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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

There was a really good article a while ago (this one, I think [1]), about why the poor make bad choices. Basically, the gist of it is that long-term, it doesn't matter - even if they made "good" choices, they would still remain poor. So they make "bad" choices (unprotected sex, pregnancy, smoking, impulse buying) that give them short-term pleasure, and hope they will get by somehow.

Do you think this would be possible for your family as well? For example, maybe your mindset is "save" because you earn a good salary and you know that if you save, in a few years you'll be well-off and will be able to afford exponentially more, whereas the rest of your family objectively has no way out of poverty, so they don't even try.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/21/linda-tirado-...

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I agree that savings and restraint in spending are not the main issue. But on the other hand, if you:

1) Graduate high school,

2) Wait until age 21 to get married, and wait until marriage to have children; and

3) Have a full time job (any full time job),

then you have a 2% chance of living in poverty, and a 75% chance to be middle class. So in order to argue that bad choices don't matter, you need to make the case that one of these three steps is impossible for most people who are poor. I think your best bet is #3.

[1] http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/03/13-join-m...

It's not clear from the article if those percentages include all of the society or just those that started out poor. If it's the former, it might be just correlation, not causation.

I'm pretty sure it's the former. I don't find it plausible that these three things wouldn't have a causal effect on income, but it's a fair point that it would be more useful to see those percentages broken down by starting income level.

I think maybe its subconscious but they view getting rich as a singular event like winning the lottery, gambling or a lawsuit (I wish I was kidding on the second one) and not an long term compounding effect using money as your leverage. That article is really good and I think sums that mindset up really well: if getting rich was a singular event then I will spend everything I have until the event happens to me.

I think this is a pretty basic and important point. Even though money "doesn't by happiness" it can buy escape, even for short periods of time. That escape is as powerful as any drug when your day-to-day life is significantly depressed, with no foreseeable exit.

So for some people, there's not much difference in $100 and $100,000 without education and impulse control.

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