Great piece. This makes me think of Francis Fukuyama's book, not the famous one but a later one, whose thesis is about the demand for dignity. It talks about how dignity is at the core of who we are as people, and I think that's relevant here because there are many things that matter to people more than money. Money is I think overrated in our society, people act like it's the end all be all, but beyond a certain point it takes a backseat to other factors. As your writing here points out.
I also find this to be the case in a lesser topic which is when recommending things like books, tv shows, or movies to people. Most people like to find things out for themselves.
Thank you, that was well told. I did not grow up poor or rich, we were fine but nothing special. And I'm not rich now but am well off enough to do just fine. I remember growing up worrying so much about having enough to support myself, that was my biggest concern in the world. But once I hit the point where I was doing just fine I started thinking about other issues, and how they weren't at all solved by money.
So now I still worry some about money, like if I lost my job or whatever. But at the same time money has lost its luster, and I'm trying to focus more on things that are really important, like relationships. Which I never cared enough about sadly. I wish I had cared more.
In my years of drug abuse I spent a lot of time around poor people, and I realized just how much differently they live their lives. One experience in particular really shocked me.
I was hanging around (likely waiting to score drugs) and I ran into some teenage kids. Somebody told them I had a job, and suddenly I turned into the most interesting person in the room. The kids were very surprised by this information, and asked me a lot of questions about how one goes and gets a job.
It occurred to me that these kids didn't have a single role model in their life - all the adults they knew were drug-addicted losers; people looking for government handouts to finance their lives of doing nothing but drugs.
Poverty is such a complex set of incentives, culture, and behavior.
One of my friends in high school was self-motivated and got a job, which had a powerful effect on the rest of our friend group. Within a year we all had part time jobs.
This is such an interesting piece. We are upper middle class and my son is at a fancy, expensive private college on a nice scholarship majoring in Finance and doing really well. He now hangs out with kids from very wealthy families and I see the difference it makes. Perhaps the drive these handful of kids have is rare (there are a bunch of lazy wealthy kids of course) but the flock he flies with now really does affect his outlook. He was always insanely driven so he was already open to it, but now it’s positively reinforced and it has created a positive feedback loop. He learned to strive with music in a great, big, competitive public high school, having attained some big accomplishments but also had to quickly learn to deal with embarrassing public failures. These were absolutely vital in his development. The intrinsic drive to take a deep breath, hold your chin up, swallow your pride and eat the shit sandwich is key.
It’s also an interesting feeling as an adult to think you’ve ‘made it’ and see your kid walking into a whole new world that you were previously blind to. I can see some parents holding their kid back out of sheer embarrassment or bitterness, especially if not upper middle class.
Wait, what? I think you read a lot into that but appreciate the lecture. I have a low paying job serving the public but thanks for the finger wagging and giant assumptions on our character. He liked the complexity of Finance and made friends with some of the students he met at the school. What can I say, they aren’t all movie villains. He just donated his last summer paycheck to the music department at his former public high school as a tiny gesture of gratefulness, but do go on?
I grew up upper-class and most of my friends have been either upper or upper-middle class, but the one exception has been playing team sports. Throughout my life playing in leagues and playing pickup I've had a much wider range of friends. I think sports are great for this because you really are on even footing - it really doesn't matter how much money you make if you're getting cooked and costing your team points. I've offered to connect dudes to job interviews here and there, and rarely get taken up on it, but it has happened. I did talk a few dudes out of borrowing money to buy crypto, which in the short term at least turned out to be good advice.
Excellent piece. It's also interesting that I can't imagine it being written by someone who did not have a difficult environment as a youth-- both for reasons of credibility and the ability to include personal anecdotes (which are often more persuasive than the data).
This quote rings very true: "It took a few more experiences like this before I would finally learn an important lesson—people don’t like unsolicited advice." This is also true in the very different but related field of development economics as observed by Bill Easterly, namely that economic reforms have to have a pretty big indigenous component to be successful.
It might be possible to answer the happiness question by looking at areas of Scotland that intentionally put low cost housing into middle class villages to open up opportunities.
Onto the other point, that of the unlikely friendships across class, I can see it. I imagine the trick might be having enough of these low cost units that people don’t feel like a “token” and can make friends. I also agree that most people are content with their life trajectory. For the few who aren’t though, I think programs explicitly mixing class, like the Scottish one, are valuable. At least they teach everyone, hopefully, how to communicate with each other. Hopefully consciously not creating class based bubbles is good not only for the upwardly mobile but for the future elites who will make policy for people now that they actually know.
The Scottish experience sounds interesting. However, the Obama Administration’s efforts to do something similar in high income Westchester, NY suburbs failed miserably. Upper middle class NYers did not want their housing investments to be diminished by low cost living nearby. In the past such programs have only worked if the income disparities are minimal - ie there’s tipping point. I grew up in a low to middle class town which barely found it acceptable to have public housing nearby and even then people from the two groups didn’t mix very well. Perhaps’mixing of classes’ works better in the military or at college when people don’t see the value of their assets threatened and the playing field is more even?
And I think the Harvard theory has proven what people have already know , not sure if you have heard of the "Social cognitive theory" if not is something for you to really look into , it essentially states that people pick up mannerisms from observing others, their own experiences (something which I can strongly observe in you and which even yourself have admitted ,saying you like to be around similar people such as yourself. )
Even from a practical perspective when you are upper class people tend to perceive you as high status, and are keen to do you favours and not offend you, you have basic needs taken care off i.e you can afford housing so do not have to worry about rent(we all have the same 24 hours) so a rich person or a person born into relative affluent surroundings doesn't have to worry about it so can probably focus on stuff like education or in terms of business it will be easier for them to start one because they will be surrounded by people who can invest in their business, give them guidance because they are apart of their circle.
Also I may moderately offend you here but were it not for the air force and leaving your working class environment where I assume stuff like education wasn't valued highly( put you on a positive track and you wouldn't be as successful as you now and I think your praise of working class maybe coming from a place of rose tinted nostalgia) , you look at the research into this topic, growing up in England in a local school and being around the culture, I got to see the underclass that the book "life at the bottom" really resonated with me, you look into various measures i.e different personality traits etc , how intellect effects profession and class position it does make sense, I have anecdotally heard that the majority of sociopaths are in the working and upper class and the least are in the middle class and from my anecdotal experience that is true, and I suppose your conclusions are anecdotal as well, whilst I have personally seen evidence of "luxury beliefs" something which you coined, there is no widespread scientific evidence to back it up. The closest we have is studies showing that virtuous victimhood is correlated to dark triad traits and to be fair in various riots and civil disobediences that have occurred such as the LA riots, where Americans living in poverty smashed up shops serving their own community and these shop owners were in fact living a daily struggle, working hard in many cases living hand to mouth and had everything destroyed, same case with riots across the western world ( I remember the London riots where a poor hard working shop owner was crying live on tv because he had lost everything and his insurance didn't cover it) and it was in the middle of a deprived urban neighbourhood, (young professionals were the volunteers doing the clean up in that case, and they were middle class).
Nearly all social scientists, even the ones who insist on good empirical data, reveal a deep desire to identify models or social engineering tools that allow us to work toward a utopian equilibrium. Our whole USA enlightenment political model is built around creating an ideal social-political structure.
But we are not bigger than our biology. You discuss deeply human traits, parts of our biological programming. We humans do not fit into a utopian model very well. Traditional religion found utopia in heaven. Modern science and secularism is not satisfied to delay utopia till the afterlife.
It is very hard to be honest about this dilemma, so I am especially appreciative of your honest empirical observations of human social behavior.
I don't think the lesson from the article is "poor people don't want help, so screw 'em". It is instead intended to pull the curtains back on the idea that all poor people need is 'opportunity'. It's more complicated than that, as you wrote.
Adam Corolla is a fabulous person, funny albeit no nonsense. He knows that to be successful you can keep making excuses for personal bad behavior & habits. That’s difficult for many to grapple with.
Great piece. This makes me think of Francis Fukuyama's book, not the famous one but a later one, whose thesis is about the demand for dignity. It talks about how dignity is at the core of who we are as people, and I think that's relevant here because there are many things that matter to people more than money. Money is I think overrated in our society, people act like it's the end all be all, but beyond a certain point it takes a backseat to other factors. As your writing here points out.
I also find this to be the case in a lesser topic which is when recommending things like books, tv shows, or movies to people. Most people like to find things out for themselves.
Thank you, that was well told. I did not grow up poor or rich, we were fine but nothing special. And I'm not rich now but am well off enough to do just fine. I remember growing up worrying so much about having enough to support myself, that was my biggest concern in the world. But once I hit the point where I was doing just fine I started thinking about other issues, and how they weren't at all solved by money.
So now I still worry some about money, like if I lost my job or whatever. But at the same time money has lost its luster, and I'm trying to focus more on things that are really important, like relationships. Which I never cared enough about sadly. I wish I had cared more.
In my years of drug abuse I spent a lot of time around poor people, and I realized just how much differently they live their lives. One experience in particular really shocked me.
I was hanging around (likely waiting to score drugs) and I ran into some teenage kids. Somebody told them I had a job, and suddenly I turned into the most interesting person in the room. The kids were very surprised by this information, and asked me a lot of questions about how one goes and gets a job.
It occurred to me that these kids didn't have a single role model in their life - all the adults they knew were drug-addicted losers; people looking for government handouts to finance their lives of doing nothing but drugs.
Poverty is such a complex set of incentives, culture, and behavior.
One of my friends in high school was self-motivated and got a job, which had a powerful effect on the rest of our friend group. Within a year we all had part time jobs.
Yes! The exact same thing happened among my friends and me.
This is such an interesting piece. We are upper middle class and my son is at a fancy, expensive private college on a nice scholarship majoring in Finance and doing really well. He now hangs out with kids from very wealthy families and I see the difference it makes. Perhaps the drive these handful of kids have is rare (there are a bunch of lazy wealthy kids of course) but the flock he flies with now really does affect his outlook. He was always insanely driven so he was already open to it, but now it’s positively reinforced and it has created a positive feedback loop. He learned to strive with music in a great, big, competitive public high school, having attained some big accomplishments but also had to quickly learn to deal with embarrassing public failures. These were absolutely vital in his development. The intrinsic drive to take a deep breath, hold your chin up, swallow your pride and eat the shit sandwich is key.
It’s also an interesting feeling as an adult to think you’ve ‘made it’ and see your kid walking into a whole new world that you were previously blind to. I can see some parents holding their kid back out of sheer embarrassment or bitterness, especially if not upper middle class.
Again, great share.
Wait, what? I think you read a lot into that but appreciate the lecture. I have a low paying job serving the public but thanks for the finger wagging and giant assumptions on our character. He liked the complexity of Finance and made friends with some of the students he met at the school. What can I say, they aren’t all movie villains. He just donated his last summer paycheck to the music department at his former public high school as a tiny gesture of gratefulness, but do go on?
I grew up upper-class and most of my friends have been either upper or upper-middle class, but the one exception has been playing team sports. Throughout my life playing in leagues and playing pickup I've had a much wider range of friends. I think sports are great for this because you really are on even footing - it really doesn't matter how much money you make if you're getting cooked and costing your team points. I've offered to connect dudes to job interviews here and there, and rarely get taken up on it, but it has happened. I did talk a few dudes out of borrowing money to buy crypto, which in the short term at least turned out to be good advice.
Excellent piece. It's also interesting that I can't imagine it being written by someone who did not have a difficult environment as a youth-- both for reasons of credibility and the ability to include personal anecdotes (which are often more persuasive than the data).
This quote rings very true: "It took a few more experiences like this before I would finally learn an important lesson—people don’t like unsolicited advice." This is also true in the very different but related field of development economics as observed by Bill Easterly, namely that economic reforms have to have a pretty big indigenous component to be successful.
Lastly here's a funny short clip you might appreciate re Chetty: https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxL5zrygEyd8oz-oS_Zi-JO4ujDr54mcr5?feature=emb_logo
Great clip-- Thanks for sharing. I've saved the video to watch later.
Great and enlightening piece, thanks Rob.
It might be possible to answer the happiness question by looking at areas of Scotland that intentionally put low cost housing into middle class villages to open up opportunities.
Onto the other point, that of the unlikely friendships across class, I can see it. I imagine the trick might be having enough of these low cost units that people don’t feel like a “token” and can make friends. I also agree that most people are content with their life trajectory. For the few who aren’t though, I think programs explicitly mixing class, like the Scottish one, are valuable. At least they teach everyone, hopefully, how to communicate with each other. Hopefully consciously not creating class based bubbles is good not only for the upwardly mobile but for the future elites who will make policy for people now that they actually know.
The Scottish experience sounds interesting. However, the Obama Administration’s efforts to do something similar in high income Westchester, NY suburbs failed miserably. Upper middle class NYers did not want their housing investments to be diminished by low cost living nearby. In the past such programs have only worked if the income disparities are minimal - ie there’s tipping point. I grew up in a low to middle class town which barely found it acceptable to have public housing nearby and even then people from the two groups didn’t mix very well. Perhaps’mixing of classes’ works better in the military or at college when people don’t see the value of their assets threatened and the playing field is more even?
And I think the Harvard theory has proven what people have already know , not sure if you have heard of the "Social cognitive theory" if not is something for you to really look into , it essentially states that people pick up mannerisms from observing others, their own experiences (something which I can strongly observe in you and which even yourself have admitted ,saying you like to be around similar people such as yourself. )
Even from a practical perspective when you are upper class people tend to perceive you as high status, and are keen to do you favours and not offend you, you have basic needs taken care off i.e you can afford housing so do not have to worry about rent(we all have the same 24 hours) so a rich person or a person born into relative affluent surroundings doesn't have to worry about it so can probably focus on stuff like education or in terms of business it will be easier for them to start one because they will be surrounded by people who can invest in their business, give them guidance because they are apart of their circle.
Also I may moderately offend you here but were it not for the air force and leaving your working class environment where I assume stuff like education wasn't valued highly( put you on a positive track and you wouldn't be as successful as you now and I think your praise of working class maybe coming from a place of rose tinted nostalgia) , you look at the research into this topic, growing up in England in a local school and being around the culture, I got to see the underclass that the book "life at the bottom" really resonated with me, you look into various measures i.e different personality traits etc , how intellect effects profession and class position it does make sense, I have anecdotally heard that the majority of sociopaths are in the working and upper class and the least are in the middle class and from my anecdotal experience that is true, and I suppose your conclusions are anecdotal as well, whilst I have personally seen evidence of "luxury beliefs" something which you coined, there is no widespread scientific evidence to back it up. The closest we have is studies showing that virtuous victimhood is correlated to dark triad traits and to be fair in various riots and civil disobediences that have occurred such as the LA riots, where Americans living in poverty smashed up shops serving their own community and these shop owners were in fact living a daily struggle, working hard in many cases living hand to mouth and had everything destroyed, same case with riots across the western world ( I remember the London riots where a poor hard working shop owner was crying live on tv because he had lost everything and his insurance didn't cover it) and it was in the middle of a deprived urban neighbourhood, (young professionals were the volunteers doing the clean up in that case, and they were middle class).
Great piece.
Not driven by a pre-existing narrative.
Nearly all social scientists, even the ones who insist on good empirical data, reveal a deep desire to identify models or social engineering tools that allow us to work toward a utopian equilibrium. Our whole USA enlightenment political model is built around creating an ideal social-political structure.
But we are not bigger than our biology. You discuss deeply human traits, parts of our biological programming. We humans do not fit into a utopian model very well. Traditional religion found utopia in heaven. Modern science and secularism is not satisfied to delay utopia till the afterlife.
It is very hard to be honest about this dilemma, so I am especially appreciative of your honest empirical observations of human social behavior.
Dan Martin
I don't think the lesson from the article is "poor people don't want help, so screw 'em". It is instead intended to pull the curtains back on the idea that all poor people need is 'opportunity'. It's more complicated than that, as you wrote.
Adam Corolla is a fabulous person, funny albeit no nonsense. He knows that to be successful you can keep making excuses for personal bad behavior & habits. That’s difficult for many to grapple with.
Poor people by virtue of their experience can also lack confidence which is really important if you want to succeed.