When you are poor you spend the majority of your brain cycles dealing with your situation.
What can I afford to eat today? How am I gonna pay the electricity bill? How am I gonna fix my broken 20yo car? Which grocery has the cheapest diapers? Should I switch on the heating today or are there colder days coming this month?
If you are well off none of the above is even a thing.
I think this under-sells the situation. I grew up in a poor, half-immigrant neighborhood in the 90s in Brooklyn. Despite the limitations you describe some people also asked themselves questions like "how do I make sure my kid takes the hardest math class in the school?" and "how do I get my kid to sign up for the magnet school exam" etc.
Those things didn't cost more money (nobody had any) but they reflected the focus on getting their kids out of that situation. The kids whose parents thought this way in my hood are mainly in the 1% now. The kids whose parents didn't think this way have a by-and-large the same life their parents did.
This is very true and I agree with the core points. I also think that there is more to be said for the skills/advantages that aren't easily quantifiable (e.g., habits passed down from parents, mentors, etc) and have a tremendous impact on upward mobility. Those habits are usually reinforced by the culture and if you are unlucky—more unlucky than just being born poor—then that can have an even larger impact on your odds (think of people who are born black, poor, with one parent, and in certain areas in the US).
I am not an expert but I do expect the epigenetics field of study to help us build a better understanding of the things touched on in this paper.
P.S. you do have a "point". Someone saying that you don't is a cop-out so they don't have to think about how to engage in a conversation, debate, or discourse.
Yeah you can't replace having great parents with anything.
This is why our current solutions are failing so badly, but telling people they are responsible for their children's outcomes does not get as many votes as telling them that the government is responsible. Just make sure to vote for us and we will fix all your problems!
I'm very skeptical of the claim that most of the kids with good parents in your poor neighborhood ended up in the 1%. Even with good parents, kids can grow up to be dumb and poorly socialized.
Also, "poor" as you're using it here might be too broad a term. The amount of brain cycles that parents can spare for their kid's academic performance is inversely related to how much time they're worrying about food, whether or not the utilities will be shut off, how to work overtime and keep the kid safe, etc.
> The kids whose parents thought this way in my hood are mainly in the 1% now. The kids whose parents didn't think this way have a by-and-large the same life their parents did.
Interesting. But it’s worth noting that many different causal mechanisms can explain that data. For example it could be that parents that think that way are pretty smart and good at long-term planning / delayed gratification, and such traits are highly heritable. So kids inherit those traits and do well.
Is my point that hard to grasp? The person I am replying to is painting the picture of inevitable stuck-ness. But in that example he omits the free thoughts that other poor people have thought that had enabled them to get un-stuck.
The stats are really not that relevant IMHO because you don't know which way the people are thinking, that make up those stats. I bet stats show a vast difference in upward mobility between Asian immigrants and others, for example, because Asians think about how to get unstuck...
_Immigrants_ do better because immigrants have self-selected for people with the ability to leave bad situations in pursuit of a better one, and further self-selected for those who have succeeded. Immigrants believe that with sufficient effort you can improve your circumstances, because that is their experience.
Yes I think that's exactly my point. The immigrants have less resources and are at a disadvantage (eg language) compared to the US born population. But they think and do differently which enables them to achieve escape velocity from poverty.
My point is that the same mindset is available to others if they chose to seek it out. Telling yourself how poor and stuck you are precludes that.
I disagree with the broad idea that immigrants have less resources compared to the US born population as a category. Immigrants are often more educated than the native US born population, with greater incomes. Nigerian-Americans are some of the highest educated Americans by demographic, and way out-earn their native African-American counterparts.
Remember that the immigrants who come to america already have enough resources at minimum to immigrate!
> Immigrants are often more educated than the native US born population
... and are usually unable to do anything with that education because most American employers (outside the very unusual field of software engineering) discount or ignore non-American degrees. An immigrant with an engineering or medical degree making a living by driving an Uber in America is a stereotype very much based in reality. I personally know people who fit that stereotype.
Reasonable, but don't fall into the trap of thinking it's that easy. There are a lot of complicating factors, from what assets an immigrant can leverage on arrival (if any) to how socially connected they are, to whether other political and economic actors push back against immigrants (recall that one major political party defines itself by its willingness to do this).
People don't 'tell' themselves they are poor and stuck. People learn they are poor and stuck when that has been their experience from their youth.
Some people's circumstances are a result of systemic racism that has kept them from succeeding. Some people have been deliberately kept from better jobs, better schools, and better neighborhoods. Some people have consistently bad experiences from the power structure.
Possibly it could be argued that many of these barriers can be overcome in the modern age but that is a questionable assertion and the experiences of one's parents and grandparents is not easily overlooked.
No, your point is perfectly clear. Some people have taken to replying "What is your point" as if it were a Jedi mind trick, as if by saying that they could make everyone else not see your point.
Sometimes someone really didn't have a point, or stated it badly enough that it's not very clear. But more often, "What's your point?" is being used as a cheap rhetorical trick, to try to make everyone else not see the point that is being made, because the one who says "What's your point?" very much doesn't want anyone to see the point, or to acknowledge it as an actual point with any validity.
Take comfort when you get asked that. You've made a point that they have no real response to, so all they can do is ineffectively try to get everyone else to ignore it.
Now in this case, they did go one step further. They said that statistics disprove your anecdata. That's at least a bit of a rebuttal. But they didn't actually cite any statistics, so it's just this unsupported claim.
Thank you for this supportive post. You're describing a real dynamic but there's a reason I replied to the person's post. If we're just talking debate styles then you're completely right. But this is more than that - this is real "life and death" in a way because how a person thinks about their situation (eg: being stuck in poverty vs looking for long-term ways out) has a huge impact on their outcomes.
For some reason, for some people, it's very important to insist that "no, you can't change your own stickiness" - if you are poor, you are poor. If you are fat, you are fat. If women hate you, they will hate you. This reveals something about their own approach in life but worse, I worry that it can influence someone who's on the fence ("should I try to lose weight, should I try to better my economics, etc?") and being barraged with messages of impossibility is poisonous to them.
You've hit a nerve, which is why this thread got big. What's happening is you're giving some agency to individuals, and that is for some a contrary view to the foundational belief that inequality is 'systemic', in fact one person above wrote "systemic racism." It's a dangerous game to enter into that debate, of course.
I think there's a bit of individual / group culture that plays a role in relative success (such as immigrants often doing better than richer but still poor Americans) and also there is some systemic factors, residually.
But here the systemic folks are going to lash out, because it is considered that not prioritizing the systemic factors is a lack of education, at best, and perhaps racism, at worst.
> being barraged with messages of impossibility is poisonous to them
It is not your successful friends staying online all day posting negative messages.
That’s the line I tell anyone who needs some unstuckitude and feels it’s impossible. Has worked well for me personally. The people bitching and moaning on Reddit are not the people busting their butts getting unstuck.
No, they're the ones ranting about 'blood poisoning' and 'great replacement' and indiscriminately calling immigrants vermin. (Anyone who is thinking of replying with emollient, nuanced interpretations of such rhetoric, please save your effort.)
> For some reason, for some people, it's very important to insist that "no, you can't change your own stickiness" - if you are poor, you are poor.
Commies want everybody to think that class warfare is the only solution to their problems. They lose their composure whenever somebody points out that individual determination and responsibility have proven effectiveness. I almost fell for their ruse and but pulled myself out of it and have turned my life around. Screw their crab bucket hell.
Because it's a foundational belief for many on the left to believe that a) the world is fundamentally unjust but b) because of a system that c) creates and perpetuates successful and unsuccessful people. If you counter the narrative that a 'system' is involved, it must be that you are some hyper individualist.
The truth is that it is both true that there is a 'system' - in the sense that large groupings of independent organisms self organize into an emergent property that behaves with 'rules' that appear like a systemic thing - and also that individuals are not equal in capacity. From will, to intelligence, to resourcefulness, to bravery, to then the more nefarious luck, and many other factors, some people succeed and some fail.
The 'systemic' emphasis, at the exclusion of any and all other factors, is the problem, here, as it's a reductionism.
There is no objective scientific measure to disprove political ideals - you can't prove or disprove that capitalism, or socialism are good or bad. And you can certainly not falsify any claims of "systemic." These are claims of values masquerading as science and objective facts.
I think maybe he's saying that sometimes, one person can slip through if the appropriate conditions are met. Your implication is correct as well. He offers only an anecdote to back up the claim, but no data. Even assuming the anecdote to be true, and s/he has multiple childhood acquaintances from poverty who each now have a 5.8 million dollar or higher net worth [1], it would have little effect at the mean of the population.
Personally, I think the explanation is structural, or if you prefer, just math. Just statistical distribution will assure that if you're poor, 99 percent of you won't get into the 1%. You'll never amass the required 5.8 million dollar net worth.
In fact, I almost hate to say this, but it should be implied, whether you are poor or middle class, 90% of you will never even get into the 10%.
I'm not sure that it's a psychological state of mind, or even a statement on the innate abilities of poor or middle class people? I'm more confident that it's a simple structural barrier. There is not room in the 10% for every law abiding, intelligent, ambitious, hard working individual. Which means many law abiding, intelligent, ambitious, hard working individuals who are poor or middle class, will need to aim lower to increase their chances of success. It sucks, but just in my opinion, that's how things are, I'm not sure there's a way around it?
So I think what's happening is more along the lines of people, perhaps even unconsciously, realizing the structural reality, and adjusting their strategies accordingly. That poor or middle class kid says:
"You know it's a lot safer if I just become a nurse, teacher, or regular software engineer instead of trying to swing for the fences on a startup since I have no safety net to work with."
In fact, in a societal moral hazard kind of way, the more intelligent and rational that poor or middle class kid is, the more likely s/he is to say that. (Or maybe it isn't a societal moral hazard? Since we do need nurses, teachers, fire fighters, and so on. I don't know?)
> There is not room in the 10% for every law abiding, intelligent, ambitious, hard working individual.
While this is true as a simple matter of distribution, it conflates two very different things.
In terms of relative wealth, yes, there's no way everybody can be in the top 10%.
But in terms of absolute wealth, there is lots of room to make even the bottom 10% wealthier than they are today. Indeed, the bottom 10% in the US are already wealthier than most humans who ever lived. But they could be much wealthier still, even if their relative wealth stays the same.
Focusing kids on "getting out of the bad situation" doesn't have to mean "shoot for being in the top 10%" (and if the GP was implying that it does, I think the GP is wrong on that point). It just has to mean "go out and create wealth instead of staying stuck in this place". And doing that will make those kids better off--not to mention society as a whole--even if their relative wealth never makes it anywhere near the top 10%.
To the extent that our society has "structural problems", I think they are about preventing people from creating wealth, by imposing all manner of nanny state micromanagement and by allowing people in power to bully others.
// Focusing kids on "getting out of the bad situation" doesn't have to mean "shoot for being in the top 10%" (and if the GP was implying that it does, I think the GP is wrong on that point)
I am the GP. I agree with everything you wrote here. My reference to the "1%" was specifically applicable to the kids growing up in my neighborhood in the 90s - the public school and other education OPPORTUNITIES were good enough to launch many of us into this stratosphere.
Meanwhile, a ton of our neighbors didn't even try to avail their kids of these opportunities (namely, to work hard and optimize for education) and their kids got stuck too.
I totally agree with you that 1% or 10% is not the goal. We both agree that if people try to look for ways to grow vs accept stickiness and limitation, they are likely to move up SOMEWHAT and that's really important.
Last I recall, 1% INCOME is about 700K per year household income (this maybe out of date by now) - a couple of professionals in their 40s in NYX (my peer group) who has some investments, pulls that in pretty consistently.
I'll make this point again. If in the 90s your parents made you take the hard math classes, try for the AP courses, try for the magnet school, try for a good college/major/scholarship, you're on track to earn 350K at baseline.
If this really bothers you, fine - let's talk top 10%. Going from broke-ass to top 10% is an impressive feat. top-10% is under 170K.
If he's being truthful about his own net worth, and it is 5.8 million dollars plus, it's statistically highly unlikely that even one of his friends from the ghetto also has a net worth of 5.8 million dollars plus. These are difficult things to do. So the idea that an entire group of impoverished kids, all from the same ghetto neighborhood, each, independently, amassed that net worth? Yeah, that would require the evidence and data being presented for me to believe.
Even if it were true, I'd bet dollars to donuts that there was something different about the public school to which those kids were assigned. That's just way too high of a statistical variance to be, "Oh they just thought positively."
> Every one of your friends has a net worth of 6 million or more.
You are intentionally strawmanning. When people say 1% they usually mean income (in my experience) and sometimes are using it as a figure of speech. Your usage of wealth really stuck out to me badly in your original comment - I actually thought you were trolling by choosing an obviously silly figure.
HN rule: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
> I know your type, I came from your world. You are not being truthful.
HN rule: "In Comments: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."
And your strong stereotyping is likely not helpful to you. Perhaps be a little less discriminiating and a bit less judgemental. No one likes to be bucketed. You know nothing about the OP.
To tell people it's their "state of mind" is nonsense. It doesn't matter what everyone's state of mind is, only 1% ever get into the 1%. So arguing about "state of mind" or "accelerated classes" is meaningless to that structural reality. If you need 5.8 million dollars to get into the one percent, there is a 99% chance you won't get there.
I'm also skeptical of these people who say they grew up in the ghetto surrounded by poverty, but several of their friends who were also in the same ghetto and suffered the same childhood poverty, have 5.8 million in assets. The statistical likelihood of multiple children from the exact same impoverished neighborhood, of similar age cohort, all going on to amass 5.8 million in assets is,
well,
remote in the extreme.
Not saying you can't have a neighborhood like that where everyone goes on to become millionaires. I'm saying it's statistically unlikely.
You can avoid getting your kids out of that situation by not having any; it seems like an increasingly popular option. DINK or SINK makes it much easier to stay out of poverty.
For most people throughout history, having family has been the most significant and meaningful thing. DINK/SINK sound "easier" but hardly "more fulfilling" that a life of family and the steady of stream of "oh shit, I waited to have kids and now it's too late and I am depressed" suggests that it's not the ticket to a good life that it might appear at the onset.
Historically speaking you are probably correct, but we live in the present. I've been thinking about this a bit since I recently caught up with a childhood friend. He's a laborer who trims trees for a living and mentioned that he'd been with his girlfriend for a decade and they had never had an accident. Interesting turn of phrase, isn't that? Accident? Yet you know exactly what he means.
The research on this suggests that you've got it the other way around actually on who ends up with lower levels of emotional well being.
> The recent proliferation of studies examining cross-national variation in the association between parenthood and happiness reveal accumulating evidence of lower levels of happiness among parents than nonparents in most advanced industrialized societies.
Evolution doesn't rationalize optimal choice. Humans can design their own environments which is fairly dangerous because humans have the choice to gamify, but life isn't a competition.
Choosing both, either, or neither of the two options are all valid. And I think that's nice.
Sexual selection and reproduction has always been a competition, both in nature and in humans. Choosing not to play is an option, but your genes won't continue
That would imply winners and losers, but nobody wins or loses either way. Reality goes on regardless of who or what reproduces.
Even if one's genetics aren't passed on, their memetics do which nullifies the proposition of competition to begin with. You play, you don't play, you win!
Does your culture not talk about your ancestors choices and successes, and extrapolate that your current choices affect your great-great-[etc]-grandchildren?
My ancestors are forgotten to time, as I suspect are most peoples'. How many do you think can name all eight (theoretically) of their great-great grandfathers? I certainly cannot. And that is not exactly ancient history.
As far as extrapolating my current choices effect on my descendants, nothing could be simpler; I have none and so there will be no effect on them. This is something that brings me much peace. I do wish that people with or without children would take better care of this planet, since I find the continued degradation of it to be the most depressing aspect of modern life, but I would think that parents in particular would be more future oriented.
Sure, but don't tell me we are wealthier then a generation ago if basic things like kids and homeownership are now lofty luxury goals all of the sudden. A single income used to be able to afford it, now two cannot, we are much poorer no matter how you hedonicly adjust CPI.
I don't accept your premise. People who want kids have kids. This is obvious as I am pretty sure poorer people have more kids than wealthier people.
I have never heard anyone say "I really want kids but I can't afford them" - I hear people say generically "oh kids are expensive" but I've never heard of anyone use that for their own decision.
60% of women aged 35 or younger have kids. That doesn't sound like a "luxury". And I doubt that these are the strictly richest 60% of women...
Yes, I got the classical econ education in college and bought into it for some time, but increasingly it just doesn't seem to jive with reality. I'm even really starting to disbelieve that productivity has actually increased that much in the last few decades.
prepared to be downvoted since i have nothing substantive to offer this discussion, but i've now seen it twice in these comments: the word is 'jibe.' apologies in advance for failing to control myself.
OMG thank you. I always pictured two ideas "jiving" (doing that dance!) together for the like 3 decades I've been speaking English. Thanks for the upgrade.
> The kids whose parents thought this way in my hood are mainly in the 1% now.
This is comforting fantasy. One of the most dire statistics in the US is that black people consistently place more value on education and getting certifications than white people do, and that it doesn't help them (as a group) in the market at all. A black person with a college degree has about the same likelihood of being hired as a white high school graduate who has spent time in prison.
It's also a slander on the poor. You either think that fewer than one percent of the poor place value on education, or you think that class is so hypermobile that far more than one percent of the poor are ending up in the 1%. The idea that all the worthy poor automatically go to heaven is, with the slightest inspection, a statistical impossibility, unless you believe that the poor are almost never worthy.
edit: also, where the hell are these worthy poor parents coming from, and how did they manage to stay poor with so much virtue?
> One of the most dire statistics in the US is that black people consistently place more value on education and getting certifications than white people do, and that it doesn't help them (as a group) in the market at all. A black person with a college degree has about the same likelihood of being hired as a white high school graduate who has spent time in prison.
There's seems to be a study every two months because they're easy to do, and people are hoping the problem will have magically fixed itself. But from a quick google and (https://cepr.net/report/the-continuing-power-of-white-prefer...), in 2022 the unemployment for white high school dropouts was 3.4% while the unemployment rate for black people with bachelors' degrees was 3.3%.
Here's a random Ipsos poll that finds US attitudes on higher education virtually indistinguishable by race (which understates black educational values based on other studies I recall, but to say that the value put on education was indistinguishable is enough, considering the outcome.)
An interesting quote from a guy who ran a study reported on in Fortune: "White participants who opposed affirmative action were more than twice as likely to select an applicant with a white-sounding name compared with applicants perceived as Black – whether or not they had to make the simulated hiring decision in a hurry.
"By contrast, giving white participants who favor affirmative action unlimited time to choose a name from the hiring list reduced discrimination against the job candidates with names they perceived as Black-sounding by almost half."
What this means is that the 50% fewer callbacks (mentioned above) for black-sounding names became only 25% fewer if you believed in AA, but if you didn't like AA, you would call random white-sounding names twice as often as random black-sounding names.
That was really impactful. I grew up pretty okay, but lots of my friends were very poor. I remember experiencing several of these things but I know for a fact they experienced many of them. They were good people who otherwise didn't deserve that struggle.
I read that many (10? 15?) years ago and it changed me. It literally, changed me. That blog post, and its comments (including one by the sister of the author... really difficult stuff) is incredibly hard and important to read.
In many cases, the poor have created that situation themselves. In fact that's the reason they are poor: the income may actually be decent, but spending is uncontrolled.
Many well-off people care about these things. They cook for themselves to save money, they monitor their electricity usage, buy reliable second hand cars, look at the diaper prices and wear warm clothes instead of overheating the space. Some of them do it even if they don't have to, making it a waste of their valuable time, but for those with low middle-class income, it is the difference between a rather good standard of living and poverty.
In fact, if you are really good at "dealing with your situation", chances are that you won't stay poor for long. Not only you will make the best of whatever income you have, but it is also a highly sought after skill, and you may up with a well paying job or a profitable business.
But it is usually a learned skill, and other poor people are unlikely to teach you, because they failed at it themselves, it is a vicious circle.
>When you are poor you spend the majority of your brain cycles dealing with your situation.
I call it "Poor Brain/Rich Brain", and neither requires you to be rich or poor, although they are heavily correlated. A Poor Brain person will always take the immediate reward, even if it's not crucial to their survival. They fail the marshmallow test [0]. Rich Brain people will weigh the immediate reward against future opportunities, even if the immediate reward would significantly enhance their life, and the future opportunity is vague and undefined. It's about understanding that how you are perceived in certain situations can far outweigh your own ability to change your circumstances.
I'm not sure if you are alluding to this or not but the most obvious correlation between the marshmallow test in poverty is that people who grow up in poverty do not believe in future rewards. Their experience is that if someone tells you that you will get a marshmallow later, that marshmallow will never arrive.
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" accurately describes the experience of many people who grew up in poverty. It's a proverb for a reason.
> Their experience is that if someone tells you that you will get a marshmallow later, that marshmallow will never arrive.
Precisely. And the problem is that experience does not map to reality in all situations. Thus Poor Brain. It leaves you physically unable to see the long term risk/benefit. Loan a friend $20, and Poor Brain will demand it be paid back over and over again, even if it's not crucial to their survival, even ruining the friendship over it. Rich brain never mentions it, and uses it indirectly as leverage in every possible situation, far outweighing the original value of the $20. Call it $10 or $1 or whatever is a trivial amount of money to even a poor person in your society. Having Rich Brain does not require you to not need the money, only that you understand how much more valuable not getting the money is. It's about understanding the value in your relationships with people and how that vastly outweighs your own skills/talents/ambition/resources.
I'm not sure what kind of poverty you've seen, but the kinds I'm familiar with both personally and from studies place far more emphasis on maintaining relationships and social capital because that's what they have. Lending or pooling money is not only common, but often without the expectation of direct repayment.
>I'm not sure what kind of poverty you've seen, but the kinds I'm familiar with both personally and from studies place far more emphasis on maintaining relationships and social capital because that's what they have. Lending or pooling money is not only common, but often without the expectation of direct repayment.
Fair, in that the experience I'm describing is among the poor whites of the US; a notoriously atomic and individualistic group. This probably does not map to other cultures as neatly.
I grew up in that poor white demo. My experience is that there's the idea of individualism - ie. "I won't ask for someone to solve my problems" - vs the practice of constantly trading off skills with your network of family and friends to stay afloat. Uncle A is good with cars, so he does everyone's repairs, Uncle B does all the plumbing. Their best friend growing up is useless, but they still help him anyway and maybe get some help next time they have to move, etc.
> the problem is that experience does not map to reality in all situations
There is no way to know the reality until after the decision to take the marshmallow, one always has to make the decision and the decision is going to be based on prior experience. That is how all our minds work. "Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes" and that sort of thing.
Nice for you to make stuff up. The reality is that most statistics show that poor people tend to be much better with money than rich people. The myth that that poor people are poor because of poor management skills is just a stereotype that rich people tell themselves to feel good. Poor people are poor because they lack money. It's been shown over again the best way to get people out of poverty is to give them money. That's why microloan systems were so successful. Moreover financial training has essentially zero effect on lifting people out of poverty.
You don't need to make up an inaccurate metaphor which will annoy people, bringing in a bunch of unsupported baggage.
You're talking about time preference. What you've decided to call "poor brain" is simply high time preference, and "rich brain" is low time preference.
There. Now you don't need to defend the implicit statistical correlation, or deal with those who are justly annoyed because it's unsupported and classist.
I would've failed the Marshmallow Test as a child. I failed it this morning grabbing breakfast; I got 2 muffins instead of a single bagel. I'm not exactly hurting for money.
If you eat the marshmallow now, you get a marshmallow.
If you wait, it WILL disappear. You don't get a marshmallow.
Basically, for poor people, the "future" is just future suffering, judgemental assholes in government cutting more funds cause you made $10 more this month (welfare cliff), and your sad equipment breaking down at the worst case causing whatever meager savings to evaporate like smoke.
I think it also has a weird effect on how you save money. I have been broke before and worked for < $15/hr from the ages of 16-25, but I came from a middle class family and always had the mindset that I would someday have money.
I think being raised poor imbues you with the opposite mentality, that you will inevitably end up being broke. This has played out a few times in front of my eyes when friends from poor families come into a windfall and burn through it within a few months. It was like they subconsciously knew they would wind up broke again so why not?
I see this play out with my partner. I was raised in middle class paradise (small town Midwest) whereas my partner grew up in poverty in the mountains. Now they have a better job than me but they tend to spend lots of money on silly things and can’t save like I can. The mindset that money is for the future is something that is slowly sinking in for them (a shared account for future bills helped a lot!). On the other hand, I think I’ve become less of a miser.
To me an extra $100 is that much closer to a safe retirement. For them it’s 4 candles. Compromising on 2 candles has worked well for us.
There is something to be said at least of the philosophy of spending money when you have good health and free time, than being on the opposite spectrum of some joyless miser who might die one day never taking advantage of what they worked to save for themselves. You might die before 50 you never know.
There's an exponential inverse law. Being too far below poverty makes everything 10 times harder. Being far above makes everything safer, simpler, less costly (you have time, resources to take risks, and you have people willing to give you hints to ensure better odds).
And that's just the problems you can control. If you are poor and live in a bad neighborhood, you're probably worried about getting to/from work without getting jumped. Everything is filthy. There's trash everywhere. You probably live near environmental hazards like an airport, factory, or some public works. My neighborhood growing up was ringed with an airport, sewage treatment plant, junk yards, and the remnants of manufacturing industry. The air was gross and it was always loud. These kinds of things just absolutely wear you down.
“Poor people” cannot be lumped into a single group.
Some respond to their problems like you mention: they dwell on the scarcity and try to problem solve. I’m not convinced that group is the majority of poor (at least in developed countries).
There are many low income people who do not really worry or think about those things at all. They are incredibly reactive vs proactive and do not plan well. They don’t really worry about whether or not they can pay the electric bill—either they will pay it or they won’t.
Frankly I wonder what influences what weird hangups being poor/relatively poor gives people. Like, when I was growing up I remember my mom and grandmother discussing exactly this - oh, this store has chicken on discount, and the market at blah neighborhood has the cheapest tomatoes, I'll be in the neighborhood and can pick up some for you. However, I got all the useful hangups from it and none of the poverty trap ones, as far as I'm aware.
A big one, I generally have disdain for status goods, probably because I couldn't have them as a kid so I convinced myself they don't matter. This one I'm not planning to fix :)
Or, I mechanically buy things I need on discount and optimize minor things like that without much mental effort. I have to train myself now to notice when I do make effort, so I don't waste time saving 5 bucks anymore.
Or a weird one, I am averse to buying anything that I cannot afford /very/ easily, I remember the first time I saved enough money from odd jobs and gifts to upgrade my computer (early aughts), I was deathly afraid to do it - cause if something happened to my years-old shitty computer I could use the money to buy a new one 3 times over, but if I spent the money now on the new one and something happened to it I'd be SOL, better stick with the old shitty computer. When having money, it translated into e.g. buying a house I could afford very easily ("the cheapest house on the best street", sorta) instead of maxing out like most people I know and buying as much house as practical... However in smaller things, I have to really force myself to spend money, e.g. to not buy crappy air tickets just cause they are a bit cheaper, and such.
Why cannot everyone get the good hangups from poverty? :)
Why is it that outcomes are not the same? Most poor folks remain such, and live their lives pro-creating young, etc. A minority of them overcome the situation given the circumstances presented: if it is a country in dire straits, they immigrate out. If it is the U.S. or another rich country, they make it work.
In places like LA and NYC and Chicago, there are immigrants who made it, poor who made it and poor who didn't.
I would say, when I was poor, I was less busy dealing with the situation. No need to choose between all of those Michelin starred restaurants, just eat the bread and wash down with tea. No need to think where to invest - in stocks or in bonds - as there was nothing to invest. No need to wash the car - just hop on the bus or walk. And every girl loved me and not my money for sure!
Indeed. If you wanna understand this more in-depth, I suggest the book "Can't Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility". It does exactly what it says on the lid, an amazing book.
The actual poor people I know spend more time worrying about how to afford cigarettes, rather than thinking of the electric bill (which is paid for by the government).
The cigarette seller at one of the major train station downtown is this economic issue in a singular nutshell. He sells cigarettes for a dollar each. No pack costs $24 even with all the taxes but this man gets enough work his way to be there every day. He’s pretty well dressed and personable too not like he is disheveled and desperate. I guess he’s probably clearing well north of minimum wage after his expenses bothering with this.
Of course, there will always be someone who has it way worse or lives inside an underdeveloped region but this isn't some kind of competition.
To observe the lifelong negative effects of growing up poor one doesn't have to grow up in absolute squalor.
Living in a large German city, I also never owned a car and didn't feel poor for the fact.
>Living in a large German city, I also never owned a car and didn't feel poor for the fact.
Lacking a car doesn't make one poor, and if you're growing up in one of Germany's largest cities (where one does not need a car to survive), you're already in an incredibly fortunate position in terms of lottery of birth compared to the rest of the people on the planet.
Well sure. Poor depends on where you are too. Poor in an American city can still be rich compared to poor in a very poor country. I don’t think that negates the point though.
i.e. at a conference of neurosurgeons perhaps the vast majority of the HN userbase, including perhaps everyone commenting here, would be considered ‘lazy’ and ‘stupid’.
If it’s fine to refer to people in this manner, depending on their physical location, then I think it would have some pretty big implications.
The issue with this sort of gatekeeping definition is: why stop there? There are a billion people living on less than a dollar a day, now they're the "really poor people", you were just lower-middle class.
The concept of the poverty line is somewhat artificial but it avoids this sort of pointless digression.
It is not a "pointless digression" at all, but rather speaks directly to the claims at hand.
If being "poor" in the United States (meaning, say, having to buy Walmart clothes instead of designer stuff) leads to "lifelong trauma", imagine how traumatic it must be to live in one of those countries where the income is less than a dollar a day.
This is why "billionaire works 80 hours a week so you should too" is idiotic. Assuming, say, Elon Musk really does work 80 hours a week (being an edgy shitlord on Twitter is not work), do you really think he has all of the same duties you do? Does he drive his kids to school? Does he get stuck in traffic on his commute to work? Does he cook dinner and help his kids with homework?
It's easy to work 80 hours a week when you have people taking care of all of your other needs.
It's not easy. I know people who have nannies, cleaners, gardeners, etc. but they still don't work 80 hours a week.
Somebody with a fairly normal job could, in principle (assuming employer allows it, opportunities exist, etc.), work 80 hours a week and spend their entire extra income on a full-time assistant for their daily chores. The more your hourly income is higher than the assistant's, the more economical that becomes. A FAANG level programmer could absolutely do that, but they typically don't, probably because it's not easy!
You don't even need an assistant if you have no kids, live walking distance from work, and get all your meals by eating out/delivery. You won't have much housework because you won't spend much time there.
Having grown up lower middle class with parents from a former Eastern bloc country, I feel that my mentality has very often held me back from taking risks in career, education and personal life, because there was no safety net to fall back on if the risky move wouldn't pay off.
I'm good at surviving with very little money or food, but at the age of 42, I feel now like I had let life pass me by, having never developed ambitions or passions, and living like a "rat", is also very unappealing to potential love interests.
I grew up very poor in the USA (in a housing project). I ended up becoming successful/wealthy by most people's yardstick, but it took a long time for me to grow out of the poor mindset.
For the longest time I never bought anything for myself. I had half a million in income and wouldn't even buy a snack or anything because it felt "wrong" the same way I couldn't justify it when I was a kid.
Before I was married I didn't even own a bed (I coded on a lawn chair in my apartment and used a cardboard box for my table. I didn't own a TV, car, etc.
Even though I build things for my livelihood, I couldn't justify buying a new machine, etc.
I started to come out of that mindset after getting married. I enjoyed buying things for others (my spouse, then my kids). My spouse then urged (forced) me to buy things for myself. Come to think of it, maybe I never grew out of that mindset. If I wasn't married I would still be living that way. The only reason I'm not is because my wife urges (forces) me not to.
I get you. It took me a looong time to come to terms with the fact that I can buy myself some nice things, even though I was already gifting nice things to others. I still only rarely buy nice stuff for myself, but I am learning. I bought myself a high-end computer (5950x & RTX 3070) 3 years ago, and I realized how important it is to spend -- it's sometimes cheaper than buying it later (it was the beginning of the silicon crisis), and you get to enjoy it a lot. I still pay a lot of attention to what I buy and for what purpose, but I am less crazy about not spending it.
It takes actual time to learn to spend, and you gotta be patient with yourself.
> Before I was married I didn't even own a bed. [...] My spouse then urged (forced) me to buy things for myself.
I worked for years while sleeping on the floor (on a bedsheet, over carpet), even once I could arguably afford a bed. It took a girlfriend to convince me that I should finally, urgently buy a bed (well, an unfinished pine futon frame, from a warehouse outlet).
Maybe the current pause in VC-powered-growth startups means founders&engineers with latent frugality skills will really shine? :)
With a quick search online it looks like you got it backwards. I'm not Catholic, so don't understand the intricacies of every single position, but it looks like there are about 10 times as many "sisters" compared to the number of men serving in the various religious orders.
I should have been clear, I mean "monks" vs "female" monks of all religions. When I imagine a "monk", I imagine an orange clad Buddhist or Hindu person. Still happy to also be proven wrong there too. Always cool to learn new things.
Something that I've suspected is that "poverty mentality" may not be the full picture.
It seems to me that one aspect of "poverty mentality" is a refusal to go outside of "the rules" even when doing so would clearly be within the socially acceptable gray area. I'm not talking about someone with privilege selfishly believing that the rules don't apply to them. I mean minor things like putting up a lost cat flier without a permit, ducking into a random restaurant and asking if they have napkins to clean up a spill, or teaching a small yoga class in a public park without a permit. The fear seems to be that if those in authority are given any opportunity to crack down or refuse a request then they will do so.
What I have noticed is that it actually does seem like those in authority are more strict with them than they are for me (note that in this case I'm talking about people who are the same race and in some cases the same gender as me).
I've come to suspect that in addition to "poverty mindset", there may also be some sort of unconscious body language or other indicators that allow people to subconsciously pickup that someone comes from poverty. I don't have any proof of this, it's just something that I've suspected. So I don't know if there would be any value in trying to look at any of these potential cues?
That's a surprising claim to me. I live in a fairly poor area and people seem very willing to throw litter out of their cars, blast bass so loud it shakes my house, do drugs in public view, or commit flagrant traffic/parking violations (no value judgments here, just being objective) compared to other places I've lived.
It is also trivially true that poor people are more likely to commit crimes (source[1] if needed, though). Of course, that is likely biased by the selective enforcement you call out.
Perhaps the two can be rectified as a bimodal distribution: Poor people are either dramatically more or dramatically less likely to commit crimes based on how they respond to their environment. Say poor people are more likely to be exposed to crime and thus presented with the choice, and you can respond to high scrutiny by treading carefully or just giving up on it and doing whatever ("They'll punish me regardless, may as well get something out of it.").
Because getting convicted of a given crime is relatively unlikely to begin with, the low crime group doesn't substantively reduce the conviction rate but the high crime group drives it up dramatically. And I am more able to notice the guy blasting bass at 80 mph than the hundreds who quietly pass by.
> I live in a fairly poor area and people seem very willing to throw litter out of their cars, blast bass so loud it shakes my house, do drugs in public view, or commit flagrant traffic/parking violations (no value judgments here, just being objective) compared to other places I've lived.
I used to live in wealthy frathouse neighborhoods and they do the same shit there too. They just have the money to hire cleaners after they trash houses, or collectively buy summer vacation trips to other countries to do it.
My previous apartments were mostly very near a campus, so that's more or less my point of comparison. I definitely was more upset at entitled college kids than I am about my neighbors today (who I mostly can excuse), but I do think there was a lot less of it.
The bass issue for example has gone from 1-2 times a week to 2-3 times a day, and this is a much lower traffic area. A lot fewer loud parties here, but I think that's mostly a function of age. And yeah, they'd trash their own houses/lawns, but I'm not sure that's even illegal. Here I pick up a small bag of trash from my own property whenever I mow the lawn; nobody once littered in my lawn by campus (I do have about 4x the space where that could happen now).
This is all anecdotal, my experience certainly doesn't override yours. I'd love to see some data, but I can't seem to find anything.
Reading what I originally wrote again, I didn't explain that I was talking about situations where on the surface at least, it would seem that those in authority wouldn't be able to tell that they were poor. Which is why I suspect that there might be some sort of more subtle tell that people are responding to.
What you aren't internalizing is that fear of authority is a feeling. And feelings aren't very contextual or rational. People learn them and react with them on the most diverse situations.
> one aspect of "poverty mentality" is a refusal to go outside of "the rules" ... The fear seems to be that if those in authority are given any opportunity to crack down or refuse a request then they will do so.
The fear is still valid regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, etc. if they didn't move away from the poverty. Most do move away, but not all can.
I grew up poor in a poor place, but had some "rich" friends whose future was running the family business or otherwise maintaining regionally dependent wealth. If they cashed out they'd be betraying another set of "rules": their family. Their day-to-day quality of life is still significantly worse than anyone upper middle class in a major metro area suburb. They have to deal with high property crime, corrupt local government, etc. Having to hide your wealth and not many peers can be just as stressful as being poor in the first place.
I think the way we relate to authority is a very central part of socialization for humans. We get it from our parents, and to some extent our peers. Best way to change it as a grownup is probably therapy.
Take a few risks. Start with risks that aren't real, like going to a restaurant that no one you know has ever heard of.
Once you have the experience that nothing bad happens, or if it does, it at most wasted a little money and time, work your way up to more rewarding risks.
Don't go as far as the Into the Wild guy though: he never realised how much "nothing bad" happening was due to other people bailing him out until he took risks someplace where that wasn't going to happen.
It's like writing a program: do it in small chunks and check each bit of functionality before committing.
No hacker ever stopped writing a program because they encountered bugs now and then.
You're not alone, and you have some good awareness.
If you're currently facing real resource threats, I guess your wiring might make it very difficult to develop more luxurious ambitions or passions. (Where someone else might actually retreat into denial, and cling to distractions from survival.)
But if you currently have resources and not under imminent existential threat, two naive suggestions:
* Consider finding a counselor (expensive), or doing lots of (frugal) Web searching about the topic, to try to figure out how to un-condition yourself from fixating on mere survival.
* For growing new ambitions and passions, have you tried experimenting, trying different things to see whether you'd like them, once you spend a significant chunk of time on them?
Also, FWIW, 10 years from now, you'll probably realize that you had more agency and options now than you currently think you do. Consider that bit of info from your future self.
The main blocking "poverty mentality" is focusing on getting by with what little you have, rather than focusing on producing more.
In generally, it's far easier to earn an extra Dollar than to save one from your budget, especially when you're poor. Working an extra hour is hard, but it's still easier than eating less rice and beans. Getting a job that pays more money is hard, but easier than reducing your rent from $600/mo to $550/mo.
The other mentality one has to break is the hopelessness, which is not at all helped by articles such as TFA here. Believing that past difficulties are inescapably holding you back robs you of the initiative, motivation and agency you could use to actually improve your life. The people who make it out of poverty are the ones who believe that their effort can improve their life.
> living like a "rat", is also very unappealing to potential love interests.
Yeah, women really dislike men with a poverty attitude who worry about spending money. Poor men who act as if they are rich seems to do much better than well off men who act as if they are poor.
You and I are the same age and from similar background... Just reading your post makes it sound like you have a little backwards (obviously I don't know your situation beyond what's written here.)
You mention "potential love interests" as the last thing but that's what it's actually about, isn't it? If you're not sure you want a family and partner then "living like a rat" is kinda fine - why not live that way if that's what you want?
On the other hand, if you want a family then start with that goal in mind - what has to change? If you need to upgrade your living situation so women aren't grossed out to come over, then you do that for that reason.
I don't think this has to do with "poverty mentality" specifically. Plenty of poor people make do with what they have and still date, get married, and have kids - because they want those things. When you really want those things, you shape your life to achieve them.
I know a few people living in the east who earns 1/5th of what I do and they're happy in their small garden growing tomatoes and potatoes, who am I to judge them and their poverty mindset.
Getting in line for the rat race most likely won't make you feel less of a rat.
Find your own pace, don't listen to random internet users about what poverty mentality is, or that taking risk is always good, or that being a wantrepreneur is the be all end all of life
Poverty mentality often mixes up with frugality in lifestyle, a certain disdain, discomfort, anxiety or even outright fear about living better than you "could" or "should", partly based on being afraid to lose what you purchased and feeling wasteful when purchasing something you previously considered an excess, indulgence.
> how does one unlearn "poverty mentality"?
Acquire things and then lose them, repeatedly. Literally throw money at the problem.
One can start with more expensive consumables and luxury items, as simple as food and wine (not to mention that more expensive quality produce more often than not means healthier diet), clothing (better fabrics feel nicer on skin, better fits make you look better and improve your public image if you care about it) and cosmetic items (bodily sensations are very important for mental health, who would've thought?).
Essentially you want to gradually get into "better" lifestyle and bigger spending just to show yourself it's not actually a problem, which in turn relaxes you towards seeking better opportunities and bigger earnings. Once you feel that spending more here and there can make you feel significantly better, something clicks in your monkey brain and changes your perception of what money can actually buy for you and why you would want to risk to get more of it, and that in turn changes your behavior. Just try to be self-aware about it and refrain from forbidding yourself to feel better because it's "unnecessary".
I grew up in a very poor socioeconomic situation and became an SWE. The largest challenge wasn't learning the skills. The hardest challenge was throwing away my culture and hiding who I am to get the bills paid. It was also knowing the "correct" socially-coded answers to things, and being able to keep up the upper-class disguise well-enough over long periods. When people discover or figure it out, they discriminate against you in subconscious ways and exclude you.
Values, the roots, are so different they bear different fruit. Learning the new fruit and reverse engineering its roots you become aware of what most never do. You are a fish that discovers water.
Scarcity and abundance are so different that unless you’ve experienced both you really will not understand.
Becoming a SWE changed all of this for me and I’ve noticed the culture, especially in FAANG is so wealthy.
I'm genuinely curious what things you feel like you have to hide. I'm fortunate enough to come from a decent socioeconomic situation, but I still feel like I'm not my "full self" (whatever that even means) at work in interest of team cohesion.
One of the biggest indicators to me, as someone who has navigated such lines before, is how comfortable co-workers are with waste. A co-worker who takes catered food home (without saying something like, "oh I have 3 growing teenagers" or something else to excuse it) is low-class. Do you keep the little sauce packets, napkins, disposable cutlery, etc. from take-out? Low class. Do you keep the pencils and notepads etc. from places? Low. Class. Also this causes you to need to have a place to store all these things, and now you fulfill the stereotype of a poor, messy person.
Minimalism, aka the confidence to be able to acquire anything you may need at the moment with resources always available to you, is a class indicator.
When I was in law school I went out to many work lunches and dinners during the recruiting season. I was impressed by one firm — made up mostly of biglaw refugees — that took the leftover food at the end of the meal. It stood out in contrast to the normal practice, which was to spend $65 per person on lunch (20 years ago), and leave 1/3 of it on the table.
I chose to intern at the firm that took the leftovers.
I noticed you didn't bring up them also taking napkins, sauce packets, sugar and creamer, cutlery etc. You either already were eating at wealthy enough places (metal cutlery + real cloth napkins) that this wasn't an opportunity for you & that was itself a class indicator, or you were focused on one thing (taking food home) and missing the bigger picture.
Of course each individual action of preventing waste isn't a 100% indicator for having grown up in poverty. Low-waste is arguably fashionable, even. But being low-waste is different from acquiring and retaining arbitrary stuff to use later in place of things you can just buy when you need it. Buying a reusable straw is different from keeping every disposable straw you're given, same as buying a reusable bag is different from keeping every takeout/grocery plastic one. The house of my parents displays my impoverished childhood clearly-- it is a place of incredible resourcefulness using all the things people normally refuse to acquire or throw away if given to them.
> I noticed you didn't bring up them also taking napkins, sauce packets, sugar and creamer, cutlery etc.
That wasn't the point of my story, so it would have been a distraction to mention. Even now, 20 years later, I have a drawer stuffed with free napkins, and I've kept some ketchup packets so long they burst.
I was keeping my reply succinct, and the point was that it stands out when wealthy people take home leftovers, and some people view that as a positive thing.
> My point is not that no wealthy people save things.
That may not be your point in this comment, but in your original comment you listed several things (taking home leftovers, keeping sauce packets, hanging onto free pens) that you labeled as low-class indicators. These are only indicators of being low-class if they are not done by a significant number of non-low-class people.
My point was that there are actually some people who are quite wealthy/comfortable who do these things also, and that some people (like law-school-me) react positively to it. The point is that people who do this because of their current situation or past situation need not feel embarrassed or odd for doing this, because some people see it as practical and commonsense.
I've been poor and I've never known anyone to take sauce packets. You're supposed to take what you need for your meal not so you can take them home. It's iffy ethically.
Pretty much everything. When people ask my opinion on anything, they don't want my opinion, they want an opinion from their class perspective. When they want to know how my holiday was, no they don't. When I am supposed to have visited my family from context (or it's weird if I didn't), yeah I did. I am not allowed to wear things people of my class find professional. I am not allowed to discuss what I really did on my time off (it was a punk show or something like this, probably).
This is not even getting into issues where a lot of people let actual class discrimination fly live in the office, overtly insult people from my background, or say things about being scared regarding being near section 8 people. I could go on for a long time.
>When they want to know how my holiday was, no they don't.
I'm gonna say this in the nicest way possible: I know what you mean, but at the same time it's not about class or personal issues. When you return from the weekend, people don't want to learn every single excruciating detail on whether your leg was in pain, your child threw its ice cream on the floor, etc. The question "how was your weekend" is a "nicety". They don't want the literal description, just a "doing well".
I'm saying this as someone with chronic pain, insomnia problems, and in spite of being a developer low quality of life. I learned to hide my reality, and found out that my mere description of my reality is for them an emotional frustration akin to watching a drama on TV. People just don't want to feel bad, even if it's through proxy.
That's why my daily standups at work has two people talking about their weekend playing tennis and hitting up concerts, when I can barely afford a video game because of the inherent uncertainty of employment and my monthly expenses on top of my medical condition bills.
> When they want to know how my holiday was, no they don't.
If you ever move to europe, you will find that even when people didn't really want to know, they understand that they did, in fact, ask the question. (If you don't have time, the polite thing is to greet* but not inquire)
Q. How do you confuse an American?
A. When they ask how you are, tell them.
* a folk etymology of "howdy!" is that it evolved from the vestigial use of "how do you do?" You could pretend, when your cow-orkers ask how you are, that they really meant to say "howdy, pardner!" (in a VR-mediated world, this could be automated via filter?)
fun fact: cowhands and SWEs both sometimes ask each other "how's the stock doing?"
Once you realise how much the desire for conformity stems from their own insecurities, it's easier to let all the petit bourgeois concerns roll off you like muddy water off a lotus.
This seems like a pretty dark take. It may be accurate, but seems unlikely or at least incomplete. Even if it was accurate, viewing the world through such a myopic lens isn't going to help you or anybody else. A therapist might be able to help you out, if you're looking for it.
Calling the recount of lived/observed experience myopic seems [please see edit] like an attempt to alienate the GP from their experience. At the very least it is at risk of having that effect. While a therapist can help with handling the experience and navigation of this sort of phenomenon, how exactly are they going to alter its occurrence or effects? Will the therapist be refunding the lost salary? Will the therapist rewrite time to provide that promotion that was missed? Will the therapist inspire love or even camaraderie in the heart of the missed relatee?
In my experience these sorts of behaviors are pervasive, as noted they are subconscious, and their impacts are very real. The biggest problem is that you need to avoid expressing your needs and sidestep the headwind while additionally dealing with the emotional impacts while being expected to over deliver relative to peers.
[edit: I'm sorry. Some challenging topics here. Rather than visiting your intentions, I should ask: do you want these types of experiences not to be a part of hidden worlds around you?]
How is your takeaway that their personal encounters are “unlikely”? This was an anecdote in response to a question asking for examples of their experiences, not a soapbox professing a dim take on the world.
I was responding to the first paragraph. I think it's unlikely that: "people... don't want my opinion" or "I am not allowed to wear" or "I am not allowed to discuss" (because they are from a lower class).
I disagree that op has a "broadly accurate view". That's the entire point of my response. I didn't say they needed therapy. I suggested therapy might help them if they're looking to improve this "view".
> I am not allowed to discuss what I really did on my time off (it was a punk show or something like this, probably).
You sound like a typical software engineer, tons of software engineers has such hobbies. Your problem seems to be more that you judge others thinking they will shun you for liking those things instead of opening up to find people like you, trust me there are a ton of software engineers who would love to talk about your hobbies.
If you talked about managers or lawyers then you'd have a point, they are more uptight. But software engineers often live extremely frugally and come with all kinds of hobbies and backgrounds, they usually don't care about social norms that much.
I have no clue how that is related to what I said, there is a massive amount of Asians in tech jobs especially if you look at silicon valley, they aren't "all white" by any stretch.
SWEs are not a tier where people care about your class much if you have the skills, speak professionally, and appear professional. Just don't talk about yourself. "How are you?" "Good". Yes, no one cares about you or your problems, but that's just work.
If you are aiming for director positions, yea, it's different story. Pro-tip - it won't be enough to pretend, they are mostly all related or went to the same school, worked together before, etc. So acting the same won't help much either.
In other words, as a SWE, you are blowing this way out of proportion.
Yeah I don't know what these people are talking about. Some of the people I've met are as care free as it gets. Wonder if most of what people "experience" is imagined here.
This sounds familiar, but if you're masking to class up it's just gonna burn you out and alienate others.
If you feel that pressure just practice what you should for all people: empathy. Listen and ask questions before you speak. This goes with all crowds. Be curious and find the common ground first. Everyone has some, regardless of class.
Who you are is a software engineer that gets the bills paid. Why would it be a "disguise" to act like upper class and not a disguise to act like lower class? If you weren't upper class you could never pretend to be it over long periods.
Just face reality of who you are and have become. Your past is no more "the real you" than your present. You and me and everybody reading this grew up walking around in diapers, that doesn't mean that it is the "real us". It's just the past, it's gone, good bye.
The brutal reality is people tend to discriminate those in a different social class. It's nothing as blatant as Indian Caste, but it's reality. This goes both ways too, upper discriminating lower and vice versa, and it transcends cultures.
For a practical example, nearly every single Black man who succeed(ed) in America doesn't speak so-called "Negro English", they all speak "normal" English. President Obama is perhaps the most familiar example. I have no doubt at least some of this is them putting on an act to demonstrate they are in the same social class as their would-be peers.
And on the other side of that coin, lower class Black men generally disparage characteristics of the higher classes such as being educated and carrying yourself more formally.
For better or worse, if you want to join a different social class you have to put up some act to get your foot in the door. Otherwise you'll be kicked right out. It's brutally unfortunate, but humans (and all living beings in general) prefer those who are alike and disdain those who aren't.
Hell, the audience here should look at themselves in a mirror: White shirt upper-middle class discriminating the elite upper class and the commonly middle and lower classes is everywhere. Screw those MBAs, amirite? The problem is Joe over there doesn't understand tech, amirite?
You're not getting it. The "act" becomes you, you become the "act". The commenter I answered is not from a different social class anymore, he's just remembering. Just as you "act" grown up when you're growing up, then gradually you are grown up and that is you.
And Obama? What makes you believe he would speak "Negro English"? He is not from that background.
The truth is that people can't really join a different social class without fundamentally belonging to that class. And belonging to a class depends on what you presently do and have, not what you did or had in your past. If the commenter was not a software engineer, no acting of his could fool people for a long time. With the exception for expert con-men. So even though he might feel as if he's faking it, the part that really counts is real.
The presumably desired end result is you joining the new class, so yes you will naturally "become the act" at the end. My point is you need to put on that act to get your foot in the door at all, otherwise chances are good you'll get shooed away for no justifiable reason.
The number one mistake I see people make in their life is giving importance to how other people treat them. How another person acts towards you only says something about that individual. It doesn't say anything about you and it doesn't say anything about any "class" or other group of people.
I've been treated as shit thousands of times in my life, for no reason, and treated well ten times more, also for no reason. We get these things in our heads that it's about us and that we're the victims of a world of discrimination, but what it was in reality is that we met some rude people and some jerks.
To get your foot into the door at all, as you mentioned, you have to demonstrate some value. Is that an act? I wouldn't say it is. I would even say that many people will have more patience and be more open to you if you're from a different background than them, or if you're young. The demands to be considered a part of polite society are usually low, so that anybody who wants to participate can enter. Politeness is first, which is free to learn and free to execute. Apart from that you need clean clothes and a clean person. Does that mean other people have to like you? No. If you're from a rough background and move into a different rough neighborhood, the people there will not necessarily like you either.
Class is intersectional. If I, an advanced PhD level educated scientist person spent the rest of my life toiling in a restaurant kitchen, I am both working class but retain many intellectual and social advantages conferred by my past background and life experiences.
The point is that social class analysis is not like high school set theory or naive OOP class declarations. The "proletariat" or "capitalist" classes are more about aggregate social phenomena rather than localizable in each individual. Each individual has characteristics of both working-class and capitalist roles. This is true of all social class categories.
That happened thanks to modern society being so egalitarian. Class boundaries were much clearer historically than today, with legal rights being tied to class.
You don't become the "act". You become ground down from the "act". What this comment said about being punished by peers and family for trying to educate myself and other people in this position trying to educate themselves, is correct. That happened to me.
It’s not a disguise. Think of it as time travel to 100 years ago. After you learn to fit in, the old part is alive and well in there still. You from both times in the same body and mind.
Why does this matter when your colleagues are now likely currently in the same strata as you?
I also grew up very poor and while I tried to hide that fact during university, it makes no sense to hide it from my colleagues because we’re all basically in the same position now.
A good SWE salary doesn't necessarily elevate you to the same strata anymore. Most of the programmers I work with have parents that supported them, especially monetarily. I myself, could not rely on either parent. Well-off parents can help you with a down payment on a house, be a better present grandparent, and be a reliable source of financial support in hard times. For most people in these well-paid positions, a job doesn't guarantee buying a house anymore, or a stable future. Only generational wealth does.
I grew up in a family who couldn't afford coffee so we drank roasted barley for years. But then we moved to the US and my family became middle class. I'm fairly well-off now, but I'm not sure if I was advantaged by being an immigrant or not.
Do you even want to keep company with people who would discriminate you for being poor? Seems thats actually a useful signal to who is worth giving time and energy towards in your own life. Screw them, in other words, rather than feel like you need to put on a mask to appease these terrible people. If you work for these types then either harden yourself to their opinions of you or find other people to work for who aren’t classist bigots.
Yeah, sadly, not a lot here. I’m a fan of studies around materialism and capitalism but trying to dress up a study in neuroscience as a cultural critique comes off as disingenuous and vapid
How exactly? If there were a hypothetical study that saw that people who have been homeless, even after homelessness, suffer from more diseases related to parasites, would it be "disingenuous and vapid?" Would it be trying to dress up a study in parasitology as cultural critique?
Or, alternatively, could both poverty and homelessness be related to culture?
I mean, a study like this could deliver meaningful results, it’s just that this one doesn’t imo.
Hypothetically, studies on the biology/physiology can be very interesting, but this one comes off as a bit vapid and disingenuous because it’s not longitudinal, has a low sample size, and appears to not even attempt to measure intelligence or select to weed out bias in the sample set (e.g. find people born poor and see if they really do have cognitive impairment into adulthood by studying them over many years, not a backwards looking or self-selecting methodology such as theirs). When they say things like “individuals from lower income households” there’s clearly some “lifelong disadvantage” still in the sample set.
I would argue btw that sub-saharan Africa was held back in terms of average IQ due to poor nutrition as well as the relative lack of empires for hundreds of years
There has been a raft of "research" over the last ~decade that purports to show that poverty causes stupidity. My impression (as a scientist, kinda related area) is that it's been discredited.
You must draw the distinction between correlational evidence (what this submission is doing) and causal claims, which is what most of the research you're pointing to makes.
TL;DR: Poverty doesn't cause lower intelligence. Catastrophically bad diet (to the point of stunting) will, though, in ref to your 2008 link. 2008 study is very weak and doesn't look at starvation, only correlational, they find a very small effect and it's very likely some unmeasured confounds.
I've noticed a lot of people from the middle of America who grew up lower middle class are stingy (even if they are doing well now). Small things like lowering the heating in their house to uncomfortable levels to save 10 bucks a month, not buying a round of drinks. etc
It's interesting because ppl in even worse socioeconomic situations in South Asia are the opposite and go above and beyond to be generous. I guess its because being hospitable is a big part of the culture there.
I'd be curious to see this corrected for sleep deprivation. In California, and so also Silicon Valley, the building codes for noise proofing apartment complexes are much weaker than for condos. This means that you're unlikely to be able to reliably sleep through the night if you live in an apartment.
For reference, noise proofing a ~ 2000 sq.ft. house in 2020 cost about $2K as it was being built, so it's hard to make an argument about housing affordability, etc. We've had bad luck with older buildings that were renovated into "luxury living" apartments and with older non-renovated buildings.
We never rented a unit in a newer building, so I can't comment about those. It's possible that developers just pay the equivalent of two weeks rent per unit now to make the buildings be less miserable.
My take (while sleep deprived) was that the situation was just a giant "f--k the poor" on the part of the people that wrote the building codes.
I’ve never really thought about this before, but it is obvious in hindsight. When I finally made enough money to move into a newer apartment, the noise from neighbors and outside was almost nonexistent. It was a stark contrast, but I never thought about how that affected my sleep/productivity, let alone how it would affect all apartment dwellers.
Its not even a sure bet new ones are like that. I’d guess you have cement walls. A lot of the new 5 story apartments are timber framed with cheap sheetrock.
More like fuck everyone not just the poor. New expensive condos and apartments are also built poorly like that.
That being said you do get used to hearing footsteps before long. As long as someone isn’t partying with a stereo you eventually tune out all that stuff in my experience although usually the first few days to weeks are rough sleeping in any new place.
The paper just shows the correlation between socioeconomics status (SES) and brain function -- there's no real causality study at all showing these are the results of lower SES.
In fact, the reverse path could be true: that differences in brain function cause lower SES. Which when stated that way, seems obvious with a clear mechanism...
But framing it the first way makes it seem left-leaning and blank-slatist, and gets you published, while the second reeks of adjacency to genetic determinism that's unfashionable in academia.
Finally please don't elevate eugenics by using the word "unfashionable" when its not only deeply disproven but also has a horrific legacy as the primarily stated justification for some of the world's worst atrocities.
Eugenics isn't disproven. It's just selective breeding applied to humans. That's like saying murder is disproven. No it's not, it's just an activity we find objectionable.
(personally I suspect we are the highly bred cooperative variant and the wild-type hasn't been a significant part of the population since [tens of?] thousands of years ago)
Why else would XVII aristocracy have been so concerned with their family lines?
(as late as the XX, we can find fictional characters referring to Burke's Peerage* as "the stud book". I rather doubt that usage arises just because both were to use abbreviations and black type.)
* back in print! I guess the XXI is bound and determined, not only to repeat the mistakes of the XX, but also those of the XIX.
Most noble marriages in Europe were done for political reasons. Why marry for love (or genetic traits) when you can marry to inherit the Duchess of Burgundy's land?
Exactly: they thought that holding land over several generations was indicative of good "blood" (what we would call genetic traits).
Just because they turned out to be in error about the value of their selections doesn't mean they hadn't been selectively breeding.
(an example in cattle: we had local bulls who had been bred for conformation for a long time, and luckily the breeders in the US instead were breeding for "liters of milk produced by the bulls' daughters", so now many [most?] locals inseminate with straws from the US lines)
> Exactly: they thought that holding land over several generations was indicative of good "blood" (what we would call genetic traits).
While, yes, “good blood” was the social narrative, I think it was a lot more about institutional power (both wealth and connections) than what we would consider “genetic traits”.
This is an interesting question. If both institutional power and "good breeding" nearly completely overlap, how should we tell the difference?
At the moment, the best I can think of is to look at how important older ancestors were in a pedigree: if one cares only about institutional power, then one probably only cares about two* generations at most; if one cares about showing sustained evidence of good breeding, pedigrees would include ancestors who are dead and hence hold no temporal power whatsoever.
How does that sound?
* maybe 3 if you had a 15, 30, and 45 year old all as warlords in their own rights, but that's not a generic situation. My understanding is that the usual tenure was to have a single generation holding as much as possible, with the older generations retiring to monasteries to keep the land in the hands of military-age men.
EDIT: the balance of these concerns probably change between peace and war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror had trouble early in his career due to his illegitimacy, but by Nov 1066, he had a clear argument that, in matters of logistics and manoeuvre, he was puissant.
> This is an interesting question. If both institutional power and "good breeding" nearly completely overlap, how should we tell the difference?
We'd look at the existence of things like “corruption of blood” as an imposed social consequences of non-compliance with institutions of social power and and how formally acknowledged vs. well-known but unacknowledged illegitimate children were treated and recognize that “blood” is really code for instititutional position (even if associated with a mythology of some kind of, more lamarckian than darwinian, inheritance as a rationalization.)
Can you explain "corruption of blood" to me? I'm much more familiar with the early feudal period (in which a vassal enjoys tenancy on condition of service) so it makes sense to me that failed insurrections would be obviously result in forfeiture (with the corollary: no land no nobility) leading to a circular argument: he who draws his sword against his lord and succeeds must have had good blood; he who fails must have had corrupt blood.
EDIT: upon reflection, I think we're talking about different things. I'd agree with you that the underlying, possibly hypocritical, calculations are done with an eye to current temporal power; I am trying to explore the models they used and how they attempted to frame realpolitik-based decisions in socially-acceptable manners.
Consider realpolitik in The Republic, where it's explicitly stated that the gold, silver, bronze races are a convenient fiction and there has to be movement between them; in 1984, where it's explicitly stated that IngSoc (and the others) are all pure meritocracies in principle and practice, but there's still not much social movement; in the language of US mobsters "cut in the smart boys from the opposition, so that they can't set up a racket of their own."; in the language of marxists "utilization of potential leadership cadres from historically superseded classes"; and in the language of Vilfredo Pareto "capture of the rising elite".
You're playing semantic equivocation games to insinuate that the "trait" of having land is understood to be the same as some kind of genetic trait. These are not the same even if the language we use to discuss them lacks the granularity to clearly delineate them without going into specific definition setting tangents. When this discussion started, it was by way of Eugenics, a theory of breeding that simply did not exist in the time period of Charles II. The Hapsburgs could not have been trying selective breeding as it was originally brought up in this thread because the underlying ideology and science required to enact it did not exist.
We agree that the Hapsburgs could not have been trying Eugenics-style selective breeding because they lacked the science of genetics.
I maintain that they understood breeding domestic animals very well, and they tried their best, with the resources they had, to selectively breed "better" (aristo) people. (Much of feudalism makes way more sense if you start with the axiom that human society should reflect barnyard large domesticate societies) Even we don't know what would be "good genes" for being a successful warlord, so their approach of looking at past performance and hoping for future results (a noble is someone whose family has exclusively extracted rents for a certain number of generations; a royal is someone whose family has sat upon a throne) seems reasonable to me.
In particular, Charles II (like the Ptolemies and Cleopatras of Egypt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty#Family_tree ) has clearly been line bred. (He is his own cousin — in multiple ways. We might quibble over the distinction between line- and inbreeding, but [a] I was trying to be charitable to the Habsburgs, and [b] I don't think that distinction is relevant to this discussion, so I'm happy to call anyone with too few ancestors "linebred")
If you think people would do better with early-20th century Eugenics than aristocratic societies have done over the last thousands of years, we can have that discussion, but I think it's a different one than I had intended. Along those lines, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39681181 for the problems I would be likely to bring up.
Variance in human ability is smaller than variance in income. Productivity does not explain income in capitalist economies. Instead, most of the changes in income are explained by differences in hierarchy. You might say that more able individuals are more likely to be higher up in the hierarchy, but being higher up doesn't require an increase in ability proportional with the increase in income. You only need to be 1% better than the next guy to win the competition, leading small differences in ability to result in large differences in income.
Using genetics to explain the fairness of capitalism is a pretty common lie we tell ourselves to make us feel superior over poor people.
The majority of income differences comes from your skill. A doctor earn much more than a cashier due to having a more valuable skill, and that span makes up the bulk of gini coefficient.
Ultra wealth can't be explained with skill difference, no, but that isn't very relevant to this discussion. You can get a ton of money just through skill alone, doctors, programmers, lawyers etc aren't poor by any stretch.
I think that oversimplifies things. Even a very skilled teacher or therapist is unlikely to make as much as an average skilled doctor, programmer, or (maybe?) lawyer.
> The majority of income differences comes from your skill. A doctor earn much more than a cashier due to having a more valuable skill, and that span makes up the bulk of gini coefficient.
Training certainly big plays a role, but the majority of a doctor's income, at least in the United States, comes from the fact that they're part of a labor cartel which artificially limits the number of doctors. No such cartel exists for cashiers.
It's why even a mediocre doctor in the United States can make significantly more there than anywhere else in the world despite receiving equivalent training.
> It's why even a mediocre doctor in the United States can make significantly more there than anywhere else in the world despite receiving equivalent training.
A mediocre developer or hairdresser in the United States also makes significantly more there than anywhere else in the world despite receiving equivalent training. That doesn't require any labor cartel.
> Using genetics to explain the fairness of capitalism
No one was doing this. I was pointing out the unfairness of capitalism. The idea that some people are genetically or developmentally less predisposed to skills that will give them a comfortable income is an argument for the unfairness of capitalism, because I haven't heard a convincing argument that this predisposition makes them less deserving of a comfortable life.
If anything the flip-side of this (arguing that humans are pretty close in ability and variations in earning are more about circumstance) is really more aligned with the pro-capitalist narrative that everyone has opportunity, and lack of success is usually due to not seizing it.
I don't think the paper implies any causality either way. Notice that the title of the paper itself is "The neurobiology of life course socioeconomic conditions and *associated* cognitive performance in middle to late adulthood"
Really, this is editorializing on the part of the person who submitted this link to HN.
I don't quite agree. While the paper is much less sensational than the submission title, the way the abstract reads clearly sounds like they are at least implying some causality, subconsciously or not.
Take the sentence "Individuals from higher income households showed preserved cognitive performance..." That could just as easily be written "Individuals with preserved cognitive performance showed higher levels of income..." There are a bunch of similar examples like that throughout the abstract.
TBH That's literal nitpicks. Nowhere in the paper is a causal relationship proposed. Your statement that a potential subconscious proposition exists in the paper is windmill-tilting.
From that perspective, surely you can draw no conclusion of causality from this data, or any conclusion you can draw has little predictive power about the direction of effect for a given sample.
> In life there can be multiple causes and multiple effects, but causality itself has one direction, doesn't it?
Causality is an inherently parameterized description of reality. I'm saying that the terms people are using to describe this complex effect are too few and each far too high grained to draw any firm conclusions.
Poor people are more likely to take high-interest loans/advances, and people who take high-interest loans are more likely to be poor. You can suggest causation both ways if say, you study a group of middle-class people who took high-interest loans and find them more likely to be poor years later.
If A causes B but B also causes A is it wrong to say causality goes both ways?
A is both cause and effect. B is both cause and effect. I think this is nearly as common as causality going one way (like if we found that smoking causes cancer, but cancer causes people to be less likely to smoke).
This is is a perfect paper to get ripped apart/defend by everyone. Too many variables and too easy to defend or pull apart. It will line up with your prior beliefs and change nothing.
Well, it's not easy to investigate how poverty affects your whole life history xD
It would take an investigator their entire life as well, assuming they started super young. And who wants to pay for such investigation?
I don't disagree with you. I don't have a solution either. I also know that the paper linked above put on HN will not make much of a difference to peoples perspectives on the matter since it doesn't have a ton of merit to it.
So the question becomes -- whats the point of posting it here other than to inflame commentary?
I can agree that it's really hard to build good science here.
But at the same time, a huge number of the variables seem like they would be directly downstream of socioeconomic status. It affects so much of our lives.
What can I afford to eat today? How am I gonna pay the electricity bill? How am I gonna fix my broken 20yo car? Which grocery has the cheapest diapers? Should I switch on the heating today or are there colder days coming this month?
If you are well off none of the above is even a thing.