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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

by 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.
  - j123 15y ago
    It's as ridiculous as if he had casually tossed "overeating" into that list as well. Of course when something sticks out like a sore thumb, that individual part will get attention. Your point is that you can only reply holistically or something?
    - stcredzero 15y ago
      It's as ridiculous as if he had casually tossed "overeating" into that list as well. Actually, overeating and obesity have been shown to have a social transmission component. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919885,00.html http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919885,00.ht...
    - mkr-hn 15y ago
      You're coming off as very confrontational. That's never a good sign. This would be a great time to stop, take a breather, and come back to the conversation with a fresh perspective. Otherwise you risk being downvoted into oblivion due to the tone you're taking.
    - krschultz 15y ago
      You can reply any way you want, but it makes a whole lot more sense to respond to the main point of the parent comment. If the word racism had not been in that post, would you have commented on it at all? Would you have still felt the need to make a throw-away account for the comment?
- stcredzero 15y ago
  What does racism even mean anymore? It's a form of bigotry which is also deeply aligned with hate, often violent hate. It's probably the same thing that sparks sectarian violence. It can also reside, in a form without overt violent manifestation. Now, you can be a racist if you have a type you prefer to date that doesn't suit the whims of your accuser. I would admit that this isn't sufficient to label someone of racism. The question to ask would be: Does the vivid thought of a loved one (a parent or a child) dating a member of a given race cause a strong emotional reaction? I'm not sure what racism is. I'm not sure academics have a good handle on all of the mechanisms by which it operates, but, in the words of the Penny Arcade guys, it is a thing. Its operation in the real world is undeniable. For many in the context of minority, it is very palpable. EDIT: It's probably connected to some suite of group organization/defense instincts. It probably operates on the same level that religion operates on.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    It's a form of bigotry which is also deeply aligned with hate, often violent hate. Meh, the vast majority of practical racism isn't really about hate. The most common form of racism is the over-generalization type -- most of the people of race X that you meet or see in the street have characteristic P, so you form in your mind the idea that "Xs have characteristic P". This, even when statistically true, is unfair to the Xs out there who don't have characteristic P, especially when P is negative, so it's a trap we need to avoid. For every racist who actively hates another race, there's fifty who don't hate 'em but merely have negative beliefs about 'em, the same way I have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about (but don't actually hate) people who wear Ed Hardy t-shirts.
    - stcredzero 15y ago
      For every racist who actively hates another race, there's fifty who don't hate 'em but merely have negative beliefs about 'em, the same way I have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about (but don't actually hate) people who wear Ed Hardy t-shirts. I think both kinds you mention are actually part of the same mechanism. I'm beginning to suspect that the mechanisms of tribal organization (human social organization) are paramount for human psychology in the same way that pack organization is paramount for dog psychology. http://www.hiiraan.com/2005/july/op/Abdishakur_Jawhar_PartFive.htm http://www.hiiraan.com/2005/july/op/Abdishakur_Jawhar_PartFi... Many organizations exploit tribal psychology for group cohesion and control. Marketing is clearly dominated by tribal psychology. I think programming language communities are organized on mechanisms for tribal cohesion. Is it possible to hate someone and not "have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about" them? How common is it to "have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about" someone and not hate them? Interesting questions, I think.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  Way to not "risk racism." http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/comments/ga51e/what_is_is_racism_by_alain_de_benoist/ http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/comments/ga51e/what_is_is_r... http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/what_is_racism.pdf http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/what_is_racism.pdf
eiji 15y ago
Wow, I hope this is not the first comment I see here because of upvotes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility
afterburner 15y ago
People develop those bad attitudes, viewpoints, or whatever, in large part because they are poor. The contagion aspect, if it exists, is secondary. You are simply advocating the preservation of the elite by gating access to it. Of course if everyone had access to the same networks there would be no elite anymore. If it raises the prospects of the vast majority of Americans by, say, 5%, that would actually be great for the country, and maybe not having an elite wouldn't be so bad (to the extent this is even possible, of course there will always be some that are far ahead of the curve). But it would be bad-mouthed as socialism.
- afterburner 15y ago
  Hey, if I'm being downvoted for my last sentence, then keep in mind that is the statement in my post actually most likely to be true.
- forkandwait 15y ago
  "People develop those bad attitudes, viewpoints, or whatever, in large part because they are poor. The contagion aspect, if it exists, is secondary." I think this is the official leftist dogma, but I actually fail to see any obvious causality. I think it assumes that structural lack of opportunity (ie you qualified to be a surgeon, but the y only job you can get is shoeshine boy because you are black) leads to resentment leads to bad behavior. And that there is no feedback from bad behavior to lack of opportunity. And that cultural diffusion just doesn't exist or doesn't matter. Am I getting this right? Not a sarcastic question, I think there are massive amounts of assumption that creep in unnoticed in all these discussions, by me as much as anyone. And just for the record, (1) I didn't downvote you, even though I think you are wrong, and wrong in a way that is holding the USA back, and (2) I would consider myself a socialist. I just think socialism should get away from "fight the rich! bad rich people!" to working on how to enculturate and change the poor so the rich just go poof and disappear; OF COURSE there is the danger we go too far in this, and there is also the fact that we need to make careful and tentative value judgements about good versus bad behavior, something the left is, reasonably given history, loathe to do. (ramble, ramble, ... sorry...)
  - 15y ago
forkandwait 15y ago
I have had a sort of reverse experience, but which has led me to believe that poverty is a "contagious mindset, nothing more" as well: My family were academics, so our bank accounts were mostly empty, our clothes were pretty old, etc, but we grew in upper middle class New York. I pretended to be blue collar in my twenties, thinking I would be the next great socialist author. However, when I got sick of, well, being poor, I just started taking classes at the community college, schmoozing my teachers and my bosses, and voila, I am a solidly middle class data hacker 15 years later. I don't have the bank account I would have had if I went to college earlier and started investing, but whatever, I am so not poor. For the blue collar people I worked with before the transition, however, the idea of getting a bunch of education and then becoming a manager was inconceivable and frankly immoral; they have probably not done as well as I in the last 15 years. I hope God appreciates humor, because if I say grace, it always includes something like "and thanks for giving me an upper middle class cultural background", because, well, I would be f*ed with out it (as are LOTS AND LOTS of people in the US). Also -- note that I have not mentioned race. I think it has become largely irrelevant to the dynamics of poverty, thank god, but only because my experience shows me that you can be totally screwed by the above culture of poverty and be of the same british isle/ german descent as my upper middle NYC friends. EDIT: And I think we should be throwing our weight into fixing this massive cultural problem, along with the wasted human potential it causes (really expensive to hire prison guards and social workers). However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault", even while the US rots from the inside.
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  > For the blue collar people ... the idea of getting a bunch of education and then becoming a manager was inconceivable and frankly immoral Not for all of them, but for disturbingly many. The problem is exacerbated by peer pressure: as soon as one tries to change something, one is booed and labeled a social climber. Because many people base their morals on what their surrounding group believes to be right, becoming rich starts being perceived as immoral. > However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault" Far left says there is no cultural problem because it is infatuated with the culture of poverty itself. There is this belief among many leftists that being poor is "moral" while being rich is not. So the left considers the culture of the poor to be superior and more "authentic". Similarly, in a perverse twist, the far right believes that being rich is almost equal to being moral (because wealth is God's gift to men or some other such nonsense). Basically people like to imagine their corresponding social groups as being the most moral of all.
iamelgringo 15y ago
May I respectfully suggest that there are very different kinds of poverty, and that not all kinds of poverty are due to cultural choices. I came to the conclusion many years ago that in America poverty is a contagious mindset, nothing more. You are making very, very broad generalizations and stereotyping an entire socio-economic category of people. My parents grew up in rural Minnesota in absolute poverty. My father didn't use a toilet or shower until he was 17 and moved to a "large" high school where they could shower after gym class. He worked his way through 3 Bachelor's degrees and a Master's degree in Education, and then chose a live of relative poverty to become a minister and work in Central America. I've had to be financially independent since I was 17. I've worked a job to pay my own bills since I was 14. I grew up rarely buying clothes at a store, and wearing hand me downs. None of that was a matter of contagious mindset. I worked in the ghetto in Chicago as an ER and trauma nurse for years, and yes, there are definitely choices that people make that make them continue in poverty, but there are also systemic issues that make escaping poverty in the inner city extremely difficult. In the inner city, it takes a lot more time to take a bus to the grocery store, purchase food and bring it back home and cook it. Groceries are _tons more expensive in large cities. Access to banking is more difficult because of similar reasons, so people use check cashing services, which cost exorbitant amounts. Transportation is much more difficult, because you end up having to take expensive public transportation back and forth to work. Banks make Billions of dollars a year on bounced check fees and overdraft charges. That means that banking is much more expensive for those people that can least afford it. Credit card companies make Billions of dollars each year in over limit fees, and late fees. In fact, people who max out their credit cards are a creditor's best customer. These are systemic problems that keep people in poverty. That's not a cultural mindset. Who would ever dream of commuting 2 hours a day for a minimum wage job. I worked with plenty of people at Walgreens on Rush and Division in Chicago that did just that. Those were the jobs available to them. Yes, people make choices that keep them in poverty. Yes, there are mindsets that keep people in poverty. But, to ignore systemic, structural problems that keep people in poverty in America is just plain wrong.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  Life is hard to live in a place where life is hard to live. There is some push to discuss "food deserts" as a social problem subject to sociopolitical solutions. Thing is, a desert is what it is because there is little there to sustain life - and the prime way to deal with that, short of either imposing expensive infrastructure or accepting grinding bare-sustenance living, is MOVE: don't be there. Ditto these urban "food deserts" (or "banking deserts", or ...): the solution isn't trying to impose an infrastructure on a system which has a natural resistance thereto, and will require enormous costs with little payback, the solution is to recognize "this is a bad place to exist in" and get out. Yes, it can be hard to move for many reasons; which is cumulatively harder - leaving, or staying? If you're going to commute 2 hours every day, you've already proven you can move. And people do! There are plenty of towns and cities (Detroit a good current example) where people finally realized "this isn't working, I'm outta here" and left, leaving the systemic structural problems behind. My recurring conclusion on the issue: the problem isn't opportunity, the problem is people not acting on opportunity. You can't force them to, and if they won't then nothing will change for them.
api 15y ago
People will defend their self-inflicted misery. This is a big part of the dynamic of alcoholism, drug addiction, bad relationships, and stupid dogmatic ideologies. I've always thought that hell would be a place where everyone burns for eternity, but there's a way to turn off the flames. They never do because they are afraid of change, and because burning for eternity is a part of their self-identity.
- Swizec 15y ago
  Just wanted to thank you for giving me an awesome tweet/quote/thing. Paraphrased as such: "Hell is a place where everyone burns for eternity, but doesn't put out the flames because they're afraid of change."
- stcredzero 15y ago
  People will defend their self-inflicted misery. This is a big part of the dynamic of alcoholism, drug addiction, bad relationships, and stupid dogmatic ideologies. I bet it plays into working life and the various "geek scenes".
  - Psyonic 15y ago
    Of course it does. The "geek's" stereotypical problems with women is a prison of his own design. Same with all sorts of health and diet issues.
    - stcredzero 15y ago
      I just lost 14 pounds. However, the instincts around body homeostasis are very, very strong. I don't think it's reasonable to presume that it's all self sabotage. http://lesswrong.com/lw/ab/akrasia_and_shangrila/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/ab/akrasia_and_shangrila/
      - Psyonic 15y ago
        Sure, but people manage to do it all the time. Like this girl on reddit today: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hlgtb/iama_24_yo_girl_who_has_lost_137lbs_and_changed/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hlgtb/iama_24_yo_girl_... Btw, I lost 20 pounds in the last 6 months, so I know what it's like. That said, once you make it a habit, it's not that bad. The hardest thing with food is avoiding "just one cigarette". Just takes a few days of crappy eating / not exercising for your old habits to take over again. You really have to watch out for that.
peterhunt 15y ago
When I was like 12 or 13, my dad (an attorney) was doing some patent work for an MIT grad student who later went on to be a professor of CS. I was interested in computers at the time and trying to teach myself, and as a favor, my dad asked him to show me a few things. He ended up teaching me Scheme, getting me to commit to an open-source 3D engine and work on computer vision stuff over the course of my early high school years. I ended getting into a top collegiate CS program with a very low high school GPA - primarily because the work I was doing outside of the classroom was pretty good. This degree opened the door to a masters degree and made finding a job much easier. Today, I'm 23 and working full-time. My dad has started reminding me why I got to where I am, and that I need to give back and do what was done for me - find an aspiring kid who wants to learn, and teach them. Maybe there are some problems with the mindset of the poor, but I think that part of the problem is that I am probably going to find this kid through my own middle-class network and continue to perpetuate a culture of mentorship that is often inaccessible to the poor.
- mindcrime 15y ago
  Maybe there are some problems with the mindset of the poor, but I think that part of the problem is that I am probably going to find this kid through my own middle-class network and continue to perpetuate a culture of mentorship that is often inaccessible to the poor. So don't... make it a point to consciously seek out a way to connect with someone who wouldn't usually have a chance to work with someone like you. Find the poorest neighborhood near where you live, find out what high-school is there, call the principal and see if there's some way you can engage with them to do some kind of mentoring or whatever. Of course that's just an example, but hopefully you get the drift: if this point matters to you, do something specific to break that cycle and help someone poor.
  - danssig 15y ago
    Easier said than done. Unfortunately, as indicated elsewhere in the thread, being poor becomes a mindset. Regardless of how it got started, it ends up there and it's hard to break. Personally, I've tried to help 2 or 3 poor kids just recently. I showed them how easy it is to program, I explained to them why it is one of the few professions with low barrier to entry and literally no limits on potential and I showed them the fruits of my labor (i.e. my coolest and most expensive toys). The result? None of them took a single step on their own. I just couldn't get them interested. One still imagines he's going to get rich making music somehow (yes, I explained why that, frankly, isn't going to happen for him), the others didn't even bother with a plan.
run4yourlives 15y ago
This. I understand exactly what you are saying, but since it doesn't jive with many people's world view, there will be stiff objection. The only cure for poverty (in western countries), ultimately, is the person that is poor. While there are many ways and unfortunate circumstances that one can find themselves poor - and as a society I believe it is incumbent on us to provide the assistance to lessen the occurrence and/or effects of such events - the ultimate recovery is in the hands of the individual. They are actually hindered in this by the collective network of the permanently poor - supported by political movements on the far left that stem from this same collective belief system. Programs should be tailored to address poverty in two ways: 1. Preventing new members of the network, by mitigating the circumstances that create poverty, and, however unpopular; 2. Disrupting the network itself, by purposely setting things up in a way that the person in poverty is isolated from other poor people and surrounded with a network that encourages them to adjust their thinking. I'm not holding my breath, but I'd love to see some experiments along this line.
ShabbyDoo 15y ago
I just got done reading this. It's admittedly not a scholarly work -- it's a set of interviews which paint a narrative about how it feels to move from the working class to the upper-middle class in America. Your statement about being shamed for doing better than your parents represents one of the book's themes. http://www.amazon.com/Limbo-Blue-Collar-Roots-White-Collar-Dreams/dp/0471714399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1306521196&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Limbo-Blue-Collar-Roots-White-Collar-D... I am an oddity. Although I grew up in a blue collar town and my dad was a factory worker/janitor, all four of my grandparents had college degrees. So, I identified with the book's stories in odd ways -- sometimes understanding the working class guy and sometimes understanding the upper middle class one. [BTW, someone here on HN recommended this book. To that person, thanks!]
schnaars 15y ago
That's crazy! I thought that it was just my parents that did that. This past April, my dad told me that I didn't pay enough in taxes and that I should paying much more. Thanks, Dad! I remember reading a quote from Bono where he talked about the crab mentality of his home town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality). One of the reasons I avoid Facebook is that it is just an easier way for that network and the poison thinking that you mentioned to flourish.
agnosticnixie 15y ago
No offense, but you sound like a nouveau riche, on top of bad generalizations

by solson 15y ago

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.
- j123 15y ago
  It's as ridiculous as if he had casually tossed "overeating" into that list as well. Of course when something sticks out like a sore thumb, that individual part will get attention. Your point is that you can only reply holistically or something?
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    It's as ridiculous as if he had casually tossed "overeating" into that list as well. Actually, overeating and obesity have been shown to have a social transmission component. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919885,00.html http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919885,00.ht...
  - mkr-hn 15y ago
    You're coming off as very confrontational. That's never a good sign. This would be a great time to stop, take a breather, and come back to the conversation with a fresh perspective. Otherwise you risk being downvoted into oblivion due to the tone you're taking.
  - krschultz 15y ago
    You can reply any way you want, but it makes a whole lot more sense to respond to the main point of the parent comment. If the word racism had not been in that post, would you have commented on it at all? Would you have still felt the need to make a throw-away account for the comment?
stcredzero 15y ago
What does racism even mean anymore? It's a form of bigotry which is also deeply aligned with hate, often violent hate. It's probably the same thing that sparks sectarian violence. It can also reside, in a form without overt violent manifestation. Now, you can be a racist if you have a type you prefer to date that doesn't suit the whims of your accuser. I would admit that this isn't sufficient to label someone of racism. The question to ask would be: Does the vivid thought of a loved one (a parent or a child) dating a member of a given race cause a strong emotional reaction? I'm not sure what racism is. I'm not sure academics have a good handle on all of the mechanisms by which it operates, but, in the words of the Penny Arcade guys, it is a thing. Its operation in the real world is undeniable. For many in the context of minority, it is very palpable. EDIT: It's probably connected to some suite of group organization/defense instincts. It probably operates on the same level that religion operates on.
- hugh3 15y ago
  It's a form of bigotry which is also deeply aligned with hate, often violent hate. Meh, the vast majority of practical racism isn't really about hate. The most common form of racism is the over-generalization type -- most of the people of race X that you meet or see in the street have characteristic P, so you form in your mind the idea that "Xs have characteristic P". This, even when statistically true, is unfair to the Xs out there who don't have characteristic P, especially when P is negative, so it's a trap we need to avoid. For every racist who actively hates another race, there's fifty who don't hate 'em but merely have negative beliefs about 'em, the same way I have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about (but don't actually hate) people who wear Ed Hardy t-shirts.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    For every racist who actively hates another race, there's fifty who don't hate 'em but merely have negative beliefs about 'em, the same way I have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about (but don't actually hate) people who wear Ed Hardy t-shirts. I think both kinds you mention are actually part of the same mechanism. I'm beginning to suspect that the mechanisms of tribal organization (human social organization) are paramount for human psychology in the same way that pack organization is paramount for dog psychology. http://www.hiiraan.com/2005/july/op/Abdishakur_Jawhar_PartFive.htm http://www.hiiraan.com/2005/july/op/Abdishakur_Jawhar_PartFi... Many organizations exploit tribal psychology for group cohesion and control. Marketing is clearly dominated by tribal psychology. I think programming language communities are organized on mechanisms for tribal cohesion. Is it possible to hate someone and not "have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about" them? How common is it to "have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about" someone and not hate them? Interesting questions, I think.
stcredzero 15y ago
Way to not "risk racism." http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/comments/ga51e/what_is_is_racism_by_alain_de_benoist/ http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/comments/ga51e/what_is_is_r... http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/what_is_racism.pdf http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/what_is_racism.pdf

eiji 15y ago

Wow, I hope this is not the first comment I see here because of upvotes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

afterburner 15y ago

People develop those bad attitudes, viewpoints, or whatever, in large part because they are poor. The contagion aspect, if it exists, is secondary. You are simply advocating the preservation of the elite by gating access to it. Of course if everyone had access to the same networks there would be no elite anymore. If it raises the prospects of the vast majority of Americans by, say, 5%, that would actually be great for the country, and maybe not having an elite wouldn't be so bad (to the extent this is even possible, of course there will always be some that are far ahead of the curve). But it would be bad-mouthed as socialism.

afterburner 15y ago
Hey, if I'm being downvoted for my last sentence, then keep in mind that is the statement in my post actually most likely to be true.
forkandwait 15y ago
"People develop those bad attitudes, viewpoints, or whatever, in large part because they are poor. The contagion aspect, if it exists, is secondary." I think this is the official leftist dogma, but I actually fail to see any obvious causality. I think it assumes that structural lack of opportunity (ie you qualified to be a surgeon, but the y only job you can get is shoeshine boy because you are black) leads to resentment leads to bad behavior. And that there is no feedback from bad behavior to lack of opportunity. And that cultural diffusion just doesn't exist or doesn't matter. Am I getting this right? Not a sarcastic question, I think there are massive amounts of assumption that creep in unnoticed in all these discussions, by me as much as anyone. And just for the record, (1) I didn't downvote you, even though I think you are wrong, and wrong in a way that is holding the USA back, and (2) I would consider myself a socialist. I just think socialism should get away from "fight the rich! bad rich people!" to working on how to enculturate and change the poor so the rich just go poof and disappear; OF COURSE there is the danger we go too far in this, and there is also the fact that we need to make careful and tentative value judgements about good versus bad behavior, something the left is, reasonably given history, loathe to do. (ramble, ramble, ... sorry...)
- 15y ago

forkandwait 15y ago

I have had a sort of reverse experience, but which has led me to believe that poverty is a "contagious mindset, nothing more" as well: My family were academics, so our bank accounts were mostly empty, our clothes were pretty old, etc, but we grew in upper middle class New York. I pretended to be blue collar in my twenties, thinking I would be the next great socialist author. However, when I got sick of, well, being poor, I just started taking classes at the community college, schmoozing my teachers and my bosses, and voila, I am a solidly middle class data hacker 15 years later. I don't have the bank account I would have had if I went to college earlier and started investing, but whatever, I am so not poor. For the blue collar people I worked with before the transition, however, the idea of getting a bunch of education and then becoming a manager was inconceivable and frankly immoral; they have probably not done as well as I in the last 15 years. I hope God appreciates humor, because if I say grace, it always includes something like "and thanks for giving me an upper middle class cultural background", because, well, I would be f*ed with out it (as are LOTS AND LOTS of people in the US). Also -- note that I have not mentioned race. I think it has become largely irrelevant to the dynamics of poverty, thank god, but only because my experience shows me that you can be totally screwed by the above culture of poverty and be of the same british isle/ german descent as my upper middle NYC friends. EDIT: And I think we should be throwing our weight into fixing this massive cultural problem, along with the wasted human potential it causes (really expensive to hire prison guards and social workers). However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault", even while the US rots from the inside.

bluekeybox 15y ago
> For the blue collar people ... the idea of getting a bunch of education and then becoming a manager was inconceivable and frankly immoral Not for all of them, but for disturbingly many. The problem is exacerbated by peer pressure: as soon as one tries to change something, one is booed and labeled a social climber. Because many people base their morals on what their surrounding group believes to be right, becoming rich starts being perceived as immoral. > However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault" Far left says there is no cultural problem because it is infatuated with the culture of poverty itself. There is this belief among many leftists that being poor is "moral" while being rich is not. So the left considers the culture of the poor to be superior and more "authentic". Similarly, in a perverse twist, the far right believes that being rich is almost equal to being moral (because wealth is God's gift to men or some other such nonsense). Basically people like to imagine their corresponding social groups as being the most moral of all.

iamelgringo 15y ago

May I respectfully suggest that there are very different kinds of poverty, and that not all kinds of poverty are due to cultural choices. I came to the conclusion many years ago that in America poverty is a contagious mindset, nothing more. You are making very, very broad generalizations and stereotyping an entire socio-economic category of people. My parents grew up in rural Minnesota in absolute poverty. My father didn't use a toilet or shower until he was 17 and moved to a "large" high school where they could shower after gym class. He worked his way through 3 Bachelor's degrees and a Master's degree in Education, and then chose a live of relative poverty to become a minister and work in Central America. I've had to be financially independent since I was 17. I've worked a job to pay my own bills since I was 14. I grew up rarely buying clothes at a store, and wearing hand me downs. None of that was a matter of contagious mindset. I worked in the ghetto in Chicago as an ER and trauma nurse for years, and yes, there are definitely choices that people make that make them continue in poverty, but there are also systemic issues that make escaping poverty in the inner city extremely difficult. In the inner city, it takes a lot more time to take a bus to the grocery store, purchase food and bring it back home and cook it. Groceries are _tons more expensive in large cities. Access to banking is more difficult because of similar reasons, so people use check cashing services, which cost exorbitant amounts. Transportation is much more difficult, because you end up having to take expensive public transportation back and forth to work. Banks make Billions of dollars a year on bounced check fees and overdraft charges. That means that banking is much more expensive for those people that can least afford it. Credit card companies make Billions of dollars each year in over limit fees, and late fees. In fact, people who max out their credit cards are a creditor's best customer. These are systemic problems that keep people in poverty. That's not a cultural mindset. Who would ever dream of commuting 2 hours a day for a minimum wage job. I worked with plenty of people at Walgreens on Rush and Division in Chicago that did just that. Those were the jobs available to them. Yes, people make choices that keep them in poverty. Yes, there are mindsets that keep people in poverty. But, to ignore systemic, structural problems that keep people in poverty in America is just plain wrong.

ctdonath 15y ago
Life is hard to live in a place where life is hard to live. There is some push to discuss "food deserts" as a social problem subject to sociopolitical solutions. Thing is, a desert is what it is because there is little there to sustain life - and the prime way to deal with that, short of either imposing expensive infrastructure or accepting grinding bare-sustenance living, is MOVE: don't be there. Ditto these urban "food deserts" (or "banking deserts", or ...): the solution isn't trying to impose an infrastructure on a system which has a natural resistance thereto, and will require enormous costs with little payback, the solution is to recognize "this is a bad place to exist in" and get out. Yes, it can be hard to move for many reasons; which is cumulatively harder - leaving, or staying? If you're going to commute 2 hours every day, you've already proven you can move. And people do! There are plenty of towns and cities (Detroit a good current example) where people finally realized "this isn't working, I'm outta here" and left, leaving the systemic structural problems behind. My recurring conclusion on the issue: the problem isn't opportunity, the problem is people not acting on opportunity. You can't force them to, and if they won't then nothing will change for them.

api 15y ago

People will defend their self-inflicted misery. This is a big part of the dynamic of alcoholism, drug addiction, bad relationships, and stupid dogmatic ideologies. I've always thought that hell would be a place where everyone burns for eternity, but there's a way to turn off the flames. They never do because they are afraid of change, and because burning for eternity is a part of their self-identity.

Swizec 15y ago
Just wanted to thank you for giving me an awesome tweet/quote/thing. Paraphrased as such: "Hell is a place where everyone burns for eternity, but doesn't put out the flames because they're afraid of change."
stcredzero 15y ago
People will defend their self-inflicted misery. This is a big part of the dynamic of alcoholism, drug addiction, bad relationships, and stupid dogmatic ideologies. I bet it plays into working life and the various "geek scenes".
- Psyonic 15y ago
  Of course it does. The "geek's" stereotypical problems with women is a prison of his own design. Same with all sorts of health and diet issues.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    I just lost 14 pounds. However, the instincts around body homeostasis are very, very strong. I don't think it's reasonable to presume that it's all self sabotage. http://lesswrong.com/lw/ab/akrasia_and_shangrila/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/ab/akrasia_and_shangrila/
    - Psyonic 15y ago
      Sure, but people manage to do it all the time. Like this girl on reddit today: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hlgtb/iama_24_yo_girl_who_has_lost_137lbs_and_changed/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hlgtb/iama_24_yo_girl_... Btw, I lost 20 pounds in the last 6 months, so I know what it's like. That said, once you make it a habit, it's not that bad. The hardest thing with food is avoiding "just one cigarette". Just takes a few days of crappy eating / not exercising for your old habits to take over again. You really have to watch out for that.

peterhunt 15y ago

When I was like 12 or 13, my dad (an attorney) was doing some patent work for an MIT grad student who later went on to be a professor of CS. I was interested in computers at the time and trying to teach myself, and as a favor, my dad asked him to show me a few things. He ended up teaching me Scheme, getting me to commit to an open-source 3D engine and work on computer vision stuff over the course of my early high school years. I ended getting into a top collegiate CS program with a very low high school GPA - primarily because the work I was doing outside of the classroom was pretty good. This degree opened the door to a masters degree and made finding a job much easier. Today, I'm 23 and working full-time. My dad has started reminding me why I got to where I am, and that I need to give back and do what was done for me - find an aspiring kid who wants to learn, and teach them. Maybe there are some problems with the mindset of the poor, but I think that part of the problem is that I am probably going to find this kid through my own middle-class network and continue to perpetuate a culture of mentorship that is often inaccessible to the poor.

mindcrime 15y ago
Maybe there are some problems with the mindset of the poor, but I think that part of the problem is that I am probably going to find this kid through my own middle-class network and continue to perpetuate a culture of mentorship that is often inaccessible to the poor. So don't... make it a point to consciously seek out a way to connect with someone who wouldn't usually have a chance to work with someone like you. Find the poorest neighborhood near where you live, find out what high-school is there, call the principal and see if there's some way you can engage with them to do some kind of mentoring or whatever. Of course that's just an example, but hopefully you get the drift: if this point matters to you, do something specific to break that cycle and help someone poor.
- danssig 15y ago
  Easier said than done. Unfortunately, as indicated elsewhere in the thread, being poor becomes a mindset. Regardless of how it got started, it ends up there and it's hard to break. Personally, I've tried to help 2 or 3 poor kids just recently. I showed them how easy it is to program, I explained to them why it is one of the few professions with low barrier to entry and literally no limits on potential and I showed them the fruits of my labor (i.e. my coolest and most expensive toys). The result? None of them took a single step on their own. I just couldn't get them interested. One still imagines he's going to get rich making music somehow (yes, I explained why that, frankly, isn't going to happen for him), the others didn't even bother with a plan.

run4yourlives 15y ago

This. I understand exactly what you are saying, but since it doesn't jive with many people's world view, there will be stiff objection. The only cure for poverty (in western countries), ultimately, is the person that is poor. While there are many ways and unfortunate circumstances that one can find themselves poor - and as a society I believe it is incumbent on us to provide the assistance to lessen the occurrence and/or effects of such events - the ultimate recovery is in the hands of the individual. They are actually hindered in this by the collective network of the permanently poor - supported by political movements on the far left that stem from this same collective belief system. Programs should be tailored to address poverty in two ways: 1. Preventing new members of the network, by mitigating the circumstances that create poverty, and, however unpopular; 2. Disrupting the network itself, by purposely setting things up in a way that the person in poverty is isolated from other poor people and surrounded with a network that encourages them to adjust their thinking. I'm not holding my breath, but I'd love to see some experiments along this line.

ShabbyDoo 15y ago

I just got done reading this. It's admittedly not a scholarly work -- it's a set of interviews which paint a narrative about how it feels to move from the working class to the upper-middle class in America. Your statement about being shamed for doing better than your parents represents one of the book's themes. http://www.amazon.com/Limbo-Blue-Collar-Roots-White-Collar-Dreams/dp/0471714399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1306521196&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Limbo-Blue-Collar-Roots-White-Collar-D... I am an oddity. Although I grew up in a blue collar town and my dad was a factory worker/janitor, all four of my grandparents had college degrees. So, I identified with the book's stories in odd ways -- sometimes understanding the working class guy and sometimes understanding the upper middle class one. [BTW, someone here on HN recommended this book. To that person, thanks!]

schnaars 15y ago

That's crazy! I thought that it was just my parents that did that. This past April, my dad told me that I didn't pay enough in taxes and that I should paying much more. Thanks, Dad! I remember reading a quote from Bono where he talked about the crab mentality of his home town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality). One of the reasons I avoid Facebook is that it is just an easier way for that network and the poison thinking that you mentioned to flourish.

agnosticnixie 15y ago

No offense, but you sound like a nouveau riche, on top of bad generalizations