Poverty and Intelligence

No sane person on the planet thinks that poor and middle class people start out the same socioeconomically. It’s inherent in the terms.

The thread is closer to the question: “Given an equal start socioeconomically, why do some end up in different places?”. If you think it has something to do with starting at an early age, then why not just say so? Working at a single task from an early age gives you a better chance at success or fame at a given task. There’s nothing magical about being a child that loves to do something. There’s nothing particularly lucky about liking to do something. There’s no special genes that make it possible to love to do something. It’s the most mundane thing imaginable to be honest yet I’ve seen nobody give the term “intrinsic motivation” - a feature common to all humans, all other primates, and even noticeable in rodents - the credit it deserves.

Why put “facts” in quotes? Why not discuss the specifics of environment on achievement? Is it because it demystifies luck? The facts highlight how people adapt to their environment. In that you learn why they might have gained success.

Why only interested in Nobel Laureates and Bill Gates and Darwins and Woods anyway? Why isn’t a person born in poverty who climbed into the lower middle class, raised non-asshole kids, and really good at officiating dungeons and dragons interesting? What did they have that beat the odds given how much luck seems stacked against them? What did they do to for them to earn the comfort they have? Is it just being lucky? Depressing.

Despite the really terrible circumstances of this all too likely true story somewhere, I see (1) running away, (2) escape further abuse, (3) motivation to protect the kid, and (4) stopped wasting time at a bad school. Seems clever enough; can’t wait to she what she does at 18.

No, that’s what you and others wanted to make it about. As I said before, learning about individuals who overcome these odds is instructive. Learning about individuals who shitty common sense and fantasy-thinking tells us should be out of poverty but instead are mired in it is instructive. Pointing at the classics in sociology seems to be teaching us about demographic trends. Instead of analysis of these trends, which is about individuals in their environment, we get luck and anecdote. Sounds like a recipe for keeping things for just the way they are.

Here’s a classic from psychology: We construct memories, we don’t record them. Meaning I sincerely and reasonably doubt the real story is as tidy as this 3rd retelling makes it.

Which returns the discussion back to what did he do with it?

msmith, was your story about your friend supposed to be about a guy who ruined his life by being lazy and dim? I see the opposite: a guy who achieved what some people dream of…living a middle class lifestyle without working…despite having no talent or ambition. He has a lot of luck behind him.

My list of hobbies when I was ten:

“I like to read, write, and draw.”

My list of hobbies when I was sixteen:

“I like to read, write, and draw.”

My list of hobbies when I was in my 20s:

“I like to read, write, and survey trees.”

My list of hobbies now that I’m in my 30s:

“I like to read, write, hike, and create functional art that I give away every weekend on the street.”

If I had been forced to pick cotton all day from an early age, only attending school sporadically, I do not think I would have any oportunity to get plugged into anything, let alone “reading and writing”.

If my cheapskate father hadn’t supplied me with reams upon reams off Xerox copy oopsies to draw on and hadn’t encouraged me with compliments about my skills (which weren’t exactly a dime a dozen in my household), then I would have never become a miniature artist.

If I hadn’t gone to graduate school and taken a botany class with a very charismatic professor, I would have continued to ignore those massive wooden things we call trees. Without having the free time to walk around the neighborhood with my field guide, I wouldn’t have been able to teach myself how to ID them. If a classmate hadn’t forwarded me a job announcement from a forestry firm about a short-term position identifying trees out in central NJ, I would have never had my mettle tested and may have eventually figured I was wasting time with the tree stuff. Without that forestry job, I might have gone insane during the Longass Summer without Employment and gone for more pragmatic job openings rather those in the research/academic setting. I might still be waiting tables at Tops Diner on Route 1 in Linden, NJ, eight years later.

If I hadn’t been able to cultivate both a love of botanical nature and the creative arts through all those years, I would not have the small and crazy business that I have now. And without exaggeration, without that business I don’t think I would be functional right now. I’d either be drugged up somewhere, staring at the blank walls, or dead. Some people take anti-psychotics to get their brains to shut up. I prefer compulsive activity, especially if beauty is the end-product.

I know you don’t like all the “ifs” because it’s mere speculation, but I don’t see how you cannot see how one thing leads to another…and how I wasn’t destined to be anything when I was a kid. Yeah, kids generally like things, but only when they are given the opportunity to delve hungrily into those things does success spring out of it. This doesn’t even have to be a function of class but also what society/ your family culture mores deems appropriate.

Have you ever seen “Yentl”? If not, you should. Streisand SO looks like a 13-year-old boy in that movie, I can’t believe it.

I am not so sure that that is what this thread is closer to actually. It seems to me to be closer to …

Side 1: “[P]eople are in poverty because they aren’t as intelligent” (The original op.)

Side 2: People are in poverty mostly because they were born into poverty. Call it lack of opportunities, cards stacked against them, effects of deprivation, the effects of a culture of poverty, bad luck … all variations on that premise.

If I understand you correctly, you’d be with me agreeing with side 2 so long as that “mostly” is in there. I would imagine that of a hundred individuals with an IQ 1 SD above the mean born into poverty a handful would have the combination of hard work and good luck to become middle class, and the rest would … not. 2 SDs maybe a bit more. Of people born into middle class or above? At the mean IQ they are likely to stay in that broad class with a few having some bad luck and drop down and a few having good luck and moving higher. (And somehow “good luck” happens more often to those born middle class or above than to those born in poverty.)

Which brings to your question. Given the same SES starting point it is a combination of intrinsic strengths and weaknesses, environmental influences (peers more than family in real life), and random events. Yes, we have conflated the debate over how important each of these is with the first subject.

Clue me in to where the thread starts dealing with this question.The OP asks, “Is poverty perpetuated because the people living there are more likely to make less-intelligent decisions in their lives?” (bolding mine)

The question you’re asking is totally different from the one we’ve been discussing.

Because some things are so obvious that they don’t need to be said? I mean, don’t we all attend school when we’re kids? That alone should tell you those years represent a very important period in our lives. It’s when we’re acquiring the skills and knowledge that we’ll end up using when we’re adults. Setbacks during those years translate into disadvantage that can last a lifetime.

I have a hard time understanding why this would need to be pointed out at all.

I put facts in quotes because honest to God, I don’t know what information you need me to provide in order to demonstrate the obvious to you.

Stop me when I say something controversial that needs scientific support. Parental nurturing is a factor that helps determine how well a child develops their potential. No one has a say over who ends up being their parent; you can attribute it to happenstance, luck, chance, or whatever word tickles your fancy. A kid born to abusive parents who ignore his educational needs will more than likely fail in life compared to a kid born to nurturing parents who actively teach him. The former, therefore, is more likely to be poor than the latter. Not because of any moral failings on his part or a lack of intelligence, but because external circumstances that he had no control over have made it difficult for him to be an even playing field as the other kid.

Tell what is wrong in the above paragraph.

They are. We’re talking about all kinds of people in this discussion. It’s easier to make a point about Nobel Laureates, though, because if the playing field was truly level irrespective of individual differences in innate talent and drive, we’d all be saying the foster kid in the ghetto and the prep school student have the same chance as winning a Pulitzer Prize later in life. If we can’t make that kind of statement about exceptional levels of success, then why should we be saying it about less than exceptional levels of success? The same hurdles are there, and yes they can be overcome, but it’s crazy to expect all poor people to do so.

Read the OP. And then read it again. Maybe read the title of the thread, too. You, like emacknight, seem to be having a very difficult time figuring out what we’re talking about. Not trying to be snide, but this discussion is not about what a poor person can do to pull themselves up out of decrepitude by their bootstraps. It’s not about the advice we should be giving the less advantaged so they can shape themselves up. It’s not about an individual’s philosophy about what has made them successful, either. It’s about answering this question:

Imma really need you to understand this.

Which is great. Understanding how the community can create opportunities and alter environments to help individuals over the odds is great too. These are not diametrically opposed positions, you know.

But treating poor people as though they’re all the victims of their own moral failings and mistakes. Not so great. And this is the way our society is moving towards. One only has to look at the latest political rhetoric to see that.

I think at best one could say: “People are in poverty because, at least once in their life (and probably more often), they weren’t intelligent about money.”

Hell, there are plenty of people here on the SDMB who are smart as hell but can’t manage their finances worth a shit, why can’t some realize the same is true of the general population?

Apropos of nothing, reading this thread reminded me of the (possibly apocryphal) Warren Buffet quote when asked some hypothetical question about him having an IQ of 160: “First thing I would do is sell 40 points.”

Inbred Mm domesticus you see here an illustration. You say that

Yet this thread is full of people who seem to think that they do.

I said a top 50 school. I also said I was a “slacker”, not a fucking dumbass. It’s all relative. Compared to these people who study in the library every saturday night and have internships with Goldman Sachs their sophomore year, I was pretty lazy.

Replace ‘mom and dad’ with ‘government’ and I think a lot of people here have that same dream.

When you are born into a middle or upper middle class family, you have the luxury of slacking off. It’s probably the reason most people end up middle class. Once you get to a certain level of comfort, it’s not really worth to work that much harder because it just means that much more work with not that much more money. Sort of like a pie eating contest where the winner gets more pie and all the pies taste like shit.

Yet millions of children who grow up in these exact same conditions (replace cotton with any agricultural activity) leave home, move to the city and enhance their standard of living. Also, it assumes an agricultural life in a village is poverty.

I drew when I was a kid too. I don’t now. What I do remember was that the only opinion that mattered was mine. You don’t think the attitude you express on your website for your current work was around when you were a kid?

In graduate school. Taught myself to ID trees. My classmates like me because I always see how others have helped me. I took a job. Took a risk for research.

Cultivated a love for stuff (at the probable sacrifice of other stuff). Started a business. Avoids drugs.

I see what you are saying, and one thing does lead to another. I wouldn’t argue with it, but it seems like you are going out of your way not to recognize what you did.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, no. I did see the one where a journalism student dresses up like a boy in high school or college or something.

I read it as: There is something called poverty that has people in it. Poverty is in dynamic equilibrium. There are people moving into it and people moving out of it. A key factor could be intelligence in explaining the moving in and moving out.

Or maybe just partly, or even more bewildering, maybe not at all. I was looking for the mechanisms that made it more difficult for say, intelligent, people to move out of their class. I suspect that future impoverishment is best predicted by past impoverishment, but that does not tell me much.

The surprising thing to me is when I saw the arguments for luck I began to question whether I really felt that our station in life is a matter of luck at all. I guess I always had the assumption “I am a conscious actor on my environment” built into it.

So where is the part about what an individual decides and does in that?

See the dynamic equilibrium comment I made above in this response. Its how I was understanding the OP. If you understand that then you can see my reasoning more clearly. I originally argued against it and attempted to clarify a possible “why?” for how impoverished people can make intelligent decisions all the time but they just aren’t intelligent decisions that make them middle class.

Okay, but how important are these things in terms of getting out of poverty? The most common strategy I see is people moving away from impoverished environments.

Nothing in particular except that everything needs scientific support. You stated a lot of risk factors for eventual problems with drugs, the law, etc., but the more interesting part is why or how these things are risk factors. When you actually address that question you gain useful knowledge to build policy on.

And as far as I can tell I, DSeid, and maybe somebody else provided cited factual responses concerning individuals and how they might not alter their SES despite their intelligence. Everyone else went on the “luck” parade and then prvided cites or facts that fed into the lurking horror of the conservative view that poverty is a punishment for moral or intellectual weakness.

I think neither view, in the absence of facts, is useful. Both makes broad assumptions and both would likely lead to action that has no functional benefit for reducing poverty.

I think JohnT was just saying that poor decisions with money can lead to one staying in poverty or one finding themselves in poverty. It in some ways fits with my first post’s article, but for the most part it is just as good at explaining things as luck.

That, and intelligence with money != general intelligence.

If you are picking cotton as a kid, only sporadically attending school, then it is safe to assume you grew up in an impoverished household.

Simply by moving out to the city, you increase your likelihood of enhancing your standard of living tremendously. Because you really couldn’t get any poorer than where you started.

But that does not mean you will jump out of poverty. Millions of people moved out of sharecropping and into the cities and still stayed poor, though not as poor as they did when they were out on the fields. Some were actually disillusioned by their lack of expected success and moved back home.

Anyway, when you said this:

my eyebrows lifted some. There is nothing magical about a child that loves to do something, correct. In addition to drawing, I loved spinning around until I got dizzy. I loved ripping the fur off my stuffed animals, and I loved making mudpies. Would all of these passions have led to success in adulthood? Of course not. The one “love” that I did have–drawing, or specifically the visual arts–did (or could have). And the reason I was able to love it was because I was allowed and encouraged to indulge in it. If my father had thought picking cotton was more important than allowing me to draw, or he thought drawing was something not befitting of a young girl (especially the kinds of crazy things I liked to draw) then most likely I wouldn’t have cultivated any talent in it. “Loving” something is not tantamount to “success”. The nurturing aspect must be there, and that’s where external factors come in.

No, it wasn’t. As a kid, I did everything my parents told me to do, and if they had told me to stop being such an obsessive artist, I would have stopped. I didn’t have an attitude. Having an attitude would have gotten me knocked back to last week. I exaggerate…but just a leetle.

Although I’ve always danced to my own beat, I did value my parents’ opinions of me. My mother cried when I would do and say certain things, so I learned how to be a “good” girl; my father would yell and threaten with a belt when he got angry, so I learned to avoid him. So I was a quiet mouse at home and flowered at school. I remember pleading with my father to come to my Open House during m senior year in high school and amazing him with the artwork my homeroom teacher had put up on the bulletin board. When the teachers told my father about my winsome personality, he too was surprised. When I was voted “Most Humorous” by my classmates, my parents almost angrily demanded to know why this was a shock to them. Why did their youngest child have a personality that they didn’t know existed? All I could do was shrug silently, mutely. But now I know it was because they scared the shit out of me with their emotions. If it hadn’t been for the encouragement I got from school, I don’t know what type of person I would have turned out to be.

(Seriously, my parents aren’t the monsters I sometimes paint them out to be. But I do blame some of my strangeness on them. :))

Did you notice how I didn’t leave those things out? Yes, it was my choice to go to graduate school (which almost didn’t happen, but I digress) and my choice to take botany and my choice to buy a field guide and look at trees instead of dating or having a social life. Yes, it was my job to inform a classmate of my hobby and to follow-up on the job announcement. It was my talent that got me hired when I showed up at the firm for the interview, having to explain how a Ph.D in marine biology would know anything about trees. And yes, it was my choice to decide a post-doc, not a position at Starbucks, was the way for me to go.

But do you not see the external factors there in my story? The things I couldn’t control? I was taking the botany class to fulfill a course requirement, not because I liked plants (I didn’t at that point in time) or because of the professor. It was the professor who got me interested in trees and made them “alive” to me. I could have easily had another professor in the botany department, like the one I had for plant physiology who used to put me to sleep everyday. If that had been the case, that tree stuff would have been lame stuff, not good stuff.

Free time. Now perhaps it is a choice to be unburdened with social desires and have huge expanses of time to walk the streets of South Orange, NJ and stare at trees. I don’t think so, though. I think it’s a quality that I was born with, and with it comes a narrow-minded intensity that is also something I did not develop intentionally. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been easily preoccupied with things. Creating things and studying things. It is both a curse and a blessing. In as far as it has been the latter, I think it is one of those features, like physical attractiveness and natural athleticism, that is a gift, and therefore something a person can’t take credit for. They can be glad they have it, they can nurture it so that it’s productive rather than maladaptive, but they can’t pound their chests like they had something to do with it. They can only be grateful.

A lot of people with success stories have this quality of introversion (like Bill Gates!), but not all of them do.

Yes, I cultivated. But from an early age, I was allowed to cultivate it or whatever else I wanted to (within reason). As long as it didn’t stain the carpet or make too much noise, my parents were fine with my habits and hobbies. If I had started cultivating my current fixations as an adult rather than as a kid, I do not think I would be so great at it. For instance, I taught myself how to play piano several years back (dissertation-writing can make you take on all kinds of new hobbies and excuses to procrastinate). Oh, I can play pretty good for an autodidact. I can play Madonna’s “Borderline” like none other! But it takes me a very long time to decipher the bass clef on sheet music and make my left and right hands work together. If had stuck to taking lessons as a kid, I would be a much better player.

If I had been born to impoverished parents who forced their children and themselves to work the land from dusk to dawn, then the only thing I would have been allowed to cultivate were the things we had growing in the fields. If I had been born in a society where young girls are married off in childhood and expected to have babies as soon as they can (which would have been sixth grade for me), then all I would have been able to cultivate is a love of motherhood and being a good wife.

As for avoiding drugs, I wish I could say that this were true. I do take meds because being creative and active isn’t enough, but I don’t want to take more meds because I’m at that point where I don’t want anything to ruin the little good that I’ve got going on…and all the additional drugs I’ve taken to make me “perfect” have done that. But there are many times when my mind “hurts” and I just want to spin around in circles, screaming “STOP, STOP, STOP!!!” Who knows how successful I could be in life if I didn’t have this problem? My personality, as wonderful as you’ve made it sound, is disordered. I could be so much more successful in life if I could understand the point of love, if I were able to express genuine emotions in public, form strong friendships, marry and have children, and plan for the future instead of reveling in bizarre fantasies. I know I would. But alas, success isn’t what motivates me to get out of bed every morning. Creating does. As long as I can keep doing that, then nothing else really matters.

Listen, I’m not being unduly modest. I take pride where pride is due. I am smart (both innately and through hard work) and good-looking too :). But I also recognize the tenuousness of my existence, that I didn’t get to this point in my life all alone. Despite my isolation as a schizoid, I have a network of support that keeps me going. People who have put opportunities directly in my path. People who have encouraged me and helped me (like my well-intentioned siblings who didn’t want me to always see failure, even if it came at someone else’s expense). People who I can turn to when the brain really hurts. THAT, my friend, is real luck. Perhaps prayer works and my mother’s prayers have been answered and it’s not luck but God’s work. But regardless, that network, whether I realized it at the time or not, has always played a part in my life.

I’ve had relatives who suffered with mental illnesses similar to mine who did not have a network because they were too whatever (poor, frail, neglected medically) to get into a position like mine. And they died poor and unsuccessful no matter how you slice it. How in the world can I look at their lives and go “tsk tsk tsk” when I know good and well that I’ve benefited from a world that they had no exposure to? I can take credit for taking advantage of this world, but if the world had not been offered to me, then I would be SOL just like so many other people.

I am a story not of an individual’s success, but the success of an individual plus a whole bunch of other people working independently to help this individual do what she can, with what she has. And that is all.

I think a “successful” person who looks back on their life and CAN’T identify a similar network is either a very special person indeed, or they suck at introspection.

You’re still trying to making this a discussion about policy, rather than just getting everyone on the same page as to what the problem is. This is why we’re talking passed each other, I suspect.

The strategy for breaking the cycle of poverty are complex and multi-faceted. I mean, I could propose fixing schools in impoverished communities, but that’s not laying out a specific plan for anything; that’s simply identifying a goal. I could say we should increase job opportunities for poor people so that crime and dead-end hustling stop looking like viable options, but again, how we do that will require more than talk. And I’m not a policymaker.

It’s been mentioned throughout this thread that we’re seeing a rise in poverty in this country. Outsourcing and the economic recession coincide with this trend. So it’s clear that one strategy to get people out of poverty is to increase job opportunities. This is not all that mysterious.

This science has already been addressed by people whose life work is devoted to this subject. Seriously. You act like we’re talking about space-age technology here instead of a topic that is old as dirt.

If you’re the type who has to wait for a scientific study to be conducted before you understand why, for instance, students that go to crappy, crime-ridden schools will fair worse in life than students who attend good ones, then you probably won’t be able to come up with solutions to the problems we’re talking about. Ideas require an imagination and the ability to see the obvious sometimes.

I cannot imagine how you read the op as that.

Along with the individual strengths and weakness, the effects of culture, etc. Individual effort is part of our basic characteristics and it is also something we learn. When you see people succeeding with effort and you learn that success is expected of you by society, you are more likely to try hard than when you see those who try beaten down and fail and get messaging that you are not expected to succeed.

Clearly I think teaching fatalism is part of the problem.

By the way agreed that only so much intelligence is needed to be successful. Habits of mind are more important than raw processing power. And opportunity. Hence IQ may be highly inheritable given middle class SES but skill sets and outcomes are highly culture and personal experience dependent.

monstro, you with the face, and Dseid, I really don’t think there is that much difference between what I think and what you are thinking. It was just some of the things I thought obvious were not clearly acknowledged in things you wrote (and I probably missed and misunderstood some posts) so I was a bit perplexed. Possibly we disagree on the extent of one influence one or the other factor has but I see no way to factually argue it.

monstro since you provided so much detail its taken awhile to absorb it all and I think I still see stuff I would argue with, but I also saw some well-known patterns of behavior such as personality in context (home vs school) and social support in coping, that give me a better understanding of why some might or might not alter their SES despite their vast intellects. I do just need to argue in general and your first point should be rebutted with a lot of beautiful works made by women who were expected to be traded off in marriage, breed, and wait on their husbands hand and foot. Not an ideal life by any means but I am sure some of these people were true artists compared to others. Sincerely, thank-you for the story.

Dseid how could you not see that? The structuring of the OP is hypothesizing intelligence as a cause. Poverty is a stable feature of society. People do fall into and out of poverty. Therefore, intelligence must be the cause of this dynamic equilibrium with other forces such as the economy affecting the absolute size of the part of society that is in poverty.

you with the face, I don’t think we are anywhere close to having the level of understanding like the one we might hope for. It’s like digging for dinosaurs with picks and hammers back in the 1800s when now we use tweezers and toothbrushes. We have clumsy facts at our disposal; that’s why I thought that social psych/economy article was so interesting.

It is easy to not see something that was not there.

But let us address your current contention, not what you generously imagine the op to have said (instead of his plain clear words), specifically this part: “intelligence must be the cause of this dynamic equilibrium” - No, it does not. It is, IMHO, likely a factor, but certainly not the factor. How much each factor plays a part in that dynamic equilibrium, and even how dynamic that equilibrium is, are very much open for debate. (I’d be honestly curious to fund out what percent of those in poverty are new to poverty in that generation and what percent of those born into poverty have become solidly middle class by the time they have school aged children of their own. My suspicion is that the number is not a large fraction.) Random chance, cultural factors, other personality characteristics than intelligence, physical characteristics and how others respond to them (and we can stick with just height to make that point and leave race alone), and so one, all likely play a larger role than IQ, again, IMHO. And we can each stake out different positions on how much each of those matter as well.

Honestly I think high intelligence is over-rated (the point of Buffet’s possibly apocryphal quoted comment). Slightly above average with good habits, of mind and otherwise, will go farther than the genius IQ without those habits. Add in some group majority approved social skills, the ability to work well as part of a team, perhaps even also some leadership skills, or a dollop of creative thinking, and the somewhat above average IQ will outperform the genius in the real world any day.

I do not agree with the idea. I was restating the OP as it made sense to me. I have not a single bit of contention with your post otherwise.

You’ve once again confused parenting with poverty, perhaps because they both start with a ‘p.’

Poverty doesn’t make bad parents. You seem to be under the impression that poor people will be abusive and neglectful.

It’s absolutely true that shitty parenting will impact future performance, whether it’s a rich family or poor. So yes, it sucks to have shitty parents, and having shitty parents will most likely decrease future earning potential.

Perhaps the question you should be considering is “how do we as a society make better parents?” Can we legislate that?

Except that the concept of a “level playing field” is complete bullshit. You’ve simply focused on two kids, where one is in a really shitty area compared to the other. Do you actually have stats comparing family wealth with Nobel Laureate recipients? From my experience the field isn’t level even for those in the same socioeconomic conditions. You give the impression you think prep school students are some how more likely to win the Nobel price, do you have any proof of that?

Nothing you’re written shows you in any way understand that question.

Like I said before, I’ve seen programs that break the poverty cycle. It came down to simple money management techniques, involve sound and reasonable financial decisions.

I often take it for granted that in school we studied the proverbial “rent vs lease vs buy” decision. That is an extremely pivotal analysis that can either make or break a person near the poverty line. And I see it all the time with the people I manage. They’ll buy shitty cars that they think are cheap, only to drop thousands on repairs, but in $200 increments so they never understand how expensive their cheap car is. They frequently rent things for years not realizing how they could have instead saved the equivalent cost for a couple months then bought it outright.

As a personal example, Comcast has me renting a modem for $5 per month, meaning that fucking thing is currently worth $360. If someone is truly poor, and struggling to make ends meet, 9 times out of 10 they have a bunch of those little $5 fees that could easily be avoided.

The conclusion here is that no matter how shitty someone’s childhood was, there are actual decisions they could make today that would break the poverty cycle for them and their children. Three easy ones would be to stop smoking, drinking, and buying lottery tickets.

Did you know that the California State Lottery gets 44% of sales are from households earning less than $35k per year (1999 stat). Does that seem like a sound financial decision to you?

It’s just as bad as excusing their personal failings with a pat on the head, and telling them it’s all their parents fault.

Because this is a policy discussion. If being poor is simply the result of being born unlucky, it puts the onus on society to help that person.

Likewise, if we consider being rich simply a matter of being born lucky, it’s easy to conclude they didn’t earn, nor do they deserve their wealth.

Put the two together and you have a simple rationalization for taking money from one group and giving it to the other.

On the other hand, if being poor involves making bad decisions, while being rich involves making good decisions (at least as far as money is concerned) than it doesn’t make much sense to take from a person that’s good with money, and transfer it to someone that’s bad with money.

Again look at the bankruptcy rate for lottery winners. If you give Waren Buffet $10million tomorrow, it’s unlikely he’s going to waste it all on $5million rims for his $6million gold Hummer.

No, it’s really not.

Those studies have been done, and the solution wasn’t as obvious as you think.

But first, ask yourself, why are the schools in poor neighbourhoods “crime ridden?” Now, if we gave all those schools boatloads of money, the best facilities, the most talented teachers, would anything change?

Turns out, it’s the parents that matter. They’ve done studies (I think I read this in Malcom Gladwell’s works) where they compared kids who applied to special schools but didn’t get in, with the rest of their class mates (who never applied). What he found was that parents that give a shit put effort into their kids education, and those kids will excel regardless of the crime riddenness of their school. Obviously a better school would make a better result, but the point was that kids in bad schools are still able to succeed if their parents give a shit. Meanwhile, the kids that fail out most likely had parents that didn’t give a shit.

When you look at the academic performance within the lowest socioeconomic group, you still get kids that excel. Which to me says that simply being in poverty isn’t the driving factor.

emacknight,

I think you are misreading you’s post some. In your fist excerpt she is not claiming that poverty makes for poor parenting but that poor parenting would contribute to a child growing up to be poor.

And are you really taking the position that the poor are poor primarily because they have poorer money management skills? Please note, I do not dispute that learning better money management skills can contribute to escaping poverty, but I suspect that many of the middle class and even higher SES levels have skills at least as poor. They get away with those poor skills. (And by the way, the used car is very likely a better investment than the new car even if it needs a thousand a year in repairs; you may want to check your money management skills too! :)) They are not persistently poor (even if they sometimes dip into poverty) because they have extended families with resources to call for help and because of the other advantages inherent in middle class status.

No one is claiming that it is impossible to have scholastic success from poverty or that parental involvement does not matter. But to ignore the difference between the child born to a household with a parent who, for example, can be there to read to him/her at night and to enforce homework time and help with it, compared to one whose parent(s) are working two jobs and either not home or sleeping because their night shift starts soon and the bus to the job takes two hours, and a host of other differences, as not “the driving factor” because some escape poverty despite those difficulties, lacks something in logic.

And you are right. Someone who believes the polar statement that “being poor involves making bad decisions, while being rich involves making good decisions” is less likely to want to help the poor escape the consequences of their “bad decisions”, and someone who believes that circumstances are more primary (call it luck if you want) is more likely to.

Of course some of us believe in neither absolute and believe that a safety net is just policy whether people need it because they have not had a fair chance to make it, or because they are not just too smart. Some of us also believe it serves all of our interests to provide the circumstances in which all can fully realize whatever their potential contribution is and know that some of the best and the brightest are currently not getting their potential fully optimized right now.

I somehow suspect emacknight will not argue with you, DSeid, as he has done with you with the face. Even though both of you guys have been saying similar things.

It’s just a hunch, though.

That’s not how I read it, but glad we’re on the same page. Shitty parenting is a huge factor in the quality of a person’s life, and this is independent of wealth.

Yes because I’ve seen how learning money management skills can get people out of poverty. As an example, governmental assistance programs struggle to find the best way to give people benefits. If they give it all at once at the beginning of the money it’s gone by the end of the week. If they give it out in weekly allotments people get in the trap of not looking forward. Case in point:

A crappy hotel room might cost $30 per night, that’s $900 per month. But a weekly rental might be $200 costing $800 per month. A simple apartment could be $600.

There are a lot of people right now in poverty paying weekly rates, but could easily save hundreds per month if they rented monthly. Problem is, that a monthly rental requires you pay the $600 up front, few people in poverty are ever able to build up that kind of savings (plus the additional $600 damage deposit). But they are able to pay the $200 per week, every week for a year, costing them thousands.

Think about a person struggling to make ends meet, how much would $2200 help them? They have it, but they piss it away.

Not as poor, way worse. They’ll do stupid things like short term leases on cars. Getting extra bedrooms, not financing purchases properly. It’s what keeps the middle class in the middle class, and it’s that razor thin margin that eventually lands them in poverty. This financial crisis was the result of middle class people living way beyond their means, assuming they could finance for ever. Most of my friends are earning in the $80-120k per year and make horrible choices with their money.

Sure, but I didn’t mean literally new, which is a mistake middle class people make. And what you’ll notice is that they only get away with it for so long. They get leases and mortgages that max out their budget without any room for fluctuation. Worse than that they make their budget based on what they expect in the future. The pick a mortgage payment based on income that will include an annual bonus, when that bonus doesn’t happen they find themselves in poverty.

There is nothing stopping either the rich or the poor from having family resources.

No, that’s bullshit, complete and utter bullshit. You need to work back through what you call “logic.” First, look at the factors that stopped the parent from reading to their kid. My dad was away a lot when I was growing up. My wife’s parents were dirt poor immigrants to Canada, here day was on the road constantly as a salesman, her mother worked full time and went to grad school. They found time because it was important, they stressed education because that was important.

It’s that kind of shitty financial management that will doom a kid to a life of poverty. Those extra jobs, and long bus commutes have a cost associated with them that people can’t comprehend. Stop looking for excuses. Lots of middle class and higher parents work long hours and are away a lot of the time, leaving them with less time at home than the poor parents you try to coddle and excuse.

You’re not one of them. You’d like to think you are, but you aren’t.

That’s not what social safety nets are for. They are just and needed by that’s not what they are for.

Sure, sounds good especially with kubaya playing in the background. But now you’re talking about policy decisions. How exactly do you propose we create those circumstances? How do you know what their potential is? And are you sure it hasn’t already been provided but pissed away?