“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
-The people that think chronic poverty is always a choice.
They have to believe it is a choice. If not, they are equally at risk of losing everything and becoming homeless and that terrifies most people. Picard’s “you can do everything right and still fail” is not something most people want to know. No one wants to be impoverished, homeless, sick, mentally unwell. Instead they find it comforting to believe that this is happening to others simply because that person made the wrong choice. The same happens for success. The one who make it would have everyone believe that if they made the exact same choices, they too would be rich and that opportunity, chance, luck have nothing to do with it.
Also, many people simply don’t want to acknowledge the safety nets that they have had surrounding them. Ever moved back in with your parents after a breakup or because you couldn’t afford the rent? Ever got a lead on a job because you knew someone who already worked there?
People tend to think of safety nets as government handouts, but the reality is that the vast majority of safety nets are social. And some people don’t have strong social circles (like family or friends) to rely on.
Well said.
This comes from the same mindset that states:
“If you don’t like the interest rate on your credit card, just pay it off and close it”
“I am a self made man. I started with nothing, and had to take a small 10 million dollar loan from my father to get started”
“If your job doesn’t pay you enough, then quit and get one that does”
People are sooooo out of touch with reality.
my favorite is “Just take risks, and success will find you”
Yeah, its real easy to take risks when you parents worth 45 hojillion dollars, who can throw a million bucks at every one of your dumb ideas until one sticks without even noticing as more than a rounding error.
For the average american, if they take a risk and fail, their life is utterly ruined forever.
I usually counter those arguments with “So how come you’re not a multimillionaire?” “How come you’re not (CEO, Foreman, successful business operator, position of leadership)?” “How come you didn’t buy your house with cash?” Etc.
They feed us this shit in our media for decades, and then people conduct studies and find that the indoctrination is working.
Most of the modern media I consumed in my lifetime had this basic message behind it. Surprise, surprise, people believe the shit they read, view, and listen to even if the evidence isn’t there to support it.
The inescapable conclusion to draw from that is most people are fucking stupid.
Edit: from not form
70% of Americans still believe angels exist, so yeah… We’ve got a long fucking way to go.
Well, yeah, they’ve been indoctrinated for decades to think Money = Merit by those who want them to think that Rich People are only Wealthy because they’re superior to the rest (which is a hilariously false idea given that almost the Wealthy come from Wealthy or at least Upper Middle Class families - they were born at or past the finish line in the race for success, not all the way back like the rest), and the other side of that exact same coin is the idea that it’s the fault of the Poor for being poor.
They have to, it’s the only way they can justify the system they love so much. If poverty is a systemic failure, then they might have to change something, but if poverty is a personal choice, all’s fair.
About 6 in 10 Americans say personal choices are a “major factor” in why people remain in poverty, while just under half say unfair systems are a major factor and about 4 in 10 blame lack of government support.
I think a lot of people in the comments are acting as if there is only one cause, and individual choices cannot be it because it doesn’t account for everything. Admittedly, the headline does frame it as if people believe it is the sole cause, rather than just the most popular. Personally, I would say both personal choices and unfair systems are major factors.
For lack of Government support, I am not sure how I would answer. The government actually does spend a lot on assistance for the poor relative to other countries, but I believe it is not done so efficiently to lift people out of poverty. It is very reactive and focuses on treating symptoms of core issues, so you end up with a lot of people in a constant state of being just barely able to keep their head above the water. It’s largely half measures that end up with worse outcomes and being more expensive in the long run than proper investment into making things better would be.
Individual choices can land you in poverty but poverty does not exist because of individual choices. Ergo, there will ALWAYS be people in poverty no matter what they do who got there for no fault of their own. This is a social issue that should be viewed through a social lense. Individual choice is irrelevant to the existence of poverty. Yes some people are impoverished because of things they did but poverty should not exist and nothing you do should put you in such a position.
Besides, capitalism has many incentives to keep people impoverished. Desperate people are far more willing to accept dangerous, shitty jobs with low pay if it means meeting just a few of their needs. They are also great for breaking strikes. I see poverty as a condition imposed upon the people and one of the greatest crimes of our time
Add in the fact that most welfare literally requires you to remain under a poverty threshold to continue receiving those meager benefits and you get the results we have. If you are disabled and receive disability payments you cannot work or you lose your coverage. There is an income cap of something insane like $1000/month for disability recipients. Its a deliberately evil system that forces families to divorce their sick spouse simply to allow them the access to insurance benefits they otherwise would be disqualified from.
How can anyone honestly recover from that? You make $1 more this month and the half of your income that paid for food and rent is gone, now youre worse off than someone on welfare just because you “arent poor enough.” Its like the exact myth they tell about tax brackets only it actually exists and happens to people in real life all the fucking time.
The thing goes even further back than that:
- The poorer you are born the more choices are bad choices for you because you either can’t afford them or if they fail can’t recover from them and the whole system is far more likely to punish you for it.
If you’re a scion of the rich you can chose to be a totally fucked up Nazi-loving ketamine user and still be wildly successful by this society’s metrics, but try, say, going into the Arts as the child of working class parents with zero connections in that environment and see how well that turns out.
Having genuine Options without massive risks of horrible outcomes is only for rich people.
And this is without going into the whole Mental Health domain and how people who live a life of strife are for more likely than the rest to tend to seek to escape if only for a short while by taking stuff they shouldn’t really be taking.
The overall idea behind this article, headline and poll is that we have constructed poverty in our society. We have made a system that creates homeless people and children starving.
It’s a false dichotomy created by the wealthy that our only options in life are to fail or succeed, if we all really wanted it bad enough we could build a system that guarantees basic needs and rights for every last person. It’s not personal choice that lands people in poverty, it’s the fact that poverty is allowed to exist at all.
The government actually does spend a lot on assistance for the poor relative to other countries but I believe it is not done so efficiently to lift people out of poverty
I mean, we’ll spend $200k employing a handful of life coaches to tell poor people they just need to work harder and submit to any abuses bosses want to inflict on them instead of giving poor people $200 to pay their bills, but I wouldn’t even call that “assistance for the poor,” it’s just subsidized hassling. When it comes to actual tangible assistance for poor people (e.g. nutrition healthcare housing etc.) I think we’re actually very skimpy.
I haven’t heard of hiring life coaches for poor people but I agree that would be an example of inefficient spending. I meant things like healthcare. The US spends more on healthcare than any other country, and so when a government program like Medicare or Medicaid covers a bill that means a very large subsidy. College is likewise exceptionally expensive, so need-based scholarships become a big expense.
If there was more of a focus on making these affordable in the first place, the cost for each covered individual would go down for taxpayers. This would free up the budget to expand coverage and offer more quality assistance in other places. Instead, it’s just a reactive policy of paying whatever the bill is when someone does qualify. This creates pressure to restrict who qualifies and what’s covered to keep prices down, while hospitals and colleges get away with charging absurd amounts since the beneficiary doesn’t feel the cost individually.
I would be surprised if the percentage was much lower in any country experiencing a surge of the far right currently
The only reason they can gain any ground is there’s a large contingent of people who have been conned into blaming others for what’s actually caused by the failings of the economic structures built around them
Problem is the choices are often choices made before you’re even an adult. Even more difficult for those from unstable households and those that were refugees. Children that have to take care of their parents or siblings.
The there’s how the right choice one decade cane be the bad choice the next. So you commit to work on like bioengineering or medical research, spend a very long time in school to get there, and it goes to shit once you hit the workforce. When you were a kid accountants were in high demand so so many went into it and then the finance department went from 200 people to 10 because of software improvements. Computer related and law degrees today. Trades as well where you can find work, but there’s so many that you don’t necessarily make a great wage hourly especially adjusted for benefits
So if everyone made the right decision individually based on the data current to them or what the data says to go for in 5 years when they could complete school/training, whatever it is will have so many people that the field is saturated and something else is the short staffed high paying career. So the correct decision is a moving target. Communal correct decision would be a strong social safety net
Individual bad decision is almost always deciding work has to be a passion. The 8+ hours at work has to be a part of your joy. Most people don’t get that. Those that accept that making good money may mean doing a job they don’t like have a better shot at financial stability. Not guaranteed, just a better shot
No wonder their politicians are shit.
The ignorance of opulence
Ergo, most American adults are uneducated or willfully ignorant.
It’s more comforting for people to think it’s a choice they make rather than something completely out of their control that may happen to them at any time. And it comes with a bonus that they feel superior “making” the right choices in life.
The proliferation of Randian Objectivism as a personal belief system has damned society.
