I’ve seen the same success story you have lived, and HOPE was what your folks had that is the result of responsibility and self discipline; delayed gratification.
I see, all day long, this woman’s story. I have a business on a busy boulevard that sits between the cheapest flophouse motel and the nearest minimart/gas station. The tenants get their beer, cigarettes, nachos, soda fountain drinks, etc. from the most expensive source while they beg, scam and steal. These poor people have come begging to me with an 18 pack of beer under one arm, and their current sperm receptacle under the other as though I was born yesterday. THEIR kind of poor is terminal, and is what the poor girl in this thread explained. They don’t have HOPE to experience better, so they take instant pleasure every time, regardless of what an hour from now will repay in consequences.
And I think she brings out an interesting point that she also doesn’t consider.
While the rich may take the poor for granted, ie not thank them, not understand their stresses, the problems they face, the job issues facing them and such,
she forgets not everyone better off was always that way, and may understand that life and their issues,
and further, the poor have little understanding of the stresses of a ceo, of an analyst, of a middle manager who can be fired pretty easy if things go south, or can be outsourced or replaced by a temp. Have a mortgage hanging over their head. Car payments. College payments. Health payments. These are people expected to pay for stuff. They aren’t poor enough to be written off because they have nothing. They have something to lose.
Just about every tier has stressers and their own pressures. She has the idea that it’s just so much easier, and in some ways it is, but more is expected too. More responsibilities and more demands. They can’t sit around doing nothing, smoking and drinking and eating junk food. They have to be planning long term.