> "the poor are trading years in the future for pleasantness now"

> This also describes how a lot of people are poor.

I suppose we should be cheered by your qualification "a lot of," since it seems to indicate that you at least have to acknowledge your growing awareness that some, if not the majority nor vast majority, of the poor are there for structural reasons, rather than shortsightedness.

What of those who are there for reasons other than shortsightedness? What of those for whom shortsightedness is a result of mental health issues? What of those who can see ahead, but see no bright future and are making rational choices in the face of that?

Fortunately, having qualified your remarks in the way you have, you have opened yourself up to a responsibility to think critically about those whom you have dismissed. I wish you the best in that.

"you have opened yourself up to a responsibility to think critically about those whom you have dismissed"

I don't think I dismissed anyone. People make bad decisions on things they are in control of and it makes them more poor. The rich have more self control -- maybe not. Those with good self control tend to be better off -- definitely.

I'm all for the argument that smoking is a rational choice for someone without a lot of money. There is also the compelling argument that poor impulse control, being poor and smoking have a strong correlation. Maybe even as a common cause for poverty and smoking.

Having watched friends spend entire paychecks drinking, smoking, having unprotected sex (with the inevitable consequences), buying new camaros at blistering interest rates, fleetingly fashionable clothes -- I somehow think that my choice to eat mountains of rice and beans and live with roommates somehow had something to do with my relative success.

Sure, you can tell some people it's not their fault, but absolving everyone of responsibility for their choices is not helping them at all.

If you actually believe this, you have never been poor.

Perhaps not all people are poor because of bad decisions, but perhaps at least some are.

No, it really doesn't. Depending on one's discount function, such a trade is perfectly rational.

This thinking also reeks of the 'just world fallacy', in which the predicament of the poor is deemed to be a deserved consequence of their moral failings.

No, being born into poor families with poor job opportunities in poor areas is how a lot of people are poor.

You should expand your horizons.

Maybe those are one and the same thing---being born into a poor family, you inherit the attitudes that kept that family poor. At least, I expect that's a contributing factor. Obviously there's more to it.