Yesterday, I wrote about how our attitudes affected our ability to actually find what we wanted – in particular, with regards to money and sex. And some people had this to say:

“What I don't like about the ‘anything's possible’ philosophy is that it can be used against people who really do face significant barriers. Being born in a refugee tent in Darfur is a very different experience from being born into a middle class family in Canada.”

“This post is relevant mostly to the middle and maybe working class. People stuck in generational poverty? Something else.”

And to a certain extent, I would agree. Certainly, where you’re born puts a cap on what you can achieve; in war-torn places, sometimes the difficulties of simply staying alive will occupy most of your time. Someone like me, who was raised in an upper-class family, will have access to more capital and opportunity than someone raised in Watts, and thus will be able to get richer a lot quicker.

Yet I don’t think that negates what I said. I think that poor folks who are raised to see money will probably be richer than their peers, and have a much better chance at escaping generational poverty.

The problem? Almost nobody in their peer group can teach them how to see it.

See, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of removing all responsibility from poor people everywhere. Yes, the philosophy of “see it, get it” can certainly be used as a punishment for people who really do face significant barriers, and frequently is by the Republicans – but the converse attitude, often pushed by the Democrats, seems to be, “Well, if you were born poor, you’re fucked, and ain’t a thing you can do but wait for the government to come and pull you out of it.”

I think part of the problem with poverty is that when you put a lot of poor folks together, the natural tendency is to gravitate towards a collective attitude of helplessness. (Just as when you put a lot of rich bastards together, the natural tendency is to gravitate towards smugness.) It’s hard for people to get along when they’re saying to each other, “You know, Phil, the reason you live in a shit apartment is you have shit work ethics. If you stopped calling in sick every third day and forcing the supervisor to ride you about everything, maybe you’d do a little better.”

That’s tough. People get mad. It’s a lot easier to console them by bitching that their bosses suck and we’re all great workers, and the world is down on us. Which is, frankly, pretty easy to do because often their bosses do suck and the world is down on them. And so they concentrate on the things they can’t change, while ignoring the things they might be able to change.

Plus, the interesting thing about making it is that it involves more than just working hard. I wound up living with some folks who were genuinely poor – as in, “$9,000 in an entire year’s worth of income for two working folks” – for a couple of years, and the funny thing was that I noticed some real differences between the guy who was raised by rich parents and the folks who were raised by poor parents.

These folks were awesome at work. They showed up on time, did their job well, and often went the extra mile. In terms of accomplishing what they were supposed to do, they did it spectacularly… Which is when I suddenly realized that merely “Doing your job” was not enough.

Part of the attitude was the job. I carry with me an attitude that my job owes me more than a paycheck – it owes me a career path. Whenever I’m somewhere, I’m constantly thinking, “Is this still putting me where I want to be five years from now? Where can I go from here? What am I learning for future jobs? Is this place financially healthy enough that I should continue to stay here, or is it gonna collapse from under me?” And that was just as true when I was working for near-minimum wage at Waldenbooks and Grand Union grocery store as it was when I worked at Borders headquarters as a buyer.

The folks I lived with? They rarely thought about skills or working up, and even when their boss was pretty notoriously crappy, they never thought about looking for another job until they got fired from this one. They had a dedication to a paycheck, and what I perceived to be an almost dysfunctional relationship with their superiors.

They didn’t plan their jobs. They just got them. Even when they had time to look for other jobs, the moment they were done with work they were off work.

They didn’t plan their money, either. I’m paranoid to the extreme – at the nearly-young age of 38, I have life insurance in case I die so that Gini can pay off the house. Even when I wasn’t saving money because I didn’t have enough to save, I felt the crushing weight of fear upon me that damn, I should be saving cash because bad things will happen.

My friends didn’t feel this pressure. They had the attitude of, “If it happens, it happens.” There were often times they could have avoided calamities by doing a bit of paperwork here, preparing a little here, and they didn’t, because the future was not a controllable substance to them. To them, the future came in waves, as unpredictable as the sea, and it often smashed them down for no reason.

Me, I could see the storms coming. I often said, “Look, you need to do X or Y is going to happen,” and they agreed in theory but never in practice, putting it off for another day. Then Y happened and they were genuinely flabbergasted.

If I were in their situation, I’d still be poor – I make no bones about that. I’m not telling you I’d be making $110,000, living on my yacht. But I’m almost certain I wouldn’t be as poor, and I’d be a little better insulated against the random shocks of life simply because I’d plan.

(Plus, there’s often a distinction between “doing what you’re paid to do” and “doing what makes your boss happy,” and the latter is far more important than the former. But I can’t say for sure what these folks did.)

Now, obviously, one poor couple does not make a coherent study. But I’ve seen some of those behaviors cropping up again in the poorer folks I’ve known, including some formerly-rich folks who fell down along the way. As such, I think that attitude does play some significant part in your personal wealth.

Here’s the thing, though: I don’t think of my behaviors as being something I stumbled upon because I was so incredibly smart. Note that I said “Rich people tend towards smugness,” and just as people in bad situations like to believe that things are out of their control, people in good situations want all the credit.

So let me say it loud and clear: I lucked out. I was taught these ideas by a culture that believed in these things, and these attitudes turned out to be helpful. Which is why I think on some level, “wealth” is a meme that’s transmitted to others, a collection of indoctrinated responses that actually help one collect and retain money.

The interesting thing is that I probably didn’t retain it as well. I’m an income level below my parents, and I never finished college because I was lazy. To a large extent, I’m a failed memetic transfer, a step down on a ladder of success.

I think one of the issues that would actually help to get rid of poverty is to define those attitudes and approaches that actually help, and do our best to transmit them to the poor. It won’t magically solve everything, of course – anyone who thinks that any one solution can turn an urban blight into a paradise is a simpleton – but at least some of poverty is due to a lack of understanding about money. The reason so many folks are losing their houses right now is because they didn’t understand the first thing about buying a house, and purchased something on a crappy loan that they should have known they couldn’t afford.

That, at least, is something that we can fix.

I said earlier that poor societies tend towards an attitude of helplessness. That’s not always true. Some poor societies manage to keep a positive attitude – which is awesome. They keep telling everyone that we’re gonna get out of this, we’re going to make this place better, we’re going to improve what we can and fuck the world if it tries to stop us.

That’s a tough attitude to keep in the face of helplessness. Helplessness is always easier, because it doesn’t sound like blame when phrased the wrong way. It’s a real hard thing to say, “Yes, the cards are stacked against you, but there is a way to play the game to maximize your chances.”

‘Course, that’s just all my opinion. You know how it is.

(Tell me I'm full of it)