|
LaTigresse -> RE: The sting of poverty (4/15/2008 8:09:31 AM)
|
I've been reading this thread off and on and decided to give my $2.00.
Some people here are aware that I spent the first 20+ years of my life living in poverty. I have very little formal education, was married at age 16 and a mother days after my 17th birthday. Then a single parent to two small ones, by the age of 24. Now I am in management and living comfortably middleclass.
I am also the oldest of six children born to two rather fucked up people, with several rather fucked up siblings.
I have often tried to understand where my life path turned down a different road than other members of my family, and others that began life similar to the way I did. In retrospect, it was a culmination of things. In large part, the influence of some remarkable people I've had the good fortune of knowing and learning from. The ability to read and reason. To observe and make decisions based upon the knowledge gleened.
Personally, I will always hold that, for the most part, people are poor, long term, by choice. Perhaps not concious choice, but still it is by choice. I believe that the biggest differences are self esteem and personal responsibility. If we feel we are less a person than someone that has more materially, we do not feel we deserve, therefor we self sabotage, afraid of failure. With that usually comes an, us against them, mindset. Which we use to absolve ourself of our own responsibility.
All too often, if we grow up poor, we feel we do not deserve therefor there is a certain sense of entitlement. Which tends to be a vicious circle of demanding the pity, government handout, whatever.......yet abusing them out of a sense of futility and entitlement..... Example: the person that uses foodstamps to buy groceries and uses the welfare check to buy a new television.
Also, when you are poor there is rarely a sense of money management education. So when you get a little extra, you haven't a CLUE how to handle it for long term results. Let alone go without the little luxuries for long term results much as our grandparents and those before them did. Now it is all about immediate gratification and to hell with tomorrow.
We have all probably read/heard/seen info on the curse of the Lottery. We've also seen sports stars and entertainment stars that ended up on poverty years after their career high point. Hearing that they had it all, then lost it all. Millions of dollars, gone. Sure, they were wealthy, but had no clue how to manage it, so lost it.
So in my eyes, there is a great deal more different about people that have/build material wealth and those destined to spend their lives in poverty. A combination of education about money management, the ability to sometimes sacrifice immediate gratification for long term results, and a personal biggie......personal responsibility. Taking responsibility for your own life, your own mistakes, your own education, your own sacrifices.
We have to quit using the excuse books and blaming "the man" because that is a lame cop out at best. My grandfather took no government subsidies, no welfare, nothing.......he worked, HARD. He pinched every penny. Every cent spent in that house was accounted for, kept in a ledger. My mother still laughs about him grumbling at the cost of shoelaces as he wrote them in his ledger. Yet, when he and my grandmother were in too poor of health to continue farming they were able to sell their farm, build a new house near my aunt and uncle and live quite well, considering where they began many years before.
So yes, some people will always be poor, no matter how much we throw at them. They quite simply refuse to know any other way. For whatever reason.
Understand, these concepts are based upon the opportunities available within the US.
|
|
|
|
