - it's environmental, not genetic.) That's the rationale behind spending money on WIC programs - if you can get the children proper nourishment, they can be attentive enough in their education that they can escape the problem.