Two Views on Poverty

~ Laura

For some reason, I'm reading a ton on personal posts on poverty today. Here's one from a guy who had to overcome a lot to get to grad school. A totally different take on the topic from a mom who's struggling. 

Published by Laura

7 thoughts on “Two Views on Poverty”

  1. I’m teaching in China right now, and last night, I had a fascinating conversation with them about what it means to be poor in the U.S.
    http://jenkinsroscoe.blogspot.com/2012/03/on-poverty.html
    Hard to explain to students who are getting a MA that people in the US who make more than they expect to make when they graduate are considered poor. Don’t get me wrong – I believe they are – but I don’t think I could make them get it.

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  4. It might help to explain to the Chinese what you can and cannot buy with a particular US income.
    I have a bad feeling about the guy’s prospects. He says he has student loan debt up to his eyeballs and I suspect his view of his post-graduate school prospects are much too rosy. Unless he is absolutely amazing and at a super department, “there is an obvious path to material security for me” doesn’t sound realistic. It may be that he is the “before” and Jenn Mattern is the “after.”

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  5. “I’m working on a way to impoverish him again so he’ll make an updated one.”
    His first book got a movie option for some pretty sweet bucks last year, so unless the plan involves hypnotizing him to give all the dosh to you me and Laura, I don’t think it’ll happen.

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  6. I think the grad student is also way too deterministic about outcomes.
    “Social capital reasserted itself. Privilege did what it does. At the very moments when my life was most broken, the vast advantages of being born white and male, to educated and caring parents, who read to me and told me I was good, who connected behavior to consequences and advised me to live life consciously– all these realities quietly worked in my favor.”
    I don’t think he’s giving himself nearly enough credit for climbing back. There is nothing inevitable about coming up again–lots of people (even young, smart, formerly healthy white people from good families) manage to damage themselves badly enough that they go down and stay down.

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  7. Doug, making sure Ron Paul is our next president should be sufficient. There may be some collateral damage.

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