"Poor people are as smart as rich people."

In My Humble Opinion
41

This is IMHO, but I think that there are any number of bad traits that will lead someone to become “poor”. Being lazy, untalented, or lacking intelligence or ambition will all keep a person from becoming successfull, regardless of how you define success.

It would not be surprising to me that a disproportionate number of poor (lets call them unsuccessful) people would be of lower intelligence than their wealthy or middle class counterparts. It’s a tough world and those without the skills to succeed generally find themselves surpassed by their peers.

I do not believe that the environment a person is raised in is the only factor in their future success. Go to any typical middle-class high school. 90% of the students will be from similar backgrounds. While most will probably have relatively comfortable lives, very few will go on to become extremely wealthy. Environment helps, but unless you expect to inheret a trust fund or something, you still need to find your own success.
That said, that does not mean that there aren’t poor people who do have the potential to succeed and would be successful given the right opportunities. The question is how much of a step up do you give to someone to level the playing field?

I don’t know what your other finances are like, but unless that includes a mortgage, $160,000 strikes me as a lot of debt to have on a policemans salary at 24 (even at %4 interest).

Don’t you mean “Ebonic’s be cool”?

42

MsSmith, do you know how much policemen make? It’s not nearly as much as one can make in the private sector to be sure, but my department offers approx $37,000/yr as a starting salary for PO1 level (I am a PO3 at the moment.) Also, there is the issue of overtime. I rate 2.5time for courtdates (Which is why I will never --barring emergencies-- miss a courtdate), and any other overtime. With an average of 55 hours OTJ per week, I come in significantly heavier than the PO3 level salary. This is not me, but there was a young fellow in my department who made more than $80,000 last year because of that, while being a PO1. He also wrote a rack of tickets, so go fig…

Anyways, relating to the topic, I know plenty of people who make more than I do, and do essentially live off of money orders. You would not belive the logic (“As in, dude, I don’t know why you don’t do it too, there only like $0.69 each”), they use to rationalise such behaviour. Of course, since I don’t bounce Checks, I’ve never had a problem getting free checking or credit cards, lol.

As for my debt, nope, no giant mortagage. I have a loan for my apartment (the lady calls it a condo, but I think it is too small for that), that I owe approx $15,000 on, but that’s it. The rest is mainly my auto, student, & credit card debt.

43

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by kniz *
There was a report on TV recently about a study that came out saying that “poor people are at least partially responsible for being poor”. They said there were 4 things that people did that contributed to their being poor.
[ul][li] dropped out of school.[/li][li] remained single.[/li][li] had a child out of wedlock.[/li][li] could not hold down a full-time job.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]

Other than the child out of wedlock category, you just listed what happened to Steve Wozniak, the creator of Apple. He dropped out of school to make Apple, stayed single, lost his job at Apple (then got married) I wouldnt classify him as being poor but he has almost an honorary status as an employee of apple, courtesy of his bud, Steven Jobs.

.

44

My former husband is poor (relatively). He was poor when we were married because he chose a lower paying job that made him happy (college professor). He is poor now because he has left that position to attend graduate school full time.

When his mother passes away, he will inherit a great deal of money.

How many IQ points will he gain?

45

I think a lot of being poor also has to do with location. Moving takes a SHITLOAD of money, and can even if you’re moving locally. If you happen to be in an area where the bottom falls out of the economy, or that only has one major employer (usually factory-type jobs, or low-end retail like Wal-Mart or Target), there simply aren’t the options available to get a better-paying job. I highly recommend reading abook called Broken Heartland. It does an exceptional job of documenting the vicious cycle of poverty in rural America, and I think it pretty clearly demonstrates that circumstance, FAR more than intelligence, can trap a person in poverty.

Another key element of getting money is connections: there’s a reason for the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Poor people tend to know other poor people. Rich people know rich people, and so on throughout the economic spectrum. I’ve landed two jobs (that I was well-qualified for, but still) based on the fact that someone I knew referred me in for the position, and their judgment was trusted. Networking has a very real impact on opportunity, and if you never meet people where you want to go, then there won’t be anyone to help you get there. Intelligence, again, has very little to do with how the socal strata are divided.

46

That’s actually lower than I would have guessed. I guess with car/school loans it really isn’t that much, but it’s still not a good idea to let yourself get heavily into debt.

There’s good debt and bad debt. Taking out a school loan or mortgage is good debt because you are leverageing that debt to increase your earning potential or acquire appreciating assets like real estate. Car loans and Circuit City credit cards are bad debt. You are essentially borrowing to accumulate assets that depreciate to nearly nothing as soon as you walk out of the store.

As for bouncing checks or money order scams, well that’s a different story. In exchange for a free $500 TV set, this individual basically also assumes the additional risk of fines, jail, and not being able to acquire good debt in the future.

Problem is that a lot of people, while not inherently stupid, are ignorant about financial matters. Even educated people. A coworker of mine was talking (kind of like you) about his friend who makes more money as an RN (nurse) than we did as management consultants. Well, the problem with that type of logic is:

  1. He’s comparing an anecdotal case of one person in an extraordinaryl position in his field to the starting salary of two people at the beginning of their careers
  2. He is failing to take into account that in 5 years we will be making a lot more while his friend’s salary will be unchanged
  3. He is not taking into account that his friend has to handle human shit on a daily basis while we wear Brooks Brothers shirts in a nice comfortable office with AC.
47

Even this is bullshit. For instance, take Jamie Packer, the son of the richest man in Australia. He is famed for his shonky business dealings, and lately he has been rumoured to have been flirting with Scientology. Simply put, the guy is an idiot.

But he’s still rich. Why? Circumstance. The guy is the perfect example of why people born rich stay rich and conversely people born poor have to work ridiculously hard and get lucky to even make the middle class.

48

Another example would be the world of professional sports. How many atheletes have ended up selling cars for a living after their sport careers are over because they blew all of their money on fancy cars and jewelry. Wealthy people does not always equate to intelligence.

49

Thanks for you opinions.

Some of you folks, however, really need to pick up a book on sociological method or statistics to understand what it means to say “I think that differences in intelligence go a long way (over half the way, i’d say) to account for differences in net worth and lifetime income.”

This does not mean that Mark Twain “must have been an idiot” because he died poor, and it doesn’t mean that I would agree with the nonsensical notion that the IQ of someone who inherits a ton of money automatically goes up.

To the rest of you, however, thanks for sharing your experiences and feelings on the matter.

50

This is a really tricky question, because the definition of “smart” is so hard to decide. And of course, as seen by other posts, race and whole host of other controversial issues get raised by this.

However, I would like to posit the following conclusion I have reached, living and working in one of the poorest parts of the United States.

Born into wealth- No way to tell at birth. If, in the process of their lives, they lose it all, probably idiots.
Born into poverty - No way to tell at birth. If, in the process of their lives, they continue to live in squalor and make no progress, probably idiots.

Of course, success is not purely determined by ability. Professional athletes are a good example of people who get rich with no minimum intelligence requirement. This is not to say that all professional athletes are idiots, far from it. However they make their money on their physical prowess, not intellectual, so their intelligence follows a natural distribution.
People who make their money are, by necessity, shrewd, a quality which is almost invariably linked to intelligence.

Where I live, the biggest problem is not a lack of raw intelligence, it is crippling apathy. Intelligent kids who have the misfortune to be born here, almost invariably move away as soon as they can, and only come back to visit relatives. The overwhelming majority of people who stay here are either incapable of or unwilling to better themselves. As a result, the average IQ here is quite low, as witnessed by test scores, unemployment rates, and the behaviors of most of my compatriots.

I, for the record, agree with the statement in the original post, but probably not in the way the speaker said it. Assuming genetic diversity (not a safe assumption where I live, but that’s another story), smart kids have statistically as much chance of being born in a poor house as a rich one. What we need to do, as a nation, is to remove the barriers that prevent the intelligent ones from succeeding. Unfortunately, removing the barriers to success also inherently implies removing the safety nets for the unintelligent ones. The ability to succeed implies the possibility of failure. What we struggle with every day is reaching a consensus on what the appropriate balance between these two items is.

51

And George Washington had to borrow money to travel to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

52

MsSmith,

In pricipal, I whole heartedly agree w/you. However, I refinanced my car loan a fews back & was able to get a 2.9% apr on that, & consolidated all my credit card payments & was able to reduce the interest to about 6%. Again, still not good debt per se, but the payments are extremely managable, & my credit rating is as good as it can be for a twenty-four year old. I feel that in the end, purchasing things that I would have to buy anyways, cash or credit (household items, etc…), I would go with credit. I just seem to be able to manage my budget better that way & it also leaves emergency cash available.
Like I said, I agree that it is not good debt, but I am far better off than many of my piers, even those who make more than I do.

For me, broke means being unable to live the lifestyle I am accustomed to for at least twelve to eighteen months should I suddenly find myself out of a job. Currently, I estimate that I could probably swing it for about twice that, so alas, I am still a drone, lol.
For my friends, broke means digging in their car’s ash trays for gas money. They may have no credit debt, but I would never trade places.

53

Cite?

That same stats book should also state that trying to explain a complex pheomenon with a single variable that is highly correlated with other independant variables is a potentially deceptive and therefore bad practice.

54

It sounds like you are living “ghetto rich”, so named after the guys with the gold chains and $200 sneakers who can’t make the rent payments each month.

Trust me…in the long run, having all that debt is going to hurt more than it will help.

55

Perhaps you ought to read such books more critically, especially if they appear to confirm some of your more base stereotypes. Unsurprisingly, we have discussed it here.

56

stuckinthemiddle

How do you figure this? What do you class as “safety nets” and “barriers?”

I’d say that education has a lot to do with, well, everything. One of the key issues for me is, does being unintelligent make you poor, or being poor (with the associated lack of nutrition, decent healthcare and education) make you unintelligent? Intelligence is as much learned as naturally occurring