I have no idea of this applies to all low-income people, but I certainly known people who would have trouble paying their rent during the year, but would later spend their tax refund on a trip to hawaii (from california) rather than save it for a rainy day. I went to university with a student who couldn't afford a $30 calculator for class, but would buy a $200 bottle of booze while on a night out for her friend's birthday.

Pretending that none of the poor have maladaptive behaviors is not helpful to them. There are also many other reasons for poverty, many of which are not under that person's control - but that makes it more important to control what you can

"Black rednecks and white liberals" by Thomas Sowell has a lot more details about cultural traits associated with persistent vs transient poverty

Isn't trying to explain poverty by referring to two of your friends a massive overprojection?

There are indeed times when a problem could be solved on the higher level by managing resources better, if you actually have the hinterland. Yet not all problems are about the superstructure you built on physical realities, and sometimes you simply don't have enough money no matter how you budget, or not enough smart people no matter how you place them in an org. chart.

Casting every problem down to a problem of management & choice seems to me a lazy excuse to escape the reality.

I agree in part, but completely ignoring the management and choice aspects to whatever greatest extent that they are present is also forfeiting one of the best local responses.

I think that’s where the Starbucks and avocado toast tropes come from. They’re not 100% right, but they’re surely not 100% wrong either.

I work with engineers who are making 6-figures and struggling with money or on course for a poor retirement. For those people, it’s 97+% choices IMO.

ok, now tell us how that applies to the family with 3 kids where both parents work and rent is 70% of their income?

It applies by the greatest extent possible being zero, which is why I phrased it that way.

did they know rent would be 70% of their income when they decided to have their first child? their third?

This is pretending a world is perfect. If pregnancy were easy to prevent, folks would have done it well before modern times. But that simply isn't the case. It doesn't matter if they knew the rent was that high, and it isn't like folks can avoid this in all areas.

Expecting a couple to never have sex is unreasonable and pregnancy cannot always be prevented. In some areas, access to abortion is abysmal, though in some areas, a woman can get the day after pill for emergencies - but that's hardly prevention.

As far as pregnancy prevention: The best prevention is actually male sterilization. Condoms break. Every single prevention method for women have a failure rate, including sterilization methods. For hormonal birth control, lots of things affect it, including some medicines.

And this is all assuming folks can afford medical care and prescriptions, which you need for most forms of birth control. I'm not sure anywhere in the US will mail condoms to you for free (unsure of how well spermicide alone performs or if they still sell a sponge for women). Heck, a young woman who doesn't want children cannot generally get sterilized, insurance often doesn't pay for it, it isn't cheap, and IIRC you need time off.

okay, I concede there are some parts of the world where family planning is actually pretty difficult. but think about the chain of things that have to go wrong to have an unplanned child in most wealthy countries.

you have to improperly use (or eschew entirely) the several forms of birth control available. you don't need insurance to buy condoms, and they are not particularly expensive. even if you can't afford to buy hormonal birth control, an IUD, or condoms outright, you can often get them for free or very cheap through planned parenthood. if you are even using one of these correctly, your risk of pregnancy in a given year is <= 2%. if you combine them, the risk is well under 1%. if you mess up somewhere along the way or are one of those spectacularly unlucky people who gets pregnant anyway, abortion is still legal (for now, at least) in all 50 US states. once again, you can get this for free or a greatly reduced price through planned parenthood.

if everything I mentioned above has gone wrong and you actually bring a child into the world that you did not plan for, you can still put the child up for adoption. the demand for newborns is quite a bit higher than the number that are actually available for adoption.

I can easily believe there are a lot of parents out there who had good plans for raising their children that went sideways due to truly unforeseeable circumstances. I think there are also a lot of parents who chose to have children without having any idea how they would support them. what I don't believe is that there is a meaningful number of parents in wealthy countries who are stuck supporting children they had no intention of raising.

You have to afford birth control, which isn't always an easy feat. I've lived plenty of places where, being poor, I couldn't afford to travel to planned parenthood.

Lots of folks get pregnant on these: Most folks can't take birth control pills perfectly. (I Personally cannot use hormonal birth control at all without major side effects, and wanted to be sterilized - but that's not generally an option for childless women)

Abortion is legal, sure: But it isn't free either and in some states, it takes travel and things to get there.

Expecting folks to put their child up for adoption is simply cruel. Besides, we should look at more than financial viability for folks. I'd rather help folks raise whatever children they have than sell children off (taxpayer funded is the way to go) and I'd much rather foster homes and adoption of older children be encouraged.

Maybe they were high earners who had any number of setbacks. There are plenty of ways anyone can stumble financially.

Most people also make financial mistakes. The people who had help, or enough slack to recover shouldn't look down on the ones who don't.

What is wrong with a poor retirement? What is wrong with enjoying life today? What if your plan is simply never to retire?

>False theories of poverty spread by people like yourself are the reason more people don't get the right advice to get out.

What exactly is your theory of poverty, if you don't mind me asking? That impoverished folk should be better at saving, and then they wouldn't be impoverished?

Let’s agree that both forms exist. There are definitely people with very little financial literacy living paycheck to paycheck, in constant fear of an unexpected cost, that could have adjusted their lifestyle to save a small amount over time into a meaningful nest egg. There are also people who just make less money than even a spartan life costs.

It’s ignorant to assume that all poverty is the result of poor decisions and an unwillingness to save, but equally ignorant to pretend that doesn’t exist at all.