[msandford]

I wonder how many people here criticizing you for saying you were able to work your way out of being poor loved the "A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept" article and can't see the parallels.

Yes I'm aware that there are feedback loops that make it much easier to say poor than to claw your way out. I have suffered them to a very minor degree. But from a systems perspective being poor is simply spending all the money you get and not saving any of it. It's not that we can't identify the problem; it's that people lack the awareness or education and potentially the will to make the changes necessary to not be poor. Poor is less about your income and more about the decisions that you make every day to spend all of it, at least in my experience. I know people making $40k who save a lot and are very peaceful and people making $150k living paycheck to paycheck and struggling financially and mentally.

I think one of the contributing factors is the low interest rates right now. If you're poor and struggling anything given up today is a BIG deal so you need a LOT more in a year to convince yourself that it's worth it. At 1% interest it's basically never worth it, but at 10% it might be.

[crdoconnor]

>Poor is less about your income and more about the decisions that you make every day to spend all of it, , at least in my experience.

Being poor is ABSOLUTELY about income and NOT about being a single $150,000 / year programmer who is one paycheck away from being on the street.

1) Financial hardship happens to almost everybody at some point.

2) Being poor happens to some.

3) Poverty happens to a subset of the poor. These people are the mainstay of payday lenders.

The very idea that people who USED to be in groups 1 and 2 and think that they can lecture group 3 from experience is a gross insult.