Rich/Poor

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

I found this aphorism on some blog, doesn’t matter where:

“I was born poor, raised in poverty and watched my parents die that way. I worked hard, eliminated my bad habits, started doing what the wealthy did. Mostly I stopped blaming others for my lack of wealth. Now I am wealthy, and help others who want to be helped.”

Mostly I have a hard time with seemingly devastating arguments put forth with near-perfect clarity. I take issue b/c of how dangerous they are. It’s like leaving military-grade guns lying around for people to pick up and use will nilly, with devastating power and precision.

He doesn’t make ANY judgements or pose any arguments. He merely reports his experience, factually. But then there’s a whiff of passive aggressive judgement to it, which we’ll get to. Whether you detect it yet or whether and how much you care, might correspond to your financial situation.

Let’s try to be objective.

The statement on one level seems humble enough, sober-minded and commendable, but there’s a dark side to it. Let’s deconstruct.

OK, so he’s establishing credibility: poor, poverty, death. Wow. But then again, kinda general. We don’t know in any detail what he had to work with and what he was up against, so it’s going to be hard to derive any principles.

Perhaps in an effort to elucidate on who he is and what he had to work with, we have item 2:

Couple issues here. First off, with regard to “who he is” we now know that he’s an android. He can simple do x, y and z. Wow. Or maybe he’s just a person with uncommon resolve, clarity and courage, to the extent that it almost makes him look robotic and not merely an evolved lemur like some of us. Good for him.

And come on, pls admit you sense that he’s rattling off this stuff in a way where see the shrug, the curled forelock, the smugness disguised as humble, detached directness.
“It was just that simple, folks.” He’s saying that for him, the steps of getting out of poverty were simple. Maybe not easy, but simple.

Hi Michael Jordan, how do I dunk from the free-throw line?
MJ: Just do it.

Yep ok he’s saying it requires grit and resolve, but he’s also implying that the object and activities you are to focus your grit on
is a simple set of things. Work HARD, eliminate bad HABITS, do what the RICH do. Not easy, but simple.

His reductive observation is how he chooses to package his history, and his given wisdom. No mention of luck, charity, breaks or natural talents or genetic predispositions for addiction, psychological abuse and fallout, and so on. Were the byzantine tendrils of fate & complexity, internal and external, present during his horatio algeric ascent? Yes. But he chooses, on hindsight, to simplify, which can make other poor people feel stupid when they fuck up something so simple.

A reader, depending on what they want to believe, can interpret this to mean there is a rational, common sense, simple way to not be poor, as long as you are willing to do the work and able to put forth the smallest modicum of rationality. (As you might have guessed by now, I think that’s a grossly inadequate, self-serving and potentially damaging worldview.)

But never fear, the quote gets worse: [b]

[/b]

Any mention of luck, abuse, talents, is headed off at the pass with this. What’s implied is interesting (and scary.) If you have no talent, people have fucked you, and you picked up your mom’s leaning for addiction and emotional problems, you now have a simple solution: stop blaming others. :slight_smile: It’s that easy folks! After all, the guy who wrote this quote was able to become wealthy when he stopped blaming others. As we all know, BLAME is something we can EASILY turn on and off, depending on how rich we want to be, right? Certainly the concept of BLAME need not be tethered to actual, physical barriers or realities that make things a shit ton harder for you than the average bloke. So what if you’re insulin resistant and toothless at the age of 22, and you’ve been raped, and now you have a baby, and you can’t get a job so you need welfare. Stop blaming! It’s SIMPLE. Work HARD. Eliminate bad HABITS. Do what the RICH DO. Stop BLAMING.

He ends with this:

If they want to be helped, why help them? All they have to do is help themselves. All they have to do is stop blaming and work hard. And do what rich people do.

And what is it that rich people do? I can tell, b/c I’m rich enough, and have been rich enough most of my life. What I do most of the time? I won’t bore you with the deets.
But I can assure you, it isn’t a bravery and nobility fest or any kind of shining example of courage, rationality and good habits. Rich people buy shit, mostly. We got here
because there was a river flowing by and we jumped on it at the right time. And we had the right parents. And the right chemical balance. And while we’re at it, we had the
right atoms in the right physical positions in time and space that led by causality to our noble, wonderful, common sense, level headed, humble, rational, wonderful goldshitting selves.

You also may have guessed: I’ve been poor. 2008 did decimate my life for a while. I know what it means to put 47 cents into a gas tank in a car that’s being hidden most of the time from repo men.
I know what it’s like TO feel like if I just had $100 it would change my whole month, possibly my whole life, so that I could get to my next check without having to grovel ask someone for money.
I’ve had friends with millions (and I’ve been this guy myself) who are too busy tying their bathrobe strings to notice my pain or anyone else’s. They wouldn’t want to share what they earned with their wonderful rational strength characteristics, b/c it could enable the poor bastard to become a long term leech.

Maybe the guys quote could help someone, somewhere, but I doubt it. More than not, it’ll be used by rich people to make them feel ok in not extending a hand, and it’ll give them such a wonderful excuse to feel superior, self-reliant, rational and brave.

Here is my advice for a poor person: good luck.

Here is my advice for a poor person whom I profess to love or call a friend: meet me at X tomorrow, I’d like to give you something in an envelope. It’s not much but it’s what I can spare right now.

If I love a drug addict: I can’t give you money b/c I love you and you need to hit rock bottom.

If I love a mooch: I can only give you x amount to make sure you don’t starve. Can I help with your utilities or grocery bills? I can’t hand over cash.

If I love someone who is struggling and doesn’t have any of the luxuries I have: Instead of giving to save the whales or simply sitting on a pile of cash, I’d rather give a little to you because I love you. What do you need help with?

If you don’t care about the person at all: it’s not your fault that you’re poor. It’s just not my problem, beyond the taxes I pay. just try not to commit any crimes. Oh, and do you know anyone that loves you? Ask them for money. If nobody loves you, join salvation army. And definitely check out family services, food stamps, etc.

Nobody can tell anyone to “work harder, stop blaming, oh it’s simple.” Including themselves. IT WILL NOT MAKE A LIGHTBULB APPEAR. Because it’s such an insignificant part of what’s really happening. It’s not easy, NOR is it simple.

Did I stay objective?

No?

Good

2

Maybe if his clarity contained an opaque mask of meaning, his arguments may take a different, hidden turn. What if, his meaning of wealth differed from the traditional? Then it may make perfectly good sense.

3

It’s not a book, it’s three sentences. He says he worked hard. I’m sure if it was an actual biography, the person would surely go into detail about just how difficult some aspects of his life were.

 The rest of your post kinda goes that way too. No mention of luck or charity? It's three sentences.  Besides, plenty of people receive luck or charity their entire lives and stay poor.  What's the difference between lucky people who are poor and lucky people who are rich?  Well, apparently he thinks it's hard work and discipline. That doesn't sound far-fetched to me. 

 Who is this person who doesn't know that the day after you start working hard and curing your bad habits, you might get struck by a bus? Who is this person who doesn't know that a blind person or a retarded person or a hideously deformed person is going to have a harder time getting rich than somebody else without those disadvantages? Who is it that could be mislead in such a way, that the original poster is on the hook for not going into more detail?

That's not stated and implied in the original comment.  If you don't think self-pity or shifting responsibility for your own actions onto others can hold a person back, well....I won't finish that because [i]you know damn well that they can[/i]. Apparently he used to do these things, he stopped, and it helped. 

It's almost as if that last comment about helping others acknowledges that it isn't easy, and puts the lie to all the words you stuck in his mouth since the beginning of your post.  A person isn't contradicting themselves because they make comments that are inconsistent with things they never said in the first place. 

Actually, your advice for the poor person has been 'don't work hard, people who work hard are assholes'.  You've created multiple threads explicitly stating this, Most of them in the Rant House until now, but there it is.  

 It should be plain to anybody that the quotes' advice will help a person out more than yours, so what's the problem?
4

The problem is it will not help anyone who’s poor. It will only help rich people feel better about themselves.

I’m not surprised by your reaction. Partly b/c it’s a deeply polarizing topic, but also b/c I left out a few important things
that I felt were implicit … but you’re holding me accountable for straw manning, and yet you counter by doing the same thing.

I’m not so convinced he feels that way, and it’s not evident in the text. I think he skirts it altogether, he’s looking for the simplest truism about success.
He’s omitting any mention of the fates, of luck, and I think this is wrong. Three sentences, all the more reason to get it right.

I’m not talking about THAT person. I’m talking about the person for who after reading that quote will be further convinced that they are weak & stupid for not succeeding and if they can’t affect change in this manner, it follows their option is to up their self-loathing. This is precisely the point of quote, loathing. It’s actually not meant to help the poor. It’s meant to make the rich feel strong and smart for their accomplishments, and let them justify their loathing for the poor.

It obviously obviously depends. If your own actions ARE due to some imposing outside force, then it IS ok to blame, and neurotic not to. If your situation is pitiable then it would be self-destructive to not feel pity where it’s due. I can understand why the rest of us with money would rather see the poor stop whining and stop pointing fingers, but when we proscribe this as a broad spectrum cure, all we’re doing is outsourcing the whip to the slave, so to speak. You can’t even be troubled to tell them how lame you think they are being, so your dream is that they learn how to tell it to themselves.

I’m saying that by helping others, he’s acknowledging that help is needed. WANTING AND GETTING HELP should be a key part of any aphorism on how to become wealthier. In his, it’s not. In his universe, he not dare EXPECT HELP. He’s only expected to GIVE HELP. Hmm.

Sorry, I need to brush up on my Gamer Studies. Clearly you’re more well versed. My advice to poor “people” as a group is no advice. Catchall advice is more than likely going to be demeaning, useless and cruel, and ultimately self-serving. Any flippant comment about not working was to shock and upend the prevailing wisdom and pave the way for serious discourse. I would give someone advice if asked, on a case by case. I guess I hate prefab proverbs b/c they don’t help, they force a kind of crunch into a conformed value system. I hate it, and I won’t lap it up, as much as I want to like everyone else.

The problem is that the posts advice pisses me off, b/c sooner or later some mother or father is going to spew this to a loved one and it’s patronizing, condescending, ignorant, brainwashed garbage, more so when it’s passed off as a one-size-fits-all diagnosis and treatment for people who aren’t performing well in a modern capitalist consumerist machine. I’m not saying I don’t want the machine, but I don’t lie to myself about what it is and isn’t, I don’t flatter myself that it’s a true meritocracy and that my money is my merit and your lack is your lack of merit.

Why don’t you test the theory, why don’t you tell a poor person to stop blaming others and work harder? You wouldn’t, you’ll know instinctively that your comment is laughable and ironic on so many levels. And instead you’d do a lot of listening, and your advice, my advice, would be better.

And yet sensitive, smart people, wonderful productive, disciplined people like you, are so blind to this fact. That’s where the rage comes – when they start thinking this is their ticket out of having to think, listen and be compassionate. And ultimately their ticket out of helping.

My hope is that people read it as just a guy talking about what was true for him. But we all know that’s not the spirit of the post. It’s meant to touch upon a universal truth. At first it even had me nodding along. Pathetic.

Do what rich people do. (And if you can’t, put a gun in your mouth. That’s what he’s saying without knowing it.)

5 
 How can you possibly say that working hard won't help anybody who's poor?  I was arguing with you when I thought you were merely saying it won't help [i]everybody[/i] who is poor. But now you're making a much more radical statement than I thought you were, and I need you to qualify it a bit so I know you aren't a crazy person.

I think your post is really just a refusal to treat a truism like a truism. Does a stitch in time really save nine, after all?

Maybe they are! Are there no weak and stupid people? If your position is that no poor people are poor because of their own bad choices and bad habits, and my position is that some people are poor for those reasons, then it seems to me the quoted advice will help those people and I’m in the much stronger position. After all, it certainly seems at a glance that some poor people are that way because of reasons they can control. So you have to defend no just an absolutist claim, but you have to defend it in spite of anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

Well, you said it’s from a blog. So either his blog is full of comments that lead you to believe this, or you’re pulling it from the quote you’ve given us alone, in which case it really really looks like you’re making shit up.

"OK" isn't the same thing as "the thing most likely to make you wealthy", which is what we're discussing.

Imagine the Dark Lord locks two people up in a dungeon, because he is an asshole. A spends his life cursing the Dark Lord, and lamenting the fact that he’s been locked in a dungeon. B spends his years coming up with an escape plan, and manages to get away. Later, (maybe in the afterlife, who knows) they are talking about the fact that A spent his whole life in the dungeon. The A says he was in the dungeon because the Dark Lord locked him there. B says A was in the dungeon because he never tried to escape.
What’s important isn’t who is right- they are both right. What’s important is who would you rather be?

 Nothing about his aphorism says he didn't receive any help. But let's assume he didn't.  There's nothing about declaring "Here is what I did, and I did it on my own without help" that precludes one from helping others.  Imagine that prisoner B in the above example goes back to the dungeon, in order to help the other prisoners out by telling them how he managed to escape- all by himself.  What could possibly be wrong with that? I see no inconsistency.  There is nothing in stating that a person did or can do something on their own that precludes helping others to do it- especially if that help comes in the form of assuring people that they can do it on their own.

So you’ve made up a fantasy story about the person who gave this device, hypothetical people who may one day give the advice, and how it will affect their hypothetical children. If it pissed you off so much, how about you make up a better story?

There’s a difference between talking to a poor person in a particular circumstance and talking to the general public. Telling fat people in general to eat less and exercise more is good advice. Telling this one fat person to eat less and exercise more is firstly none of your business, and secondly might not apply- what if they have some particular condition or whatever.

6

Most poor people do work hard, and stay poor. It’s those with nice cushy jobs with much higher wages who are rich, and the way they get those is by having a good education, paid for by their parents. That it’s sometimes, under very rare circumstances, possible to escape poverty by luck or hard work is actually a safety valve that exists to keep the system functioning.

7 
Depends on where you mean, and what you mean by poor.  In the United States, most people in the lowest income bracket are out of it within 10 years or so.  It also depends on what you mean by 'work hard'.  I work hard at arguing endlessly with strangers on the internet, but it isn't going to make me rich.  The job I have right now- if I work super duper hard at this job for the rest of my life, I will always be poor because this job doesn't really have any upward opportunities.  Knowing this, if I want to become wealthy, 'working hard' will entail something other than coming to this job and doing it day after day.
8

Interesting how the Christian teachings of giving all your money to the poor seem to have been forgotten by those who defend Christianity today, who would rather tell the poor to buck their ideas up and get themselves out of poverty.

9

I do tell people who have more than they can handle to give some to help others, and have given up all my possessions a few times (some of you would of loved the philosophy book bonanza).

But there isnt a demand.everyone give up everything and become totally destitute and impoverished… many early apostles and early church fathers worked trades on the side, and some held property, even slaves, in the very earliest communal stages of christianity. Just a strong advocacy within the group for going the extra step towards higher ideals.

This isnt the.christian bashing section of the site, thats reserved for the main forum and religious section.

10 
Changing the subject because I refuted your point?  Classic.  But sure, since you bring it up- it's a widely known fact that conservatives donate substantially more to charity than liberals do, and donations through religious organizations are a big part of the difference.
11

Sorry, I must have missed the part where you refuted my point.

All charities know that they will get more donations from the working classes than from the tight fisted middle classes.

12

He was talking specifically to his disciples (one in particular). He never suggested that all people should give up all they had to someone more poor than they. What would that have really accomplished. Everyone would get to have money every other day and be broke in between. You could build an interesting economic model out of that, but…

His disciples were to live without having any money of their own.

13

It’s also interesting how people try to twist Jesus’s words to back up thir own beliefs.

The actual result of everyone giving all their money away would be to render money useless, with, perhaps, a socialist society as a result. All Jesus’s comments about property and money are socialist.

14

Actually they would be communist. But his goal was not to destroy Money, merely to put it back into perspective. A variety of US Presidents have tried that too. They too get assassinated and by the same people.

The Catholics had no issue with people using money. They just forbid usury - the excessive fabrication of money that had no backing. Today, a Bank can (and does) loan out and charge interest on 80% more money than it actually has… legally. It is a means to manipulate an entire society while the bankers get extremely rich.

If you want to define “Capitalism” as “Usury”, then I would whole heartedly agree with your stance against it.

15

“I was born poor, raised in poverty”

Presumably poor financially and in financial poverty, but let’s not jump to conclusions (see further down).

“and watched my parents die that way.”

Perhaps a simple declaration of fact.

“I worked hard,”

Sound advice.

“eliminated my bad habits,”

Itself that would also be sound advice, but we must ask what bad habits, he in particular, had.

“started doing what the wealthy did. Mostly I stopped blaming others for my lack of wealth. Now I am wealthy,”

He started doing what the wealthy did and now he’s wealthy. Perhaps the correlation of his actions to those of the wealthy increased in direct proportion to his increased wealth, making the implication nothing less obvious and uninstructful than ‘one who’s x does as one who’s x does.’

But, the advice as to not blaming others is sound.

“and help others who want to be helped.”

Now this is strange. He starts with mostly simple statements of fact about his early destitution and his transformation into one of wealth, and then suddenly he mentions his propensity to help, presumably financially, an ambiguously defined type of person. This last line seems to convert the entire statement from a narrative on wealth to a narrative on his transformation into a better person, a moral narrative.

So now we can ask, if he was really meaning to only imply he was born poor, financially, and raised in financial poverty or if he meant to imply it was also a moral poverty he was born into and raised with, accumulating in an act of extreme degeneracy, that of idly watching his parents die morally and financially bankrupt.

So maybe its a story of moral and financial overcoming, cumulating in a desire to ease the burden of others who’re in a similar situation to what he once faced. But, as Gamer makes clear, he makes no mention of mentors and benefactors of his own. If that omission is understandable in that he may have actually had no mentors or benefactors, then his failure to bring to light the source of the profound insights he had onto the nature of moral and financial improvement is not.

16

Every morning I tell my daughter to be good, work hard and be happy. But, that working hard will make the other two much easier. Working hard does not make happiness and goodness happen, but when you work hard, at what ever you choose to work hard at, the satisfaction from a good days work will help along happiness. Goodness often requires keeping your head on a swivel and a lack of resentment for others.

17

Ucc -

You’re smart so I’m not going to pick it apart anymore. Most of your points are right on. IN fact, all are. I’m just glad we started a polemic on a truism.

There’s still one point you’re not getting, or rather, i didn’t make clear.

I’m not saying working hard won’t help. I’m saying that SAYING this to poor people won’t help.
It’s preachy and obvious and conveniently sidesteps so many issues. We need compassion, not slogans.
We tell them to stop blaming, by doing the same thing: blaming them.
We tell them to work hard, and yet we take the easy way out with a one-size-fits-all pill of advice.
We tell them do what rich people do, knowing deep down that rich people don’t work hard, they work smart.
Poor people work hard. And with contradictory advice like this, many will work themselves into the ground.

Ucci: we have to challenge the slogans, the aphorisms, the simple brilliant blameless solutions. They are the problem.
Sorry if I’m doing a bad job, but I know there’s something here.

Stuart knows it. Maybe he knows it better, and is asking better questions. That’s all I could hope for.

Anytime you advise on a complicated problem with a simple solution, it’s condescending and makes things worse.

This isn’t about whether the solution is accurate, it’s about whether the saying is useful.

If you interviewed wealthy people, they’d all think the saying is useful.

No poor people would – they’d laugh. Why? B/c it’s so obvious as to be insulting. And the obviousness is directly proportional to the insult.

I think it’s dangerous to substitute slogans for actual caring. I see it all around me. My guess is you see it, too.

Beyond that, all your internal points make sense and show a clear-glass intelligence, and I know I’m a sloppy writer.
Sometimes we just don’t have time to write shorter and tie up the loose ends. I will try harder.

We want to keep this place fresh, and attacking truisms seems a good place to start. Nothing more dangerous than the blameless truism concealing a dark heart.

18

“I worked hard”

At dealing crack? At laying bricks? At feeling sorry for himself? On his tan?

“eliminated my bad habits,”

Which were what, working on his tan? Feeling sorry for himself? Laying bricks? Dealing crack?

"I started doing what the wealthy did. "

Without further context this can only mean “amassing wealth”.

“Now I am wealthy”.

Ah.

19

I…what? This must be some kind of trick.

You know, I could more or less agree with this. The only reason why I think telling people to work hard is of any worth whatsoever, is because there’s enough of a “You can’t get ahead no matter how hard you try” message out there that there’s some worth in answering it. In a perfect world, “you need to work hard to get ahead” would be so obvious that there indeed would be no point in saying it.

But it was a three line statement! What does the guy say when he actually has the time to sit down and talk to somebody? I realize slogans aren’t the answer to anything, I just don’t see this slogan as any more or less problematic than any other. Well, alright, I see it as less problematic because it’s true.

So, the rich people think one thing and the poor people think another.  If the question is "What does it take to become rich", which of the two groups is in a better position to know the answer?  I do agree with you that 'work hard to get ahead' is so obvious to be insulting, or, as I said above, [i]it should be. [/i] There really are enough people denying this position that I wonder how obvious it is. You seem to me (and maybe I'm off base) to deny it from time to time yourself.  Could nothing in your previous post be construed as a denial that hard work will help get the poor out of poverty? Somebody has got to say the opposite, then.  I mean, I feel like I'm saying insultingly obvious things to people every day...but if they don't know, or if somebody else has convinced them of the opposite, what choice have I?

I guess I don’t see what you mean by ‘substitution’. What leads you to believe that, just because this guy has a slogan, he isn’t also actually helping people with caring and stuff? I mean…he SAYS he is. The fact that he says he’s helping people is one of the things you criticized. I mean yeah, if all he did was go around saying “Word hard, poor people!” and nothing else, I’d say that’s of very limited benefit. But why do you suppose that’s what’s happening here?

You and me both. When I’m writing in a non-hostile environment, I sound about like you. It’s only when I know people will pounce on every mistake I make that I get precise- and I don’t really care for it. I’d much rather just say what I think, in the tone of voice I am thinking it in.

20

Well you can talk like that with me if you want.

I think maybe the guy himself, taken literally, is not in my crosshairs. It’s more the nugget, passed around the internet like a pearl.

I really do feel that poor people get it, they get that they’re supposed to work hard. But for many of them, it means something
different than it means for others. It’s easy to assume it’s them, that they just need to buckle down. But it’s also
dangerous to assume that.

Elliot Smith stabbed himself in the heart once. His music was so beautiful, it was almost as if he was driven to create extreme beauty
to go to war against the extreme ugliness he suffered through in all things, his addictions, his depression, etc.

Telling a poor person to work harder could very well be like telling old Elliot to cheer up.

Last year we spent a lot of time preaching to our brother. Self-reliance, grit, hard work, resolve, doing what others do.
He’s dead now, too. Heroin overdose. We spend a lot of time thinking about how we would have LIKED to say:
what’s it LIKE being you? And then listening, and listening and listening. He might still be dead, but at least we
wouldn’t have to remember all the preachy, obvious. ridiculous advice.

His brain was rewired by heroin and other drugs. Every day was hell. He was 24. It was a problem that started a long
time ago. Low self esteem, mistakes in school and at home, genetic lottery, etc.

We can expound on tough love, rock bottom, recovery, etc., but all that goes out the window when someone dies.
You start to glimpse the universe inside that person, the compass that they alone have, the chessboard knotted with
unfolding sagas that you can’t begin to unravel. We gave him every possible advice and none worked.

I once took a homeless person to lunch. I offered him carte blanche, filet mignon. All he wanted was some greasy wings.
I let him eat his foul wings and listened to his story. There was nothing I could tell him. He seemed like a monk to me.

If you meet a poor person, you’ll have to decide on your own how to handle them, how to judge them.
Maybe this thread will stick in your mind, maybe it won’t.

I’m not defeatist, i don’t want to be fatalist or passive in the face of danger and adversity. I believe we should fight
and fight rationally and that life can be beautiful - it’s up to each of us. I just don’t know quite the right way to help people…I have to think about it.