[kevas]

About to write some possibly controversial stuff...

My early life, I grew up and had middle to upper middle class all around me. In my late teens and early twenties, there were times I had to scrounge my cushions and rummage through my car to find enough change to eat a meal.

We live in a society where everyone has access to a computer—personal or local library. We have all the information we need to bring (the majority, but not all) ourselves up from poverty to lower middle class or even middle class.

It’s my belief that it boils down to a few things: - self learning - dedication

Self Learning: if you must, pirate the crap out of all knowledge you need to get your family in a stable place. You need a textbook, you can find an older version; need a research report, find it online; you need.... just go find it and get it. If you don’t know how to find it, learn how to find it. If you don’t know where to start, ask someone. Just do...

Dedication: it’s so much easier to just come home do what you need to do with the family and then sit down and watch tv or do something that’s not going to progress you. It’s not fun and your mind will fight you every step of the way, but what’s more important to you? The show that’s on in an hour or the stability of your mind and family? Don’t look for those immediate returns, yet rather look for those returns that pay off in a year or two or 5. As i said, it sucks, but what’s more important?

One thing I’ve noticed over and over again is the difference between being raised in middle class or upper middle class vs poverty is the view of the work place—I’m not saying this is true for everyone, but just what I’ve observed over time. - Middle class and up: not as scared to talk back, speak your mind, or challenge their opinion to your bosses or colleagues. - Poverty: fearful of doing the aforementioned

I, for some reason see this as one of the largest issues with advancement as it propagates to not just the work life, but also the personal life too and thus creates a fear of challenge—it’s better to go with the status quo than to break out.

How can this change? Learn learn learn and then go find a place where you can apply your new skills and then just keep learning instead of doing the easy thing...

Thoughts?

[jacksnipe]

I'm pretty sure you've only explained why an upper-middle class upbringing makes you much more suited to success than a lower class one. If you have that upbringing, then you're right, nothing is stopping you from doing all of this.

But if you don't, well, what are you supposed to do? Your relationship to work is what it is because you can't afford to lose your job, and you were raised in an environment where others feel that way. Your ability to come home and learn things, rather than "sit down and watch tv or do something that's not going to progress you" is severely impacted if your mental health is already suffering. Your ability to even imagine what you can accomplish is affected by having no examples that you've witnessed in real life.

You can, of course, chalk all of this up to personal responsibility. But the alternative view, backed by science, is that being raised poor impacts all of these things and more, and that's a matter of how the human brain works. In the aggregate, it's not a matter of personal responsibility.

[amself]

Thank you for saying this. As a high-schooler from a lower middle-class family in Greece, I feel this pain every single day. It's therapeutic to see it is not as personal as it feels.

I know my generation has free access to almost all of human knowledge online, I know hard work and study can pull me out of this hell. I start every day hoping to do just that, but my accomplishments remain depressingly few regardless. Honestly, it's even getting worse over time, I was a far brighter and gifted kid once. I live in fear of how much smarter some of my peers are getting and I can't catch up.

It's like, every time I try to escape this mess, I fall back to a predetermined state of idleness. Most of the blame is on me; I was actually given some good opportunities to better myself by teachers who cared, I was a step away from scholarships at private schools and studying abroad etc. and I blew it all away. I never worked hard enough. Some of my failures may just boil down to luck.

Still, it is sad to think (with hindsight) how much different everything could've been, if my starting conditions were just a bit better. If I had been given a nudge in the right direction at challenging moments, instead of having to rely on self-study and self-help. If my parents had made me play an instrument, learn math earlier, read more books or make friends. God, it would've been so much better had I known somebody who had already done the things I wanted to do.

Breaking out of the loop is very, very hard without help. It is like the Münchhausen Trilemma. Anyway, I hope this comment is not inappropriate for HN, I just have nowhere else to vent. Sorry.

[kevas]

Dude... don’t worry about the past as it’s the past. Use the past to learn what you did right and what you did wrong.

I’m glad that you know you have limitless resources (libgen is your friend).

If i may make a suggestion, change the way you talk. Instead of saying, “i hope” say “I am” be more definitive about your statements and after awhile, you’ll notice a change in your thoughts.

Here’s my favorite saying, “you’re not going to change until the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the same.”

I did a 6 year stent at community college and then failed out at uni. I had a menial until 27 or 28 years old. I was a failure at life at this point. I decided to read the entire Learning Python book (>1200 pages) because I’m not a smart man, but I thought that by reading that stupid thing, I’d learn something at least (should have picked a few other books looking back). While reading that book and having the menial job, I started having these ideas... hmm... I could automate this for this department or I could do this... i could do that... blah blah... that led me to another role at that company. I kept learning that programming thing and then somehow got a job at a better company, making decent money. Kept studying and two years later, I finally a software engineer that’s leading initiatives at the company I’m at.

My full advice:

- Don’t be scared to ask questions

- Ask more questions

- Learn whatever interests you. You’ll wonder, but at some point down the road, something will click. Could be a few months from now or a few years, but just keep learning whatever tickles your fancy.

- Don’t be scared to admit you don’t know something, but just make sure that you know it the next time you see the person.

- Be curious

- Workout. This is one of the most important things. How can one feel good about oneself if they don’t take care of their body. I’m not saying gotta have the best body or diet, but just get some workout in—sports, gym, classes, yoga, hiking, something.

I got my best break of my life, which lead to everything good I have accomplished today at the gym. I overheard a conversation someone was having with a person I knew at the gym and I found it interesting. I asked for an introduction and that was that.

Don’t be scared to reach out. Go to events and meet new people. Talk to random people who you think would be interesting; talk to people who are working on interesting stuff at coffee shops, etc...

You’ll be fine if you have passion.

[nicoffeine]

This seems like a sheltered view of poverty.

When you live in poverty, there is no such thing as peace or thinking about the future. You are trying to cope minute-by-minute with hunger, abuse, fear, and limitless insecurity. You know someone who is in jail, someone who has been shot/stabbed/murdered, and plenty of people who did all the right things and still failed to make it out. In a nutshell, there's no such thing as tomorrow when you hope to die in your sleep.

Self-fulfillment is at the top of Maslow's hierarchy. Until society provides for all the needs beneath it, having access to the internet isn't going to make a damn bit of difference.

[kevas]

I hate to write the following sentence, but you don’t know me and the experiences I’ve had throughout my life.

The stabbed, jail, etc... you mentioned... yeah, I’ve seen that first hand a few times, know many people who have gone to jail and are still in it for a myriad of reasons. Seeing & having that stuff around you doesn’t mean you grow poor.

I did the 6 year community college plan; I failed out of college and by every metric on my academic record, I should be a complete failure, but hey, I’m not!

All the issues you of poverty and how crippling it is, I completely agree with, but what you don’t understand is that it’s all a decision. It’s a decision to live how you are or seek a return that will be realized down the road at some unknown point. I understand what I just said would be extremely difficult for someone who would be in that current situation, but it doesn’t deny them the ability to seek that reward at some point down the road.

As I’ve said, it’s all a choice on what to do with your time. The fight within is the most difficult thing anyone could ever face, but face it one must to change.

One of my favorite sayings is “you’re not going to change until the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the same.” Basically... one must hate oneself so much that it would be easier to change than to live another day as one currently does.

Wanna guess how I changed? I hated myself that much.

[3131s]

Sounds like someone was bankrolling you through this period of failure?

And from you're own admission you "had to scrounge for change" a few times... I know people who nearly starved to death as little children. In fact there are starving, begging kids out on the streets all over the city I live in.

It doesn't sound like you have any familiarity with the type of extreme poverty that hundreds of millions of people on Earth live through, for whom it is clearly not a choice.

[kevas]

I didn’t have a bankroll during this time, but have a job that i found through a guy i knew who knew another guy at the gym, which kept me afloat.

I can say that I have been fortunate enough to not have ever been at that level of poverty and should probably adjust my statements accordingly. Looking back, as i wrote that, I most likely had just the States in mind and other Western countries, not societies that are considered 3rd world.

For those, I cannot fathom the issues they face nor will i even attempt to speculate as that would be just foolish of me.

[travisoneill1]

Why do I meet so many happy poor people when I'm out of bubble, then?

[Kye]

I guarantee you don't have the whole picture. People are good at putting up a front so other people don't know how bad things are.

[wyre]

You anecdote doesn’t mean anything. Poor people might be more likely to fake being happy so they can avoid judgement or any other reason to fake happiness.

It’s been proven in several studies that income is linked to happiness.

[asciimov]

Happiness is a choice. Being poor doesn't mean your sad all the time, it means life is tough, tougher than the lives of the rich. Even in the toughest of times, there is plenty to be happy about.

[nor-and-or-not]

Perhaps you are confusing kindness with happyness.

[criddell]

> It’s my belief that it boils down to a few things: - self learning - dedication

And luck especially with respect to your health and the health of those around you. It's harder to invest in yourself when you are a primary caregiver to a relative.

It's this argument that makes me wonder how anybody can be opposed to some form of universal health care. I heard somebody ask this question once and it's stuck with me: how would you organize society if you knew you would be reborn but have no idea into what situation.

[dgr582systems]

The idea (how to organise society if you won’t know your position within it) is discussed extensively by philosopher John Rawls. It is called either the “Original Position” or “veil of ignorance” thought experiment. The idea itself goes a little further back, as discussed in the linked wiki article.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

[kevas]

That’s why I didn’t write everyone. For the people that have those type of scenarios, that’s just horrible and society, if possible should help.

[kiba]

90% of problems we have as human beings are emotional regulations. Maybe 5% is strategic decision making.

There's 'ugh' field, procrastination, fear, mental health problems, and so forth that impedes folks.

Growing, however, is all about academics, with a side dish PE. Nobody taught anybody how to deal with procrastination, how to deal with emotional problems, and so on. Or how to ask for help. Or how to deal with paying bills and taking responsibility.

Once we are in the real world, you either learn the rules of society or you don't. You sink and swim on your own 'merit', and that's not including the general lack of support society has for you.

Really, how do society expects people to function with no instruction manual? Or worse, that we are all making up shit as we went along with our lives?

[landon32]

One thing to keep in mind is people struggling to make ends meet don't have time to learn and will struggle to find motivation to dedicate themselves to something. For me it was quite easy to be ambitious and learn a lot, because my basic needs were taken care of growing up. Others join the workforce at 16 and their income is important for their family.

[eyphka]

I am a former foster youth that managed. Those reasons are often secondary to good habits, such as reading. Good habits compound. And so do bad ones.

[asciimov]

> It’s my belief that it boils down to a few things: - self learning - dedication

Opportunity is the biggest differentiator among the rich and poor.

Intelligence is fairly evenly distributed in our society, being poor doesn't mean you are dumb and lazy it means that you haven't had all the opportunities that a rich person has.

These opportunities are from simple things like individual tutoring, vacations and time to relax, to being able to fly across country to take an unpaid/underpaid internship, to having mentors. It also means more complex opportunities like living in better areas with a greater chance to meet like minded people and having better/more dumb luck.

Opportunities among the poor aren't equal either. A rural poor kid has less access to things than the equally poor kid that lives in the big city. These things include industry outreach, better libraries, museums, concerts, better schools, all around greater access.

Rather focusing solely on educating and motivating a populous, we should also be figuring out how to provide better opportunities for our citizens. Instead of H1-B's we might be better off forcing companies to hire kids that didn't go to a small select number of schools, or to hire people from middle America, or just incentivize them to hire and train Americans.

Further we could expand our broadband infrastructure, provide a computer and internet to every person in America who doesn't have access to neither.

[NineStarPoint]

It’s also worth noting that people who are in poverty often don’t have the option to talk back in the work place. They’re scared for a reason, if they talk back and get fired they lose their apartment. They can’t feed their kids. So on. And the sort of jobs that people in poverty have to work aren’t jobs that have to care about treating their employees well, they’re jobs that have no issue finding new cogs to place in the machine. You can’t hope that the people who are barely living in our society would be able to break this feedback loop. Instead we’d have to find a way to build a society where people have less reason to fear.

Then yes, these habits about how to treat the work place get passed onto kids. And it takes a lot of mental work to relearn things deeply ingrained in you from childhood. This is the second issue, where it would take generations for the bad effects to actually disappear. There are no quick fixes to systemic issues.

[kevas]

Your comment only talks about their current job and not the jobs that they’ll have in the future if one dedicates themselves to spending time after work and family to learning a new skill that will promote them to another career or position.

I completely agree that in roles where you are at the bottom of the totem, you can’t talk back since one is replaceable at that level. However, it’s not about speaking up at that job, rather leanings the skills needed to get another job where you’re not at the bottom of the totem.

I was in this position and I despised it.

I’m not saying it’s easy; I’m not saying that the internal fight to watch tv/relax instead of the more difficult task of studying/learning will ever stop, but what I’m saying is that there are tools available to everyone who asks for it.

What I’d love to know more about is how can one change their outlook in a systematic way? How can people who don’t have the notion of they can be more, be more? How.... so many questions.

[NineStarPoint]

The problem is that the habits people learn at their first few jobs will carry forward into jobs where the ability to talk back is an advantage, and that fixing that requires a lot of effort and either deep introspection or a good mentor who will notice the issues. By the time the issue is fixed, those who entered the system without the issues will be years or decades ahead in their careers.

Yes, someone from poverty can overcome these issues with a combination of effort and luck. But it’s hard to do, and many either don’t try or fail. This is a waste of human potential, where someone who maybe could have done better given a better starting environment loses out just due to the circumstances of their birth. Anyone who could have had a billion dollar idea and ends up hurt by their circumstances is a loss to us as a society. The tools are available for everyone who asks for it, but many are born such that they’d never trust the system enough to ask for it.

I guess I would phrase it as the difference between “their is societal mobility, in that people from any start can improve their lot” and “there is societal mobility, in that people from any start have equal opportunity as those born at the top to be successful.” America has the first, but is very far away from the second. I doubt it’s actually possible to reach the second completely of course, just get closer to it.

In the end I agree. How we actually fix this is full of so many questions. As far as America is concerned, I believe the “right to work” laws that allow firing without reason probably deeply increase the fear of those at all levels of the totem pole, but especially those close to poverty. Of course that’s just one of many issues, and repealing those laws creates economic inefficiency in making it hard to fire poor performers. Which has worse side effects is debatable, and there are endless questions indeed.

[gbh444g]

Are you sure they have any energy or time left after work?

[istjohn]

There was a study that found that blue collar and white collar parents have distinct parenting styles. Blue collar parents are more authoritarian. They teach their children to obey authority, which as it happens is what is generally required to succeed in a blue collar job. White collar parents teach their children to think for themselves and be assertive, behaviors that are--perhaps not coincidentally--rewarded in white collar jobs.

[sokoloff]

This is a really interesting observation. I also had to look up whether school teachers were considered blue or white collar, because my first-hand experience (which I suspect generalizes) is that they also tend towards training compliance and deference to authority, despite being on the white-collar side of that line.

[istjohn]

My conjecture is that school systems tend to mirror the population they serve, with blue collar schools tending to be more authoritarian (it's cheaper to operate with the regularity and order of an assembly line, after all), and wealthier schools placing more value on independence (as the parents would demand and be willing and able to pay for). Teachers in schools that operate like factories (or prisons) will be managed like blue collar assembly line workers. Teachers in white collar schools will be given the autonomy needed to adapt the school's policies and curricula to the unique needs of each student; they will be managed like white collar professionals.

[kevas]

Do you have a link to that study as I’d love to read it.

[istjohn]

I don't remember where I read that, exactly. But here's an example that discusses some of these ideas: https://www.jstor.org/stable/350357

[analognoise]

You're essentially saying "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". This is very easy to do if you've experienced a middle or upper middle class upbringing.

This is almost impossible to do if you were raised in a household of abuse or food scarcity, or where your network doesn't contain any well educated individuals. Basically it works for...middle class people.

In short: trickle down economics is being pissed on and calling it rain, and "just work harder" blames people for their station and expects them to be extraordinary just to have a reasonable life. It's essentially blaming the poor, the easiest way out possible, with nice gloss on top, and it's total and utter bullshit that papers over the systemic forces acting against all workers - let alone those just scraping by.

[tartoran]

I want to add that even the economics of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" with middle class upbringing is shrinking and that is happening fast. Case in point for HN older devs who no longer find work and yet are very knowledgeable and have lots of experience but wouldn't pass a leet code interview.

[sgt]

But his point is valid to millions of middle class people who still struggle to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". I think that demographic is so large (most of the people you know, if not all, are in that group, and HUGE potential is lost), that it is worth focusing on.

[jacksnipe]

This rhetoric is almost universally applied to the lower class as well, at least in the US.

[sgt]

I think the lower class in the US actually have it relatively darn good. They just lack perspective to see it any other way.

[jacksnipe]

It seems ok until someone in your family is diagnosed with a chronic health condition...

[gonehome]

I generally agree with this, but I think there's also a real issue of what to do about people that just can't do this.

This requires some threshold level of intelligence.

It requires knowing that it's possible and not making stupid decisions along the way that inhibit it. You're less likely to be exposed to knowledge of how or where to start when no one inside your network is successful.

There are some issues with learned behavior (children from poverty that eat one marshmallow in the test because they've learned adults are unreliable and one now is better than the promise of two later). People from poverty tend to spend money quickly when they get it because having it is scarce/rare and there's learned behavior to use it right away.

I think a lot of the arguments from the left that "it can't be done", "social mobility doesn't exist", etc. are both wrong and really harmful because it confuses people into thinking they can't improve their situation when they can. It takes away agency.

I think the truth is messier though and not everyone has the capacity to do this and our society is definitely skewed for intelligence, but arguably so is any society with living things that need to adapt to their environment.

The solution is probably some sort of complex policy and iterating on it to try and make things better and protect the lower bound of society, but that's boring pragmatic neoliberalism and doesn't really rally the troops. People prefer to argue the extremes.

I think the key is you can protect the lower bound of society without taking from the rich or disincentivizing wealth creation and growth, but I also think wealth inequality in a society when it comes from wealth creation and growth is not that big of a deal and we want to reward this kind of thing (less true when it comes from other places like inheritance). Basically protect the lower bound, don't worry about capping the upper bound. Worry about inheritance and leveraging wealth into political power.

Tyler Cowen's book makes a pretty good case for growth in this kind of way being the best way to help the most people the fastest: https://press.stripe.com/#stubborn-attachments

I think that gets less attention though because it's easier to 'hate the rich' than it is to focus on policy issues that affect the lower bound.

[kevas]

Love the response. Will respond later

[ajmurmann]

I believe that it's healthy to have two philosophies. One that I apply to society and public policy and another one for myself.

I want society to take care of the weakest. I don't want anyone to ever end up without a basic roof over their head and food on their plate, regardless how bag their decisions are. I want children to have the opportunity to advice greatness, even if they come from poverty, or worse, their parents suck.

At the same time, fort myself, I don't want to ever have to use any services offered to people in need. I want to give know to society than I give.

I think it's necessary for us to have this split view for a healthy society.

Further, personal push for success relies on grit and smarts. Also luck, but it only makes sense to think about that to the extent you can influence it.

Public policy on three other hand is about statistics and we cannot ask for better people.