Asking in good faith: data to back you up? Just my anecdata, growing up living in apartments with 8 siblings at one point, many friends who grew up in foster homes and trailer parks - maybe 1 or 2 I could recall who were “doing everything right” but still poor, and that seemed primarily because they were on disability and elderly.
The rest? Spent every paycheck, griped about immigrants and how the govt takes too much, bought lottery tickets, tons of toys at Christmas. One couple even lost had his kids taken away by CPS, was told they’d get them back once they could move out of the hotel they were living in and demonstrate they could stick to a budget - they spent their tax refund on a used Mustang.
Perhaps there are plenty of people who save what they can, make smart financial decisions, and STILL struggle in poverty. That’s not the case in my experience, but I’d love to be wrong. The hardest part about escaping may just be having no clue how to, or just plain refusing to implement it.
Ditto. My family would spend all of their savings on Christmas presents, which would generally never exceed 500 dollars. They felt it was beneath them to follow the advice I gave them from early retirement blogs. My mothers partner bought an expensive riding lawnmower when my little brother needed many of his baby teeth treated due to baby bottle carries (totally preventable if you follow the advice of almost any baby book). He was too proud to sign his name to get free dental care for my brother so he suffered/had teeth pulled. My mother would super glue a tooth of hers back into her mouth and get reoccurring infections and pay for the antibiotics instead of getting it properly taken care of. My mother will be government assistance of the rest of her life. She has taken no initiative to learn a skill/find a job. I can imagine her working as a receptionist or Walmart greeter but beyond this there are just some people like her who are too broken from abuse/health problems or have a very low IQ. I escaped poverty/child homelessness/covert sexual abuse. Moving to Silicon Valley to work in bioengineering was extremely difficult. I know no one else in real life who came from a similar background who has made it this far.
Caplan is very right wing ("the homeless still smile!"). The talk was still okish, but the points of view come from one side and could use some balance.
Blaming poverty on "impulsive sex" and leaving blameless the policies of limiting birth control and freedom of choice is a pretty myopic point of view.
A fair amount of libertarians are right wing. This is true even if one supports something or another that happens to not be stereotypically right wing.
The rest? Spent every paycheck, griped about immigrants and how the govt takes too much, bought lottery tickets, tons of toys at Christmas. One couple even lost had his kids taken away by CPS, was told they’d get them back once they could move out of the hotel they were living in and demonstrate they could stick to a budget - they spent their tax refund on a used Mustang.
Perhaps there are plenty of people who save what they can, make smart financial decisions, and STILL struggle in poverty. That’s not the case in my experience, but I’d love to be wrong. The hardest part about escaping may just be having no clue how to, or just plain refusing to implement it.