By hitekker
What you may be getting at is something similar to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_poverty
Which I don’t completely disagree with. At certain cross-cutting cleavages, one can reasonably say that it is the people in a toxic environment who perpetuate the toxicity environment irrespective of outside economic influence[1]
Two problems, however, with redefining social class to be based upon “thinking” is that neglects causality of said thinking, and, worse, fabulates “just so” stories.
The first point can be phrased as: are my poor friends behaving poor because they don’t have the same values or abilities as I or is it because they’re too exhausted by their daily drudgeries to expound the effort to climb the ladders of advancement? Do I have more natural talent and skills which align with market needs than my fellow? Perhaps a bit of both for the first question, and yes, probably, for the second.
The second problem can be boiled down to one-liners: “The poor think poorly therefore they are poor.”, “The middle class thinks good therefore they are middle class.” and of course “the upper class think amazingly therefore they are upper class.” One can argue that poor thinking will lead a member of an upper class to a lower one, eventually.[2] But that doesn’t change the number of zeros in their bank account until they blow it all a way.
While a good chunk of the onus is on the individual not to be foolish with their money, other factors like environment in a person’s social mobility must be considering. Conflating class with intelligence ( a way of thinking being the main criteria for class ) is more the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, than it is a full analysis.
[1] Pakistan is a good example. Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9642488 and direct link: https://www.quora.com/Does-the-average-Pakistani-support-the…
[2] In a rigged system, I would say that poor thinking by an upper class person could paradoxically help them ascend to even greater heights. For example, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/03…. For better example: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/donald-trump-…
link
Read more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10646267
hitekker comments on "Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions (2013)"
