# Explain the "poor" mentality to me **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 9, 2013, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558 "2013-06-09T16:21:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2013, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558/261 "2013-06-17T02:29:14Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > There is a complex psychology at work that goes beyond similistic “poor people are poor because they made bad decisions”. Poor people seem to develop a learned helplessness where even if you showed them how to make good decisions, or even made them for them, they often resist them. > > (. . .) > > In other words, poor people learn growing up that they have little control over their lives and thus make no effort to change it while rich people learn they can achieve their goals with hard work. > > So, yes. It’s more than just “poor people make bad decisions”. They are often unaware of the options or even that there is a decision to be made. This echos what I had wanted to say in my previous post. There is a lot more going on than just bad decisions, which I’ll comment on after I get this rant off my chest. I see many people who valid their choices by slamming people who don’t agree. Who ridicule those whose lives or lifestyles are different. It seems human nature to engage in such. Certainly I’m not without fault in this regard as well. I see a religious, conservative poster (IIRC) whose contribution is to cherry pick points from an article which support the “bad decisions lead to being poor” attitude, without any nuanced reasoning. The OP is simply repeating this mantra in each follow up post. I see no evidence of any attempt at a dialogue. Wouldn’t it just be better to pit the poor? Years ago, alcoholism was considered by many within society to simply be sinners. “Look at him, he’s drinking again. If only he didn’t drink, he wouldn’t be a drunk.” No shit Sherlock. And if the poor made the best choices in the world, some of them would get out of poverty as well. Much more about human nature was discovered after people got past looking at excessive drinking as a moral failure, and started to look at why some people drank too much, and as importantly, searched for the non-obvious reasons behind the drinking. There are no magic cures, no single thing can cure all addicts, but at least there are ways of help for some now. Go ahead and mock the poor. Point out that their shoes aren’t the cheapest and each and every purchase of food isn’t bland and inexpensive. But nothing you are doing is furthering understanding or contributing to a solution. I’m under no illusion that poverty is a simple problem which just a little more aid could fix. I especially feel so because there are a multitude of contributing factors, including stupid choices. I watched a TED talk the other days, and the speaker was discussing how many times attempted solutions fail because they fail to take into consideration the actual circumstances of the problem. He related his experience in an NGO which went to Africa and taught some villagers to plant vegetables, only to see the hippos eat everything before it could be harvested. I’m sure that much of the advice for the poor is well-intended, but probably of similar nature in that the given solutions aren’t really workable in the actual lives of the recipients. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2013, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558/262 "2013-06-17T02:42:48Z")
Hungry hungry hippos. ---
**Author:** ![Incubus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2013, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558/263 "2013-06-17T12:23:00Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > From literature I’ve read by people like Malcolm Gladwell and from my own annecdotal observations, kids who grow up affluent develop a sense of entitlement and learn to assert themselves. In extreme negative cases, this can result in being spoiled, but in smaller doses, these kids learn that they can achieve goals and push back when they feel they are being treated unfairly. I read his book ‘Outliers’ as well and I agree with this. Kids that come from privlege know what buttons to push, what questions to ask, and when to stand up for themselves. He also posted a comparison to this- a privleged college student getting in trouble/bad grade vs a poor college kid getting in trouble/bad grade. He said that the poor kid was much more likely to accept the punishment/grade than the privleged kid, because he’s less likely to feel like he ‘deserves’ to be there thus any punishment or bad grade is simply illustrating his own limitations. In contrast, the privleged kid feels he BELONGS in college, and will graduate come hell or high water. Wealtheir parents are going to provide more support for their kids in college too, because they have more time and resources to do so. My wife did a community project for immigrant families in CA explaining to them (in spanish) what they need to do to get their kids into college, filling out FAFSA forms, and so on. These folks either didn’t know any english at all, or only very little; they lived hand to mouth and didn’t have time or money to take language lessons. Those that had kids that could/wanted to go to college had an uphill battle because their parents couldnt help them. In contrast my mom went to college and knew EXACTLY what I had to do/who to talk to/how much time to invest. This mindset continues into the workplace, where poorer employees are more likely to be abused by their employers with workplace violations. A poor person has more at stake and doesn’t have the same elevated ego/self-worth a privleged person might have. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2013, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558/264 "2013-06-17T20:21:09Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Interesting that you mention the dentist, because most dentists in my area don’t take Medicaid. They were asked why, and several of them went on the record to say that when they do show up, they are often abusive to the staff (and a couple of them had had to call the police on these clients), and their children are totally out of control. As for the no-call no-show thing, one of them also said that they may not be able to take their kids to the dentist, but they always have the means to go to an amusement park that is 3 hours away and costs $30 a person to get into. > > :smack: > > I was horrified to discover that Missouri Medicaid only covers dental care for adults if they are blind, pregnant, or institutionalized (which includes nursing homes). A friend of mine is a dentist in Kansas, and he has moved his suburban Johnson County practice to almost exclusively Medicaid/Medicare. His main reason is that he no longer needs a staff of four to handle all the different insurance companies various paperwork and coding practices, then hounding them to actually get paid. Medicare/Medicaid means he only has to deal with one payer, and the paperwork is much simpler. He doesn’t actually get to charge as much, but after the savings, he makes more. The other reason is that he’s able to actually make people’s lives significantly better. Given a choice between makings some rich asshole’s teeth two shades too white, or enabling a poor person to eat solid food, he’s going to go with the latter. I’ve been to his office many times, and the people in the waiting rooms behave exactly the same as people in dentist’s waiting rooms anywhere. I suspect those who went on record are either suffering from selective recall or are just flat out racist assholes. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2013, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558/265 "2013-06-17T20:47:57Z")
> [@StarvingButStrong](#): > > It occurs to me that that system of family members always expecting that they can get help from each other and in turn that they must always help out when asked must be a major disincentive to making the kind of delayed gratification decisions some of us are asking the poor to make. > > It’s not that Poor Person Joe can’t _see_ that if he [scrimped and saved by not buying/spending that would bring pleasure right now] that he’d end up with [big amount of money] that would allow him to invest in [something costly that saves money in the long run.] It’s that he _knows_ it doesn’t work that way for him. > > That extra hundred bucks he laid his hands on? He can buy a nice shirt, take a girl to a movie and get the extra big tub of popcorn, have a nice night hanging out in the bar, buy a new game, whatever. A whole slew of things that he’d enjoy doing/having, and he’ll have at least the memory of having that fun – plus maybe that shirt or game will still be around – afterwards. > > If he virtuously tucks the money into the bank, maybe to save up for a better car, he knows that soon Aunt Mary is going to need money for her rent or she and her three kids will be homeless, and is he really going to be stern enough to say, “Can’t help you” when he actually has money squirreled away? I understand your point, but it looks like Aunt Mary and her kids are going to be homeless anyway. Joe spent his extra $100 on movies and shirts. And either Joe gets paid back, either by Aunt Mary or by being bailed out by some other relative when Joe is in financial difficulties, or he doesn’t. If the giving is always one-way, that isn’t so much a mutual support society as one set of relatives sponging off the rest. Although I don’t doubt you are correct - it is hard to get into the middle class if somebody tries to get their hand into your pocket every time you get a little ahead. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2013, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558/266 "2013-06-17T21:12:52Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > I’ve been to his office many times, and the people in the waiting rooms behave exactly the same as people in dentist’s waiting rooms anywhere. I suspect those who went on record are either suffering from selective recall or are just flat out racist assholes. I’ve noticed that to conservatives/poor haters, anecdotes are data that can be applied to the poor at large and should affect policy decisions. How many youtube comment arguments have I been in when the person says that people get too much on foodstamps because when they worked retail, someone once bought something on foodstamps when they had a designer bag? More than a few. The progressive approach to this would be something like “in aggregate, what is better for society, having a social safety net at what level would result in the best results, keep tweaking it to aim for better and better, and let’s aim to keep welfare fraud to as small an amount as possible in such a large program”. And yeah there’s definitely more than a twinge of racism to that “lazy black people can’t show up on time to take care of their kids” to that story, which reaks of B.S. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2013, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558/267 "2013-06-17T21:24:53Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Regarding “food deserts”: I have read about entrepreneurs who tried to open full-service grocery stores in low-income areas that lacked them, and the whole experiment failed almost immediately for numerous reasons. The main ones were that they couldn’t get people to work at them even though these stores were located in neighborhoods with unemployment approaching 100%, and there was so much shoplifting and vandalism, the stores COULD NOT stay open anyway. WTF? 100% unemployment, nobody willing to work and rampant vandalism and shoplifting to the point of the store not being able to stay open? I say those people deserve what they get. Screw them if that’s the way they want to be. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558/268 "2013-06-17T22:04:16Z")
This is the story of my occasional handyman. Jeremy was a tree trimmer who worked for a company that was contracted by the electric company to clear the path of power lines. He moved to a new crew, and shortly thereafter the crew boss had them clearing stuff for private individuals and the boss pocketed the money. The whole crew was fired, although Jeremy claims they didn’t share in the profits. Unemployed and young and dumb, Jeremy then got a DUI. No license and fines to pay. He can’t afford the fines and can’t get a new job without a valid license. Jeremy spends the next 10 years picking scrap metal and selling it to the recycling center, living with his common-law wife who is trying to get a nursing degree and is working in a nursing home as an aide. Jeremy stopped by my farm one day and asked if he could pick the scrap metal from the bulldozed shred across the road from my house. It’s not my property, so I told him I couldn’t give him permission to take the metal, but that I needed some help with some fencing and would pay $10/hr if he had time to help out. Jeremy turns out to be a very hard worker. We get the fencing up and I told him if he could bring a weedeater I’d hire him to weedeat my fence line. The next couple weekends he comes out and we get that done. I pay him cash money at the end of every day. He is able to finally pay off the rest of the fines (I had no idea how much a DUI costs a person! $1200, I think he said) and get his drivers license back. I continue to hire him as I can afford it to do odd jobs. One day he shows up, happy because he and 10 year girlfriend finally got married. Now that he has his license, he’s found a warehouse job. At the same company, after the office staff leaves, he also cleans the office and the restrooms, earning over time. He’s working 60 hours a week. He and his wife have taken in two kids his brother and sister in law have pretty much abandoned. They’re saving to buy a house. Last summer, besides working all the hours at the warehouse, I hired him to help paint my house. I’m not claiming to be Jeremy’s savior - he’s a hard working guy who seems to regret his youthful stupidity. But by giving him enough work that he could pull himself out of one hole, the lack of a DL, he’s pulled himself out of the others. He’s still poor, he’ll probably always be low-income, but he’s so much better off now, two years later, than he was before. And all it really took was changing that one thing. Hopefully, time and maturity will keep him from slipping back down into that same hole. StG [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-poor-mentality-to-me/660558.md?page=13)