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What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

164 points by jonbischke 15y ago

daimyoyo 15y ago
There are a few reasons that poor people remain poor. Math: The fact is that it's much more difficult to make $10,000 from nothing than it is to make $1M when you have $1B to use. Experience: When you're poor, the odds are very good that you don't know anyone who is successful(let alone "rich") so there isn't the chance to find out what it takes to be successful. Plus, when you have no experience you need to work your way up from nothing. If you come from a rich family, odds are you know people who are willing to take a chance on you based on the references you have. Mindset: I came from a very poor family. I always assumed that I would start work at some horrible entry level job, and work my way up. That's what everyone in my family had done. It never occurred to me that there was another way until my mid 20's. Now I'm approaching 30 and I feel like I'm finally on my way to working for myself.
- jeffool 15y ago
  I'm with you. I'm now 30 and in debt from trying to "do things they way they're done," which is what I was taught. I actually think that's probably the larger reason (though certainly raw resources like money don't hurt.)
- etaty 15y ago
  Poor people need to work for tomorrow. No failure accepted. Rich people invest in their future. Failure is ok.
  - afterburner 15y ago
    Yes. The poor can accept no risk, and can't even leverage on a safe bet. The rich can do both, multiple times.
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  Gentleman, when I first started Reynholm Industries, I had just two things in my possession: a dream... and 6 million pounds. Today, I have a business empire, the like of which... the world has never seen the like of which. Hope it doesn't sound arrogant when I say... that I am the greatest man in the world!
- evangineer 15y ago
  Economist Samuel Bowles and his colleagues have found the single most important determinant of economic success in America is "one's choice of parents". I blogged about Bowles & his work here: http://londoncreativelabs.com/blog/2010/3/28/insights-into-economic-inequality-and-job-creation-from-samu.html http://londoncreativelabs.com/blog/2010/3/28/insights-into-e...
- ekanes 15y ago
  Actually you can make $10,000 from nothing weeding or mowing. Of course, you have to be willing to do hard things like get rejected door to door, but it's extremely possible.
  - krschultz 15y ago
    If 'nothing' == 'buying a lawn mower, a truck, a trailer, and a weed wacker' then you'd be correct. Although I'm not sure which part of the the Bronx you think I should setup my mowing business in because the last time I checked, there isn't any grass.
    - lionhearted 15y ago
      There was a great comment on here by Mahmud, I think, about how he used to make a few hundred dollars per day with a bucket of water and some sponges washing windows. It is possible to make money with work ethic and no capital.
      - omouse 15y ago
        By being a wage-slave, it's possible to make just enough money to live. Cool.
      - krschultz 15y ago
        I'm sure there are many ways to make money with no capital, I was responding to what I perceive to be the flippant 'if only poor people just WORKED, they wouldn't be so damn poor' mentality. A hell of a lot of people work their ass off and are still poor. I'll go further than that. Hard work doesn't actually correlate with salary. I know this becuase I have an incredibly easy job while my cousin busts his ass everyday at two jobs. He works more hours than me a week, and each of those hours is far harder, and one of his jobs actually involves risk of personal injury. All of them are outside in the heat. He gets pissed off at me because he works so hard and I seem to not have to work at all, but at the end of the day, hard work is not a recipe for sucess. He does stuff that plenty of other people are willing to do, while I do stuff that a lot of people never bothered to learn (at some point, they probably decided that they 'didn't like math' and closed the door for themselves). Hard work is a necessary but insufficient condition for sucess. Yes, you have to work your butt off in order to suceed; but you can toil everyday and get nowhere very easily. You have to work hard on the right things in order to get ahead. That realization has a lot of implications. One of them is relevant for this conversation: working hard may or may not lift you out of poverty. You can't extrapolate from "he lives in poverty" to "he isn't working hard". I've worked at a McDonalds, I've pumped gas, I've mowed lawns. All of those jobs were significantly harder than what I do today, and all of them paid barely enough to support myself, much less work towards a better future. You could work full time at McDonalds and then put in an extra 20 or 30 hours a week at another minimum wage job, and not get ahead. Or you can work full time at McDonalds and go to a vocational school at nights and probably get ahead. They are both equally hard work, but one will likely lead you to a better life and one won't. But that doesn't mean the people in the first group aren't working hard.
RK 15y ago
at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile Whenever I see a statistic like that, the first question I want answered is: what is the trend over time? Maybe this is actually a big change with only 1% coming from the bottom quartile 10 years ago, indicating the future situation, etc.
- drats 15y ago
  The long term trend is quite extraordinary with regard to the total number going into higher ed (which form networks too, although not the same as the elite institutions). "Two percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in a university at the beginning of the 20th century. At nearly the end of the 20th century, beyond 60 percent, or 14 million students, were enrolled in 3500 four year or two year colleges." http://ajha.org/early-history-of-universities-in-america.htm http://ajha.org/early-history-of-universities-in-america.htm
Joakal 15y ago
Many factors in poor staying poor. The High Cost of Poverty: Why the Poor Pay More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05... Poor people spend 9% of income on lottery tickets; here's why: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/05/31/poor-people-spend-9-of-income-on-lottery-tickets-heres-why/ http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/05/31/poor-people-spend-9... Missing poverty's new reality: There's a lot less of it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/25/AR2011012504735.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01...
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  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 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 cards?
  - Joakal 15y ago
    Interesting data! Thanks for your input, For lack of a better opinion, I've been focusing on improving this stuff because of the relative ease.
  - mfringel 15y ago
    _70% of the poor own a car, 25% own two cars._ Those particular numbers don't tell the whole story. There are many ways to "not have a car", including "the car has broken down and they don't have the $300 to get it fixed, just like what happened last month because the car is fundamentally unreliable after owning it for 15 years (or getting a 10-year-old used one because they had a windfall one month, five years ago) but they can't amass enough cash to get another one, because they're living hand-to-mouth."
  - sethg 15y ago
    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.
dgreensp 15y ago
He stretches the point a bit far. When he's talking about "isolation" broadly, I can maybe see the point -- lack of role models, mentors, references, people to help get your foot in the door at your first job. (I have no idea if this is "what really keeps poor people poor.") Then he uses "network" to mean what you get at Harvard or Yale, and suggests that this is a gating factor, that masses of people have everything they need to rise out of the bottom quartile, if only we could give them a letter of admission to Harvard. This seems odd.
- entangld 15y ago
  I don't think it's that much of a stretch. When you're poor and you're around other poor people there is no one there to recognize your potential and bring you into the fold (job, connections, inform you of opportunities available). You're just a clever person other poor people know. There's a big difference between knowing small business owners in the neighborhood and knowing friends of wealthy and or well connected people. When you're poor you are isolated. You have to do everything from scratch and it takes a LONG time to figure out by yourself, what generations of people have already figured out. The Harvard example could easily be a proxy for other institutions frequented by the elite.
  - chernevik 15y ago
    Networks expand returns on ability. They allow people to find better places for their skills, better access to employees and capital and expertise. But they do very little for people who lack ability in the first place. An "in" with a hedge fund or VC or a big law firm won't get anyone anywhere without the ability to deliver the goods. Networks work by filtering. That country club golf partner doesn't think to mention his buddy in your field if he doesn't think that buddy will find you impressive. And if he did, his buddy wouldn't be very interested in his introductions.
    - entangld 15y ago
      I think you're logic is a little too strict. Beginner positions, almost by definition, are lower responsibility and offer some leeway. Networks may expand returns on ability, but they can only guess at the real ability of a new person. Resumes anyone? Many startups right now say they are looking for "cultural fit" first and foremost, so even ability has limits. It would be convenient to assume that there are so many high skilled and irreplaceable people, but they're probably at the top of organizations, not the entry-level. We're talking about people getting first chances which requires the networks to take a chance as well. No one knows how good anyone is until they're actually working.
charlesju 15y ago
This whole line of arguments is very strange to me. I think it would be nice to have high expectations for our highest colleges to admit a large amount from the lowest quartile of society, but this is not the natural next step in the process of solving poverty. The next step is how do we get more of those individuals to graduate from high school, go to vocational schools, etc. This is just another example of the intellectual elite trying to overlay their standards on problems, resulting in impractical policies and priorities, that do nothing to solve underlying problems.
aantix 15y ago
This article has me reminiscing about the recent Linked-In IPO; I remember reading that the IPO was offered to favorable clients of the brokerage underwriting the IPO. I don't know how many "favorable" offerings are presented each year or what their performances are, but if the IPO is purposelessly undervalued to make their clients richer, how does one compete with that? I doubt a $100 or 10k account would draw enough interest to gain access to these "Favorable" offerings.
- pavlov 15y ago
  These favored clients are huge customers like funds. They pay the brokerage millions of dollars just in transaction fees every year. In this context, an undervalued IPO every once in a while is more like a perk to a valued customer -- it's the equivalent of the bouquet of flowers or bottle of wine a company might send to a regular Joe.
  - anamax 15y ago
    > In this context, an undervalued IPO every once in a while is more like a perk to a valued customer -- it's the equivalent of the bouquet of flowers or bottle of wine a company might send to a regular Joe. Yes, but that perk is paid for by LinkedIn.
    - pavlov 15y ago
      LinkedIn agreed to the IPO price. Presumably they felt that undervaluing the stock had enough PR benefits. (These stories about the IPO pricing, where LinkedIn gets to be portrayed as honest entrepreneurs ripped off by an evil bank, surely is an additional PR victory they gained from this move.)
- bane 15y ago
  A similar example. Suppose you wanted to be an investor in a private company. In many localities you actually can't invest unless you have a certain level of net worth (something I've personally had to deal with at various levels of frustration until I just decided to found my own company). Everybody says the way to become wealthy is to let money make money for you, but you can find yourself locked out of most of the opportunities where that might happen at a growth percentage to be interesting simply because you don't start with enough money to get in the game.
mcdaid 15y ago
The latest attempt in the UK to deal with the problem http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8540055/Schools-win-right-to-turn-away-middle-class-children.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8540055/Schools-win-rig...
- hugh3 15y ago
  I read as much of the title as is in the truncated URL and really hoped it would be "Schools win right to use corporal punishment".
  - agnosticnixie 15y ago
    Your ass, first.
izendejas 15y ago
I come from an officially poor background, but it wasn't until I started learning about my girlfriend's family back in her native, third-world country that I really got a sense for what third-world poverty is: - Constant verbal, physical, sometimes sexual abuse--the stuff that really traumatizes people into doing these same things across generations. This isn't the stuff you learn about in the news because, sadly, to many people living in those conditions, it's part of life. - Simply not have any positive role models at all to look up to. Their role-models are their parents, or their neighbors who have basically grown accustomed to living in poverty and can offer no guidance. And I can go on and on. My girlfriend and I have simply concluded: "some of these people don't know any better." If they had better role-models, they'd have a better shot. So it is about the network in a way, but the author doesn't go enough to explain why. I'd like to give it a shot based on my observations: the network effect matters. Escaping one network to join a knowledgeable and competitive one exposes you to different ways of thinking, makes you question preconceived notions you have, makes you realize just how badly things really were, etc. I'm sure others here can relate even more, but coming from a modest background, it has been truly eye opening to be in the bay area, for example. There are so many talented, ambitious young people that inspire you every day to push your selves to the limits, that question your abilities, etc. Most people, I must say are unfortunate to not even know what YC is, entrepreneurship is all about, etc. So for anyone who doesn't really understand poverty (I myself, included), I really recommend you visit a third-world country and actually live amidst them. Find a friend who comes from such a background and go stay with his/her family and him/her. You'll realize just how fortunate you are. By all means, don't feel bad about this, just gain some conscious about the fact that there are less fortunate people out there and begin to question what you can do with your companies, at your job to educate these people. To finish, for anyone that questions a university's worth... remember this, an education isn't just the material you learn during lectures or books, it's what you learn about others and from others that really , also. And this latter component, I think is the secret to reducing poverty: simple exposure to new ways of life.
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  The graph is disjoint. I remember when I was in school and teachers were asking me what I wanted to do in college, and I had known not one single professional individual ever, other than teachers, with a teacher/pupil ratio of 33/1. How was I supposed to know? The problem with being poor is that everybody else you know is poor and also doesn't have an iota how to get out of it.
motters 15y ago
I think these things were identified several decades ago by sociologists. Namely that poverty isn't so much about money or level of education, as popularly supposed, but is primarily about "social exclusion", where there are few or no opportunities for someone of modest upbringing to break into other kinds of social circle. My grandparents generation had a very acute understanding of social class, and it played a central role in their lives in a variety of ways. I think the kinds of issues which they faced are now returning.
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  Networking doesn't happen exclusively among people who overestimate their importance. Just about any kind of volunteering can lead you to something worthwhile. If one wants to get into an "elite" circle, they can get into a political campaign as a volunteer for a good start.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dolvlo 15y ago
I think the person who wrote this article should read about the history of imperialism and colonization of the non-white world. The quote: "...doing what we can to teach kids from impoverished backgrounds not just how to read and write but how to become upwardly mobile in their networking" really demonstrates a lot of historical ignorance. Anyway, regarding this topic, there's an entire field of academia which regularly studies intergenerational economic mobility (Sociology). Would anyone familiar enough with the field like to provide us with a paper on this topic? (Preferably about the US)
tritogeneia 15y ago
Networking can mean two different things and the author's conflating them. 1. You have a connection with a successful professional and so you're closer to promising job opportunities. 2. Your social circle contains a lot of rich people who have the habits and lifestyle typical of the rich, and you absorb a lot of their behavior by osmosis, which helps you succeed. It's really hard to extend the benefits of the second kind of "networking" to more than a few poor people, and usually they have to be children. (Prep for Prep, college admissions decisions.) On the other hand, it would be quite possible to develop online institutions to help with the first kind of networking. Create alternative, non-college ways to signal ability, and create ways for employers to connect with those able but isolated people. (I'm working on a project that has applications in that direction.)
hxa7241 15y ago
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.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  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 core factor is self-motivation: you can't make someone do what they need to for their own good. This nation provides tremendous access to networks and other opportunities for the poor. Maybe not unlimited access to the top networks from the bottom (the classic "can't afford Harvard" red herring), but there is more than enough access to get out of poverty. The funding is there, the doors are open, the paths are clear, assistance is eager - but if someone won't take the steps that only they themselves can take, they won't get anywhere. I see stark examples of this over and over. It's not lack of access, it's lack of personal motivation.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    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.
ctdonath 15y ago
It's not just having access to networks, it's using them. Can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. All too often I see, from first hand experience, the poor and the middle class having the same opportunities: broadly speaking, the latter take advantage thereof, the former don't. Sure, some networks are not accessible. Many are, and if one does not take advantage of what opportunities one does have, then more will not become available.
- afterburner 15y ago
  This is also a network effect: being around people who always take advantage of what's around them teaches you to do the same.
jinushaun 15y ago
Blah blah white people. Blah blah blah black people. Same old story of white guilt by the NYT I'm neither white nor black, but I was definitely poor. Grew up in the ghetto with gang violence. The problem isn't "access" or outreach programs for poor people—the problem is and always will be the parents. My parents stressed the importance of education and now I do well. My friends' parents didnt, and most of them barely graduated high school. Some even dropped out.
- lallysingh 15y ago
  I agree with you across the board, but I have to point out that you used level-of-education as your comparative metric, which seems suboptimal in making your point. How were you vs your friends in other metrics of success?
- poppysan 15y ago
  It is not about "white guilt" at all. This isn't even about racism as much as it is about classes, so I think the statement is off... Growing up poor, I know firsthand that parents don't stress education enough, in my opinion. Most of those parents have no idea about how to change their situations or they would do it themselves. This is what the outreach programs and access to different ways of thinking, a view of how easy it is to get ahead, and access to opportunities that their parent may have never even knew about address.
- ajscherer 15y ago
  It's wonderful that your parents stressed the importance of an education. If only your education had stressed the importance of actually reading a piece before responding to it! Perhaps then you would have noticed that this piece: isn't in the new york times; doesn't talk about outreach programs for poor poeple; only mentions race via quoting a 1999 Malcom Gladwell piece The post argues that the income-boosting effect of going to a top college isn't due to the education one receives, but instead is due to the possibility of inclusion in a network of people who are all more likely to find success. In other words the friends you meet at a top college are a much better influence than the friends you meet in the hood, and having a good network of friends is more beneficial to your career than what you learn in the classroom. Of course if you escaped the ghetto to do well you probably know everything there is to know about how poverty works. Other people's thoughts are just sort of a speedbump on your way to let the truth shine here on hn.
rglover 15y ago
I think the author makes a good point here, but unfortunately networking is only a mere fraction of this equation. More than anything, in order for impoverished students to better understand the situation, someone needs to tell them. Explain how our current social structure is unfair and doesn't yield any advantage. Is it grim? Of course. But without a heads up how the hell are these kids going to protect themselves? When you're that young, everything seems attainable (even if just a little bit). Unfortunately, as these kids transition out of high school into adulthood, they begin to realize that they may not have a better path. By instilling thoughts early on, explaining the necessity to focus on school work and the value that it provides your life (also explaining what's actually available, i.e. the networks discussed here) could prove to be a motivator for lots of kids. In order to be educated you need to be educated.
solson 15y ago
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 understand the trap. I tell my upper middle class neighbors about this and they can't imagine parents who wouldn't want their children to do better than them. While I still talk to my parents I've dumped the rest of the network. I protect myself and my family from my old network. Their whole way of thinking is poison. With many of them you risk violence, drugs, abuse, sexual abuse, racism, etc. Even if you trust one or two of them you can never trust who they will bring you or your family in contact with. No amount of mentoring or example setting has helped, it just breeds resentment. Their world view traps them right where they are and their rejection, resentment, and hostility to a better way of life creates their poverty and isolation. Sending them to Harvard isn't going to make a damn bit of difference. Well, MAYBE if you sent one or two, but if you sent enough, they'd just ruin Harvard. I came to the conclusion many years ago that in America poverty is a contagious mindset, nothing more. But I do understand that it is a difficult mindset to escape due to social issues. In all honesty, in most cases the middle class and rich have good reason not to network with the poor.
- j123 15y ago
  "With many of them you risk violence, drugs, abuse, sexual abuse, racism, etc." This modern bugbear of racism is getting ridiculous. Did you really just equate "racism" with sexual abuse? What does racism even mean anymore? Is it only institutional discrimination, e.g. the refusal of the publicly funded government to hire some races? That's where it started. Now, you can be a racist if you have a type you prefer to date that doesn't suit the whims of your accuser. Way to not "risk racism."
  - krschultz 15y ago
    The ridiculous part was picking one word out of a very thoughtful post (and one written as a first person account, not conjecture) and attacking that rather than the overall point. The first time I read his story I didn't even notice that he had mentioned racism in it, it was largely immaterial. But quoting only that part makes it sound like he is blaming racism as the cause for poverty, which he clearly isn't. If I had a penny for every time I heard something to the effect of 'if only poor people stopped complaining/blaming racism and started pulling themselves out of poverty, there would be no more poverty', I'd have enough to help people get out of poverty. Although I guess there is no point in arguing with throw-away accounts.
sili 15y ago
A number of my professional friends participate in mentoring programs for young underprivileged kids. From what this article talks about, such programs should have a good potential at making a difference, at least for those that go through it.
trebor 15y ago
You can be broke and you can be poor. Being broke just means you don't have money—been there, left that. But I equate poor with the mindset that repeatedly produces being broke and living paycheck to paycheck. If you want to make money and stop being poor you have to stick with a tight budget. Stop spending more than you make, and evaluate whether or not you need that super-cool iPhone you just adore. At $70 a month a single iPhone could put food on your table, or the money you save by downgrading to a clamshell "stupid phone" could help pay off the credit card. Money doesn't solve money management problems. Solve how you manage your money and you automatically keep more. A spendthrift with great social connections is still poor.
pessimizer 15y ago
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 the network for now, but probably after I'm further along in my career, directly. I have no doubt that if I become a business owner, or pursue a managerial track, I'll be expected to do the same thing for other people and their kids. How else are you expected to get the million years of experience on everything expected at every job? The only entry-level jobs I see advertised are for entry-level geniuses. I don't think that this can be artificially created by a third party for adults. The advice that I would give to actual poor people: make friends with people with money. Wrack your brains to think of ways to do things for them for free so you can become a part of the favor trading network. Drink with them a lot - unless they're religious people, then pray with them. Only date people who have a family that has money. More money is better than less money. Avoid people with no money.
- MartinCron 15y ago
  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.
  - pessimizer 15y ago
    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.
bane 15y ago
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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow_experiment It brings to mind a very recent discussion I had with a close friend from those days, one who hasn't managed to break out of a cycle of being poor. He was telling me how excited he was about a new idea where he was going to enroll himself and and his 12 year old son into an expensive martial arts school for some father-son bonding time every week. I remarked back, "but you barely make rent every month (and you split rent with 3 other adults in a relatively inexpensive area), your cell phone is routinely shut off for non-payment, your credit is so bad you can't even qualify for the highest interest lowest balance credit cards allowed by law, your cars are perpetually broken down/repossessed etc. you have a pending lawsuit for non-payment to a doctor because you couldn't pay your medical bills, etc. etc. etc. how on earth do you expect to pay for this? If I were you, I'd figure out how to resolve my financial situation first so that you can then do those kinds of father-son things you want at your leisure." "Well how do I do that?" "Instead of spending $250 a month on this, why don't you spend half as much and go to the local community college and finish up your associates (he's already finished a semester, so it was only another year, year and half left), translate that into a higher paying job or promotion or whatever, pay off your crap, buy Dad and Son Kung Fu?" "Look, I only have a short window of opportunity here." "What do you mean?" "Well, the lease on the house me and 3 other adults split the rent on is up in 2 years, and because of my money issues I don't know if I can afford to stay living close to my son after that, I may have to move out of state to a cheaper area, I'm seriously considering the Detroit area since the cost of living is low. So I want to do this now, while I can." This has been a typical conversation over the last 20 years with my friend. A decision point comes up, we'll talk about it, on one hand he'll have an opportunity to improve his lot in life, but he'll have to sacrifice a little now in order to reap rewards later, on the other hand, an emotionally satisfying marshmallow. Invariable he'll always pick the marshmallow. He's interested in the immediate "feeling" of a decision, unable to project an expectation of a better "feeling" later on. The result is, 20 years later, an otherwise intelligent, honest, good guy nearing middle age has: - no career progression of any sort, he's actually never worked a full-time job - he's been fired many times from promising jobs because he was "bored" and pretended to be sick from a mystery illness until they let him go - has a couple kids he can't support properly - can't afford a place on his own with living arrangements so complex it would take 4 or 5 long blog posts to explain - has had a handful of cars repossessed or sold off out of his control - continues to buy known unreliable vehicles that require constant repair, costing him precious money and time away from work - did a solid semester at college (with decentish grades) before dropping out because he didn't have enough time to play WoW - he was very proud of having finally cancelled his account...for the 3rd time. - spends considerable portions of his income on videogames and online subscriptions - buys random unnecessary crap all the time, "yes that RC helicopter is cool, why is your phone shut off again?" - has innumerable small medical bills currently in collections, with one pending lawsuit (btw, the one he's getting sued for? Almost the exact cost of a WoW account for a year) - etc. Each of these issues can be explained by the Marshmallow test, because to properly deal with any of them requires the ability to defer gratification in the immediate as part of a plan, something, even with decades of coaching, he's unable to do, and thus remains poor.
api 15y ago
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.
- zacharytelschow 15y ago
  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 http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html
  - api 15y ago
    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.
kalmi10 15y ago
I know a homeless person who says that he would not work for less than x money/day, where x is more than what the average person earns here in Hungary. (He used to earn a lot. He used to be a baker.)
stcredzero 15y ago
I think there's a similar mechanism by which geeks end up "too geeky". http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-smart-people-defend-bad-ideas/ http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-smart-people-defend... http://amzn.com/0300090331 http://amzn.com/0300090331
programminggeek 15y ago
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.
- j123 15y ago
  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.
  - pessimizer 15y ago
    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.
    - j123 15y ago
      Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that there is no such thing as culture (as opposed to innate behavior) or that it couldn't change. But there are innate behaviors too. That newborns are a blank slate, a "tabula rasa" as Locke called it in Latin, to have whatever new form of behavior we want imprinted upon them is a fallacy. It was a hypothesis at one point, but now it's known to be false. Some facets of human behavior are largely the same for all times and in all places. Tribalism and territoriality, e.g. These things will always be with us. It's hopeless to think a day exists on the horizon in which these will be eliminated. A more mature approach is to accept humanity for what it is. Improve what can be improved upon and don't aggravate those features which are here to stay. Fossil fuels rushed humanity into a new era of mass immigration comparable to the "people wanderings" which characterize Late Antiquity in Europe. But it's now happened globally. It's popular to pretend we can overcome tribalism and territoriality. We'll see. If not, though, we're in for some excitement in the coming years.
mindcrime 15y ago
So can we change this? I think we can. It starts with recognizing the problem for what it is and doing what we can to teach kids from impoverished backgrounds not just how to read and write but how to become upwardly mobile in their networking I'm pretty sure the problem is more complex than just lack of awareness of the importance of a certain approach to networking... and I'm someone who has been down this path - having grown up "dirt poor" in rural southeast NC, and having escaped to a solidly middle-class lifestyle. But I absolutely agree that this is one component of helping people escape poverty, and I'd definitely like to see (and perhaps participate in) some sort of initiative to help raise awareness of this point, especially among younger folks. Some sort of program, directed at high-school kids, that teaches skills specifically related to networking, economics, entrepreneurship, and all the "stuff" needed to advance economically, would be - IMO - tremendously beneficial. That said, I believe the point that solson made about mindsets does stand. I grew up with plenty of people who were as poor as I was, and I was willing to make certain sacrifices, and commit to doing things in order to raise my standard of living... many of my peers weren't, and they still live in the sticks and they're still poor. And I honestly don't believe that I'm necessarily (smarter|more talented|more insightful|whatever) than most of them. But I had a different attitude and different ambitions, and - to my mind - that was the single biggest difference. Edit: As an aside, though, I'll throw this out... some of my friends who are still "poorer" than me in the financial sense, may actually be happier. I, for example, have never married or had kids, because I was too busy working and trying to make a better life for myself. And now that I'm working on a startup, I work more than ever and have basically quit worrying about dating or anything for a while... OTOH, my friends back home have wives and kids to come home to, play with, go out with, etc. But I have more money. So who's really better off? I would say that's a real grey area. <shrug />
zacharytelschow 15y ago
"'We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,' Mr. Marx says. 'Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.'" Is your college a meritocracy based on talent or a means of attempting to right social wrongs, Mr Marx? If it's the former, then the income of student's parents should be irrelevant and you should only be wringing your hands over lesser talented pupils getting in over more talented ones. If it's the latter, I can see your concern - patterns of behavior beget success and children often emulate their parents, leaving you stuck with those blasted high achievers. Tough break, that.
aarontait 15y ago
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.
MarkPNeyer 15y ago
how about a social network algorithm that connects the least connected people with the most connected? imagine VC's having dinner with homeless people.
dkarl 15y ago
“We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,” Mr. Marx says. “Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.” Mr. Marx's job is educating, hopefully as well as possible, people who already have a great educational advantage. Anyone working at Amherst or any other elite college who thinks they can be part of the solution by directly educating underprivileged kids is indulging in fantasy. Access to higher education is not the problem; preparation is. A poor person who is prepared to succeed at an elite college has already risen beyond "underprivileged" and is on a trajectory to the upper middle class. More precisely, if Mr. Marx is wrong to imply that there is some kind of "merit" and "talent" that makes one capable of handling higher education but is not affected by a child's opportunities and environmental influences. Amherst does not admit people based on their genetic potential or even their winning personality. They try to take social disadvantage into account when judging applicants' academic preparation, but in the end they limit admissions to students who can succeed at Amherst. If Mr. Marx wants to directly help people who are disadvantaged then he should quit Amherst and join some organization that works with people who are not and could not be Amherst students.
fatherlinux 15y ago
Honestly, it is just so much more complicated than a two paragraph post on hacker news. This is ridiculous. The title is awesome, like scientists just made some startling new discovery. Ridiculous!

164 points by jonbischke 15y ago

There are a few reasons that poor people remain poor. Math: The fact is that it's much more difficult to make $10,000 from nothing than it is to make $1M when you have $1B to use. Experience: When you're poor, the odds are very good that you don't know anyone who is successful(let alone "rich") so there isn't the chance to find out what it takes to be successful. Plus, when you have no experience you need to work your way up from nothing. If you come from a rich family, odds are you know people who are willing to take a chance on you based on the references you have. Mindset: I came from a very poor family. I always assumed that I would start work at some horrible entry level job, and work my way up. That's what everyone in my family had done. It never occurred to me that there was another way until my mid 20's. Now I'm approaching 30 and I feel like I'm finally on my way to working for myself.

jeffool 15y ago
I'm with you. I'm now 30 and in debt from trying to "do things they way they're done," which is what I was taught. I actually think that's probably the larger reason (though certainly raw resources like money don't hurt.)
etaty 15y ago
Poor people need to work for tomorrow. No failure accepted. Rich people invest in their future. Failure is ok.
- afterburner 15y ago
  Yes. The poor can accept no risk, and can't even leverage on a safe bet. The rich can do both, multiple times.
hessenwolf 15y ago
Gentleman, when I first started Reynholm Industries, I had just two things in my possession: a dream... and 6 million pounds. Today, I have a business empire, the like of which... the world has never seen the like of which. Hope it doesn't sound arrogant when I say... that I am the greatest man in the world!
evangineer 15y ago
Economist Samuel Bowles and his colleagues have found the single most important determinant of economic success in America is "one's choice of parents". I blogged about Bowles & his work here: http://londoncreativelabs.com/blog/2010/3/28/insights-into-economic-inequality-and-job-creation-from-samu.html http://londoncreativelabs.com/blog/2010/3/28/insights-into-e...
ekanes 15y ago
Actually you can make $10,000 from nothing weeding or mowing. Of course, you have to be willing to do hard things like get rejected door to door, but it's extremely possible.
- krschultz 15y ago
  If 'nothing' == 'buying a lawn mower, a truck, a trailer, and a weed wacker' then you'd be correct. Although I'm not sure which part of the the Bronx you think I should setup my mowing business in because the last time I checked, there isn't any grass.
  - lionhearted 15y ago
    There was a great comment on here by Mahmud, I think, about how he used to make a few hundred dollars per day with a bucket of water and some sponges washing windows. It is possible to make money with work ethic and no capital.
    - omouse 15y ago
      By being a wage-slave, it's possible to make just enough money to live. Cool.
    - krschultz 15y ago
      I'm sure there are many ways to make money with no capital, I was responding to what I perceive to be the flippant 'if only poor people just WORKED, they wouldn't be so damn poor' mentality. A hell of a lot of people work their ass off and are still poor. I'll go further than that. Hard work doesn't actually correlate with salary. I know this becuase I have an incredibly easy job while my cousin busts his ass everyday at two jobs. He works more hours than me a week, and each of those hours is far harder, and one of his jobs actually involves risk of personal injury. All of them are outside in the heat. He gets pissed off at me because he works so hard and I seem to not have to work at all, but at the end of the day, hard work is not a recipe for sucess. He does stuff that plenty of other people are willing to do, while I do stuff that a lot of people never bothered to learn (at some point, they probably decided that they 'didn't like math' and closed the door for themselves). Hard work is a necessary but insufficient condition for sucess. Yes, you have to work your butt off in order to suceed; but you can toil everyday and get nowhere very easily. You have to work hard on the right things in order to get ahead. That realization has a lot of implications. One of them is relevant for this conversation: working hard may or may not lift you out of poverty. You can't extrapolate from "he lives in poverty" to "he isn't working hard". I've worked at a McDonalds, I've pumped gas, I've mowed lawns. All of those jobs were significantly harder than what I do today, and all of them paid barely enough to support myself, much less work towards a better future. You could work full time at McDonalds and then put in an extra 20 or 30 hours a week at another minimum wage job, and not get ahead. Or you can work full time at McDonalds and go to a vocational school at nights and probably get ahead. They are both equally hard work, but one will likely lead you to a better life and one won't. But that doesn't mean the people in the first group aren't working hard.

RK 15y ago

at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile Whenever I see a statistic like that, the first question I want answered is: what is the trend over time? Maybe this is actually a big change with only 1% coming from the bottom quartile 10 years ago, indicating the future situation, etc.

drats 15y ago
The long term trend is quite extraordinary with regard to the total number going into higher ed (which form networks too, although not the same as the elite institutions). "Two percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in a university at the beginning of the 20th century. At nearly the end of the 20th century, beyond 60 percent, or 14 million students, were enrolled in 3500 four year or two year colleges." http://ajha.org/early-history-of-universities-in-america.htm http://ajha.org/early-history-of-universities-in-america.htm

Joakal 15y ago

Many factors in poor staying poor. The High Cost of Poverty: Why the Poor Pay More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05... Poor people spend 9% of income on lottery tickets; here's why: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/05/31/poor-people-spend-9-of-income-on-lottery-tickets-heres-why/ http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/05/31/poor-people-spend-9... Missing poverty's new reality: There's a lot less of it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/25/AR2011012504735.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01...

yummyfajitas 15y ago
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 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 cards?
- Joakal 15y ago
  Interesting data! Thanks for your input, For lack of a better opinion, I've been focusing on improving this stuff because of the relative ease.
- mfringel 15y ago
  _70% of the poor own a car, 25% own two cars._ Those particular numbers don't tell the whole story. There are many ways to "not have a car", including "the car has broken down and they don't have the $300 to get it fixed, just like what happened last month because the car is fundamentally unreliable after owning it for 15 years (or getting a 10-year-old used one because they had a windfall one month, five years ago) but they can't amass enough cash to get another one, because they're living hand-to-mouth."
- sethg 15y ago
  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.

dgreensp 15y ago

He stretches the point a bit far. When he's talking about "isolation" broadly, I can maybe see the point -- lack of role models, mentors, references, people to help get your foot in the door at your first job. (I have no idea if this is "what really keeps poor people poor.") Then he uses "network" to mean what you get at Harvard or Yale, and suggests that this is a gating factor, that masses of people have everything they need to rise out of the bottom quartile, if only we could give them a letter of admission to Harvard. This seems odd.

entangld 15y ago
I don't think it's that much of a stretch. When you're poor and you're around other poor people there is no one there to recognize your potential and bring you into the fold (job, connections, inform you of opportunities available). You're just a clever person other poor people know. There's a big difference between knowing small business owners in the neighborhood and knowing friends of wealthy and or well connected people. When you're poor you are isolated. You have to do everything from scratch and it takes a LONG time to figure out by yourself, what generations of people have already figured out. The Harvard example could easily be a proxy for other institutions frequented by the elite.
- chernevik 15y ago
  Networks expand returns on ability. They allow people to find better places for their skills, better access to employees and capital and expertise. But they do very little for people who lack ability in the first place. An "in" with a hedge fund or VC or a big law firm won't get anyone anywhere without the ability to deliver the goods. Networks work by filtering. That country club golf partner doesn't think to mention his buddy in your field if he doesn't think that buddy will find you impressive. And if he did, his buddy wouldn't be very interested in his introductions.
  - entangld 15y ago
    I think you're logic is a little too strict. Beginner positions, almost by definition, are lower responsibility and offer some leeway. Networks may expand returns on ability, but they can only guess at the real ability of a new person. Resumes anyone? Many startups right now say they are looking for "cultural fit" first and foremost, so even ability has limits. It would be convenient to assume that there are so many high skilled and irreplaceable people, but they're probably at the top of organizations, not the entry-level. We're talking about people getting first chances which requires the networks to take a chance as well. No one knows how good anyone is until they're actually working.

charlesju 15y ago

This whole line of arguments is very strange to me. I think it would be nice to have high expectations for our highest colleges to admit a large amount from the lowest quartile of society, but this is not the natural next step in the process of solving poverty. The next step is how do we get more of those individuals to graduate from high school, go to vocational schools, etc. This is just another example of the intellectual elite trying to overlay their standards on problems, resulting in impractical policies and priorities, that do nothing to solve underlying problems.

aantix 15y ago

This article has me reminiscing about the recent Linked-In IPO; I remember reading that the IPO was offered to favorable clients of the brokerage underwriting the IPO. I don't know how many "favorable" offerings are presented each year or what their performances are, but if the IPO is purposelessly undervalued to make their clients richer, how does one compete with that? I doubt a $100 or 10k account would draw enough interest to gain access to these "Favorable" offerings.

pavlov 15y ago
These favored clients are huge customers like funds. They pay the brokerage millions of dollars just in transaction fees every year. In this context, an undervalued IPO every once in a while is more like a perk to a valued customer -- it's the equivalent of the bouquet of flowers or bottle of wine a company might send to a regular Joe.
- anamax 15y ago
  > In this context, an undervalued IPO every once in a while is more like a perk to a valued customer -- it's the equivalent of the bouquet of flowers or bottle of wine a company might send to a regular Joe. Yes, but that perk is paid for by LinkedIn.
  - pavlov 15y ago
    LinkedIn agreed to the IPO price. Presumably they felt that undervaluing the stock had enough PR benefits. (These stories about the IPO pricing, where LinkedIn gets to be portrayed as honest entrepreneurs ripped off by an evil bank, surely is an additional PR victory they gained from this move.)
bane 15y ago
A similar example. Suppose you wanted to be an investor in a private company. In many localities you actually can't invest unless you have a certain level of net worth (something I've personally had to deal with at various levels of frustration until I just decided to found my own company). Everybody says the way to become wealthy is to let money make money for you, but you can find yourself locked out of most of the opportunities where that might happen at a growth percentage to be interesting simply because you don't start with enough money to get in the game.

mcdaid 15y ago

The latest attempt in the UK to deal with the problem http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8540055/Schools-win-right-to-turn-away-middle-class-children.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8540055/Schools-win-rig...

hugh3 15y ago
I read as much of the title as is in the truncated URL and really hoped it would be "Schools win right to use corporal punishment".
- agnosticnixie 15y ago
  Your ass, first.

izendejas 15y ago

I come from an officially poor background, but it wasn't until I started learning about my girlfriend's family back in her native, third-world country that I really got a sense for what third-world poverty is: - Constant verbal, physical, sometimes sexual abuse--the stuff that really traumatizes people into doing these same things across generations. This isn't the stuff you learn about in the news because, sadly, to many people living in those conditions, it's part of life. - Simply not have any positive role models at all to look up to. Their role-models are their parents, or their neighbors who have basically grown accustomed to living in poverty and can offer no guidance. And I can go on and on. My girlfriend and I have simply concluded: "some of these people don't know any better." If they had better role-models, they'd have a better shot. So it is about the network in a way, but the author doesn't go enough to explain why. I'd like to give it a shot based on my observations: the network effect matters. Escaping one network to join a knowledgeable and competitive one exposes you to different ways of thinking, makes you question preconceived notions you have, makes you realize just how badly things really were, etc. I'm sure others here can relate even more, but coming from a modest background, it has been truly eye opening to be in the bay area, for example. There are so many talented, ambitious young people that inspire you every day to push your selves to the limits, that question your abilities, etc. Most people, I must say are unfortunate to not even know what YC is, entrepreneurship is all about, etc. So for anyone who doesn't really understand poverty (I myself, included), I really recommend you visit a third-world country and actually live amidst them. Find a friend who comes from such a background and go stay with his/her family and him/her. You'll realize just how fortunate you are. By all means, don't feel bad about this, just gain some conscious about the fact that there are less fortunate people out there and begin to question what you can do with your companies, at your job to educate these people. To finish, for anyone that questions a university's worth... remember this, an education isn't just the material you learn during lectures or books, it's what you learn about others and from others that really , also. And this latter component, I think is the secret to reducing poverty: simple exposure to new ways of life.

hessenwolf 15y ago
The graph is disjoint. I remember when I was in school and teachers were asking me what I wanted to do in college, and I had known not one single professional individual ever, other than teachers, with a teacher/pupil ratio of 33/1. How was I supposed to know? The problem with being poor is that everybody else you know is poor and also doesn't have an iota how to get out of it.

motters 15y ago

I think these things were identified several decades ago by sociologists. Namely that poverty isn't so much about money or level of education, as popularly supposed, but is primarily about "social exclusion", where there are few or no opportunities for someone of modest upbringing to break into other kinds of social circle. My grandparents generation had a very acute understanding of social class, and it played a central role in their lives in a variety of ways. I think the kinds of issues which they faced are now returning.

mkr-hn 15y ago
Networking doesn't happen exclusively among people who overestimate their importance. Just about any kind of volunteering can lead you to something worthwhile. If one wants to get into an "elite" circle, they can get into a political campaign as a volunteer for a good start.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

dolvlo 15y ago

I think the person who wrote this article should read about the history of imperialism and colonization of the non-white world. The quote: "...doing what we can to teach kids from impoverished backgrounds not just how to read and write but how to become upwardly mobile in their networking" really demonstrates a lot of historical ignorance. Anyway, regarding this topic, there's an entire field of academia which regularly studies intergenerational economic mobility (Sociology). Would anyone familiar enough with the field like to provide us with a paper on this topic? (Preferably about the US)

tritogeneia 15y ago

Networking can mean two different things and the author's conflating them. 1. You have a connection with a successful professional and so you're closer to promising job opportunities. 2. Your social circle contains a lot of rich people who have the habits and lifestyle typical of the rich, and you absorb a lot of their behavior by osmosis, which helps you succeed. It's really hard to extend the benefits of the second kind of "networking" to more than a few poor people, and usually they have to be children. (Prep for Prep, college admissions decisions.) On the other hand, it would be quite possible to develop online institutions to help with the first kind of networking. Create alternative, non-college ways to signal ability, and create ways for employers to connect with those able but isolated people. (I'm working on a project that has applications in that direction.)

hxa7241 15y ago

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.

ctdonath 15y ago
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 core factor is self-motivation: you can't make someone do what they need to for their own good. This nation provides tremendous access to networks and other opportunities for the poor. Maybe not unlimited access to the top networks from the bottom (the classic "can't afford Harvard" red herring), but there is more than enough access to get out of poverty. The funding is there, the doors are open, the paths are clear, assistance is eager - but if someone won't take the steps that only they themselves can take, they won't get anywhere. I see stark examples of this over and over. It's not lack of access, it's lack of personal motivation.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  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.

ctdonath 15y ago

It's not just having access to networks, it's using them. Can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. All too often I see, from first hand experience, the poor and the middle class having the same opportunities: broadly speaking, the latter take advantage thereof, the former don't. Sure, some networks are not accessible. Many are, and if one does not take advantage of what opportunities one does have, then more will not become available.

afterburner 15y ago
This is also a network effect: being around people who always take advantage of what's around them teaches you to do the same.

jinushaun 15y ago

Blah blah white people. Blah blah blah black people. Same old story of white guilt by the NYT I'm neither white nor black, but I was definitely poor. Grew up in the ghetto with gang violence. The problem isn't "access" or outreach programs for poor people—the problem is and always will be the parents. My parents stressed the importance of education and now I do well. My friends' parents didnt, and most of them barely graduated high school. Some even dropped out.

lallysingh 15y ago
I agree with you across the board, but I have to point out that you used level-of-education as your comparative metric, which seems suboptimal in making your point. How were you vs your friends in other metrics of success?
poppysan 15y ago
It is not about "white guilt" at all. This isn't even about racism as much as it is about classes, so I think the statement is off... Growing up poor, I know firsthand that parents don't stress education enough, in my opinion. Most of those parents have no idea about how to change their situations or they would do it themselves. This is what the outreach programs and access to different ways of thinking, a view of how easy it is to get ahead, and access to opportunities that their parent may have never even knew about address.
ajscherer 15y ago
It's wonderful that your parents stressed the importance of an education. If only your education had stressed the importance of actually reading a piece before responding to it! Perhaps then you would have noticed that this piece: isn't in the new york times; doesn't talk about outreach programs for poor poeple; only mentions race via quoting a 1999 Malcom Gladwell piece The post argues that the income-boosting effect of going to a top college isn't due to the education one receives, but instead is due to the possibility of inclusion in a network of people who are all more likely to find success. In other words the friends you meet at a top college are a much better influence than the friends you meet in the hood, and having a good network of friends is more beneficial to your career than what you learn in the classroom. Of course if you escaped the ghetto to do well you probably know everything there is to know about how poverty works. Other people's thoughts are just sort of a speedbump on your way to let the truth shine here on hn.

rglover 15y ago

I think the author makes a good point here, but unfortunately networking is only a mere fraction of this equation. More than anything, in order for impoverished students to better understand the situation, someone needs to tell them. Explain how our current social structure is unfair and doesn't yield any advantage. Is it grim? Of course. But without a heads up how the hell are these kids going to protect themselves? When you're that young, everything seems attainable (even if just a little bit). Unfortunately, as these kids transition out of high school into adulthood, they begin to realize that they may not have a better path. By instilling thoughts early on, explaining the necessity to focus on school work and the value that it provides your life (also explaining what's actually available, i.e. the networks discussed here) could prove to be a motivator for lots of kids. In order to be educated you need to be educated.

solson 15y ago

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 understand the trap. I tell my upper middle class neighbors about this and they can't imagine parents who wouldn't want their children to do better than them. While I still talk to my parents I've dumped the rest of the network. I protect myself and my family from my old network. Their whole way of thinking is poison. With many of them you risk violence, drugs, abuse, sexual abuse, racism, etc. Even if you trust one or two of them you can never trust who they will bring you or your family in contact with. No amount of mentoring or example setting has helped, it just breeds resentment. Their world view traps them right where they are and their rejection, resentment, and hostility to a better way of life creates their poverty and isolation. Sending them to Harvard isn't going to make a damn bit of difference. Well, MAYBE if you sent one or two, but if you sent enough, they'd just ruin Harvard. I came to the conclusion many years ago that in America poverty is a contagious mindset, nothing more. But I do understand that it is a difficult mindset to escape due to social issues. In all honesty, in most cases the middle class and rich have good reason not to network with the poor.

j123 15y ago
"With many of them you risk violence, drugs, abuse, sexual abuse, racism, etc." This modern bugbear of racism is getting ridiculous. Did you really just equate "racism" with sexual abuse? What does racism even mean anymore? Is it only institutional discrimination, e.g. the refusal of the publicly funded government to hire some races? That's where it started. Now, you can be a racist if you have a type you prefer to date that doesn't suit the whims of your accuser. Way to not "risk racism."
- krschultz 15y ago
  The ridiculous part was picking one word out of a very thoughtful post (and one written as a first person account, not conjecture) and attacking that rather than the overall point. The first time I read his story I didn't even notice that he had mentioned racism in it, it was largely immaterial. But quoting only that part makes it sound like he is blaming racism as the cause for poverty, which he clearly isn't. If I had a penny for every time I heard something to the effect of 'if only poor people stopped complaining/blaming racism and started pulling themselves out of poverty, there would be no more poverty', I'd have enough to help people get out of poverty. Although I guess there is no point in arguing with throw-away accounts.

sili 15y ago

A number of my professional friends participate in mentoring programs for young underprivileged kids. From what this article talks about, such programs should have a good potential at making a difference, at least for those that go through it.

trebor 15y ago

You can be broke and you can be poor. Being broke just means you don't have money—been there, left that. But I equate poor with the mindset that repeatedly produces being broke and living paycheck to paycheck. If you want to make money and stop being poor you have to stick with a tight budget. Stop spending more than you make, and evaluate whether or not you need that super-cool iPhone you just adore. At $70 a month a single iPhone could put food on your table, or the money you save by downgrading to a clamshell "stupid phone" could help pay off the credit card. Money doesn't solve money management problems. Solve how you manage your money and you automatically keep more. A spendthrift with great social connections is still poor.

pessimizer 15y ago

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 the network for now, but probably after I'm further along in my career, directly. I have no doubt that if I become a business owner, or pursue a managerial track, I'll be expected to do the same thing for other people and their kids. How else are you expected to get the million years of experience on everything expected at every job? The only entry-level jobs I see advertised are for entry-level geniuses. I don't think that this can be artificially created by a third party for adults. The advice that I would give to actual poor people: make friends with people with money. Wrack your brains to think of ways to do things for them for free so you can become a part of the favor trading network. Drink with them a lot - unless they're religious people, then pray with them. Only date people who have a family that has money. More money is better than less money. Avoid people with no money.

MartinCron 15y ago
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.
- pessimizer 15y ago
  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.

bane 15y ago

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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow_experiment It brings to mind a very recent discussion I had with a close friend from those days, one who hasn't managed to break out of a cycle of being poor. He was telling me how excited he was about a new idea where he was going to enroll himself and and his 12 year old son into an expensive martial arts school for some father-son bonding time every week. I remarked back, "but you barely make rent every month (and you split rent with 3 other adults in a relatively inexpensive area), your cell phone is routinely shut off for non-payment, your credit is so bad you can't even qualify for the highest interest lowest balance credit cards allowed by law, your cars are perpetually broken down/repossessed etc. you have a pending lawsuit for non-payment to a doctor because you couldn't pay your medical bills, etc. etc. etc. how on earth do you expect to pay for this? If I were you, I'd figure out how to resolve my financial situation first so that you can then do those kinds of father-son things you want at your leisure." "Well how do I do that?" "Instead of spending $250 a month on this, why don't you spend half as much and go to the local community college and finish up your associates (he's already finished a semester, so it was only another year, year and half left), translate that into a higher paying job or promotion or whatever, pay off your crap, buy Dad and Son Kung Fu?" "Look, I only have a short window of opportunity here." "What do you mean?" "Well, the lease on the house me and 3 other adults split the rent on is up in 2 years, and because of my money issues I don't know if I can afford to stay living close to my son after that, I may have to move out of state to a cheaper area, I'm seriously considering the Detroit area since the cost of living is low. So I want to do this now, while I can." This has been a typical conversation over the last 20 years with my friend. A decision point comes up, we'll talk about it, on one hand he'll have an opportunity to improve his lot in life, but he'll have to sacrifice a little now in order to reap rewards later, on the other hand, an emotionally satisfying marshmallow. Invariable he'll always pick the marshmallow. He's interested in the immediate "feeling" of a decision, unable to project an expectation of a better "feeling" later on. The result is, 20 years later, an otherwise intelligent, honest, good guy nearing middle age has: - no career progression of any sort, he's actually never worked a full-time job - he's been fired many times from promising jobs because he was "bored" and pretended to be sick from a mystery illness until they let him go - has a couple kids he can't support properly - can't afford a place on his own with living arrangements so complex it would take 4 or 5 long blog posts to explain - has had a handful of cars repossessed or sold off out of his control - continues to buy known unreliable vehicles that require constant repair, costing him precious money and time away from work - did a solid semester at college (with decentish grades) before dropping out because he didn't have enough time to play WoW - he was very proud of having finally cancelled his account...for the 3rd time. - spends considerable portions of his income on videogames and online subscriptions - buys random unnecessary crap all the time, "yes that RC helicopter is cool, why is your phone shut off again?" - has innumerable small medical bills currently in collections, with one pending lawsuit (btw, the one he's getting sued for? Almost the exact cost of a WoW account for a year) - etc. Each of these issues can be explained by the Marshmallow test, because to properly deal with any of them requires the ability to defer gratification in the immediate as part of a plan, something, even with decades of coaching, he's unable to do, and thus remains poor.

api 15y ago

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.

zacharytelschow 15y ago
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 http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html
- api 15y ago
  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.

kalmi10 15y ago

I know a homeless person who says that he would not work for less than x money/day, where x is more than what the average person earns here in Hungary. (He used to earn a lot. He used to be a baker.)

stcredzero 15y ago

I think there's a similar mechanism by which geeks end up "too geeky". http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-smart-people-defend-bad-ideas/ http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-smart-people-defend... http://amzn.com/0300090331 http://amzn.com/0300090331

programminggeek 15y ago

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.

j123 15y ago
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.
- pessimizer 15y ago
  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.
  - j123 15y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that there is no such thing as culture (as opposed to innate behavior) or that it couldn't change. But there are innate behaviors too. That newborns are a blank slate, a "tabula rasa" as Locke called it in Latin, to have whatever new form of behavior we want imprinted upon them is a fallacy. It was a hypothesis at one point, but now it's known to be false. Some facets of human behavior are largely the same for all times and in all places. Tribalism and territoriality, e.g. These things will always be with us. It's hopeless to think a day exists on the horizon in which these will be eliminated. A more mature approach is to accept humanity for what it is. Improve what can be improved upon and don't aggravate those features which are here to stay. Fossil fuels rushed humanity into a new era of mass immigration comparable to the "people wanderings" which characterize Late Antiquity in Europe. But it's now happened globally. It's popular to pretend we can overcome tribalism and territoriality. We'll see. If not, though, we're in for some excitement in the coming years.

mindcrime 15y ago

So can we change this? I think we can. It starts with recognizing the problem for what it is and doing what we can to teach kids from impoverished backgrounds not just how to read and write but how to become upwardly mobile in their networking I'm pretty sure the problem is more complex than just lack of awareness of the importance of a certain approach to networking... and I'm someone who has been down this path - having grown up "dirt poor" in rural southeast NC, and having escaped to a solidly middle-class lifestyle. But I absolutely agree that this is one component of helping people escape poverty, and I'd definitely like to see (and perhaps participate in) some sort of initiative to help raise awareness of this point, especially among younger folks. Some sort of program, directed at high-school kids, that teaches skills specifically related to networking, economics, entrepreneurship, and all the "stuff" needed to advance economically, would be - IMO - tremendously beneficial. That said, I believe the point that solson made about mindsets does stand. I grew up with plenty of people who were as poor as I was, and I was willing to make certain sacrifices, and commit to doing things in order to raise my standard of living... many of my peers weren't, and they still live in the sticks and they're still poor. And I honestly don't believe that I'm necessarily (smarter|more talented|more insightful|whatever) than most of them. But I had a different attitude and different ambitions, and - to my mind - that was the single biggest difference. Edit: As an aside, though, I'll throw this out... some of my friends who are still "poorer" than me in the financial sense, may actually be happier. I, for example, have never married or had kids, because I was too busy working and trying to make a better life for myself. And now that I'm working on a startup, I work more than ever and have basically quit worrying about dating or anything for a while... OTOH, my friends back home have wives and kids to come home to, play with, go out with, etc. But I have more money. So who's really better off? I would say that's a real grey area. <shrug />

zacharytelschow 15y ago

"'We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,' Mr. Marx says. 'Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.'" Is your college a meritocracy based on talent or a means of attempting to right social wrongs, Mr Marx? If it's the former, then the income of student's parents should be irrelevant and you should only be wringing your hands over lesser talented pupils getting in over more talented ones. If it's the latter, I can see your concern - patterns of behavior beget success and children often emulate their parents, leaving you stuck with those blasted high achievers. Tough break, that.

aarontait 15y ago

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.

MarkPNeyer 15y ago

how about a social network algorithm that connects the least connected people with the most connected? imagine VC's having dinner with homeless people.

dkarl 15y ago

“We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,” Mr. Marx says. “Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.” Mr. Marx's job is educating, hopefully as well as possible, people who already have a great educational advantage. Anyone working at Amherst or any other elite college who thinks they can be part of the solution by directly educating underprivileged kids is indulging in fantasy. Access to higher education is not the problem; preparation is. A poor person who is prepared to succeed at an elite college has already risen beyond "underprivileged" and is on a trajectory to the upper middle class. More precisely, if Mr. Marx is wrong to imply that there is some kind of "merit" and "talent" that makes one capable of handling higher education but is not affected by a child's opportunities and environmental influences. Amherst does not admit people based on their genetic potential or even their winning personality. They try to take social disadvantage into account when judging applicants' academic preparation, but in the end they limit admissions to students who can succeed at Amherst. If Mr. Marx wants to directly help people who are disadvantaged then he should quit Amherst and join some organization that works with people who are not and could not be Amherst students.

fatherlinux 15y ago

Honestly, it is just so much more complicated than a two paragraph post on hacker news. This is ridiculous. The title is awesome, like scientists just made some startling new discovery. Ridiculous!