
Why Do Some Poor Kids Thrive? - pmcpinto
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/kids-poverty-baltimore/476808/?single_page=true
======
pjmorris
Programming was my identity project. I suppose it still is. I grew up US rural
South poor. My childhood started well, but went down hill to the point that,
by high school, my single mom was raising three kids in a 2 bedroom single-
wide trailer. I aced standardized tests, but my initial idea of what to do
after high school was to keep my dishwasher job. Mom, the guidance counselors
and our support system weren't of much help. Luckily, mom taught us about
reading and libraries, and, luckily, the local community college offered
scholarships to the top 10% of local high school students if they stuck
around. CC was a nice change of pace from doing dishes, and connected me to
programming, which led to a state school, a BSCS, a career, an MSCS, and,
shortly, a PhD. My main excuse for the PhD is to be able to give back as I've
been given to. The identity project was important, and not something I'd have
been able to afford without help from society. I think I've paid much more in
taxes as a developer than I'd have as a dishwasher/cook, so society's 'hand
up' wasn't just a 'hand out'. I'm sure not everyone can follow the same path,
but I'm sure glad the path was there, and I'm hopeful we'll see fit to leave
paths like it out there.

~~~
ruairidhwm
Very impressive, I hope things are working out for you :)

~~~
pjmorris
Thanks. Some days better, some days worse, the end of the story has yet to be
written.

------
rdtsc
I grew up poor. Not Africa poor, but ex Soviet Union falling apart poor. One
thing that made a huge difference was parents who sacrificed their career to
make sure they were home with me after school. They encouraged education. Mom
never finished more than 7 grades of school, but she saved money for and for
the 8th of March, equivalent to mothers day (oh the irony) got me cheapest ZX
Spectrum clone we could find. It was history after that, but it was just an
example of what I think made a huge difference for me.

~~~
galfarragem
To raise kids, money beyond a low threshold is not relevant, providing a good
education is.

Money, or better, social capital gets importance when these kids become young
adults and have chosen career paths with less demand.

~~~
microcolonel
I've done well without "an education". I think it's probably more complex than
that.

~~~
hackuser
In a world of 7 billion people, there are always millions of exceptions. But
it's beyond a doubt that there's a very strong relationship between education
and economic success and personal happiness.

------
josh_carterPDX
This makes so much sense to me. I came from a single parent home and watched
my Mom work two jobs just to ensure my Brother and I didn't feel like we were
poor, but we both knew we didn't have money.

When I graduated high school I joined the Navy to get college money. I believe
that through the journey of going through adversity, it has taught me to
appreciate everything I've worked for. It also drives and motivates me to
build a foundation for my kids so they can have a childhood they look back on
fondly.

We're all products of our environment. Whether it's rising above it to be
better or working to build a lasting legacy, we all want to look back in 40
years and appreciate the things we've accomplished in our lives.

Sorry if that got all soapbox-y, but this is a huge thing for me. I wasn't
born into money and never had a network of rich friends. And that's ok with
me. Because looking back in my nearly 40 years I don't regret any of it. It's
led me to what I'm doing today and I take nothing for granted.

------
init
I'm one of those poor kids who got out. My identity project was programming.
An friend gave me a an old noisy Pentium II that became my best friend. I
spent countless hours, day and night, learning to program. Skipped prom to
program, dodged sports in high school, never attended parties. Programming was
my identity. I started working before starting college. The prohibitive cost
of college made me drop out to focus on my career on the first opportunity I
had.

My current job as a software engineer pays well. I live a comfortable life and
can afford things I never had but my lack of college degree also causes me to
have a very bad impostor syndrome.

Maybe I should save up enough to go back to college and graduate.

~~~
unclebucknasty
College doesn't "cure" imposter syndrome. I'm not sure what does.

~~~
eropple
For me, success. I started being much more willing to believe the projection
of confidence that I had learned to do in order to sell myself as capable and
competent once I realized that I was coming in above the level promised by
that projection in the first place.

It really is "fake it 'til you make it." But in my experience that does go
away, a lot, once you can really say to yourself that you've made it (even
just a little).

~~~
unclebucknasty
But, success is actually a prerequisite for imposter syndrome. It's the
haunting feeling that you don't deserve that success and that you will be
somehow "discovered".

One thing I can relate to though is working really hard for fear of
underperforming or proving to be under qualified, only to learn later that
others felt I was performing exceedingly well.

~~~
eropple
Success is a prerequisite, but what I was trying to say is that sustained
success--what I use to validate that, no, really, I am walking my talk--can
drive it away.

------
tdaltonc
The answer from the article: "... kids who found what researchers call an
“identity project,” essentially a passion or hobby that helped motivate them,
... onto college or decent jobs. ... [however] Many of the kids who [had
passion projects, still] veered off track. [They] wanted to get out of their
parents’ house so badly that they took whatever job they could, before they
had the chance to get the education or training to excel further."

So the policy implications seem clear. Enable more poor kids to find passion
projects. Once they have one, get them in to a living situation that, though
meager, gives them the space to pursue their passion. Honestly, sounds like an
apprenticeship or graduate school model, but for much younger people.

------
MrFoof
I grew up poor. Literally across the street from the projects, which we
absolutely qualified for, but didn't because my parents refused to for a
myriad of reasons (mostly to avoid shame). We were Section 8 for the first 15
years of my life.

My parents valued education in theory, but not as much in practice. My father
learned the hard way and redeemed himself in his 20s -- managing to get into
the Army Corp of Engineers after initially dropping out of high school. They
pounded the importance of education into my sister and I when I was very
young, but that seemed to taper off when I was about 9 or 10, when we were
left to our own devices.

How did I thrive? Simple. At around the age of 12 I realized that they were
mostly idiots. They made terrible financial decisions (which they're paying
for now, as they have no retirement savings), my father -- mostly working in
factories/landfills -- made no career moves (on account of my mother
discouraging him at every opportunity), and my mother simply parroted the
advice spewed by the TV, but did the exact opposite. My goal was to avoid
ending up like them at all costs -- ending up in a crappy part of a city 50
years in decline with "a good job" being something like working in a furniture
store, and being complacent with it.

I was fortunate in my early 20s (after I dropped out of a state college in
which I felt I was getting a bad deal for my $) to work with an older QA
engineer who took a similar path. He had it much worse than I when he grew up,
but he could empathize with my upbringing, as it felt all too familiar to him.
At the time he felt I was getting a raw deal from my employer, so he would
invite me over on the weekends to have lunch with him and his wife (and his
daughters, who were my age) to drive into all our heads on how to better make
informed decisions about our current state at a given moment.

Solid, extremely pragmatic advice from the two of them. As well as painful
examples of mistakes both of them made along the way, to show they were far
from perfect themselves. Much of it focusing on the long term even if it
involves temporarily stunting yourself in the short term, or cutting ties with
people you may have had relationships with but were ultimately toxic. Some of
the advice was certainly hard to follow in practice, but I'm still to find a
case where it wasn't the best move I could've made, and regretted not
following some of it earlier.

------
stretchwithme
My identity project was not being poor.

So I was a cashier and a filed bank teller. I delivered newspapers. I washed
cars and delivered tires and packages. I washed windows and cleaned doctors
offices. Then eventually went to college and got into software development.

It baffles me when some people are surprised that its possible to work your
way out of poverty. That's what most sane people do when they have the
opportunity to do so.

Of course, if you have a culture that deters hard work and self development,
that makes it a lot hard.

Its also harder when people say that environment determines the outcome
instead of individual determination. The truth is its both, but telling people
their effort is not what makes the difference is creating a environment that
does not encourage the effort required to succeed. The idea that environment
is everything can help ensure a bad environment prevents you from succeeding.
And even the environment cannot be changed without individual effort.

~~~
hackuser
It's an interesting and often-repeated theory, but the data is overwhelming:
People born in poor environments do much worse than those born in wealthier
environments.

The massive difference in resources seems like a place to start. Compare the
percentage of kids who get into college from poor urban public schools, where
many kids aren't even functionally literate and classes lack books, and
wealthy suburban public schools.

But whatever the cause, the bar is far too high in poor neighborhoods for most
people to get over.

~~~
stretchwithme
I would say that those born into poor cultures do poorly.

Those cultures that are no longer poor were more conducive to escaping
poverty.

The evidence is compelling in places that dropped government control of
everything and millions of people have moved out of poverty in just a
generation or two.

China is a good example. Everybody started out poor but they still had an
ethic or working hard, saving for the future and education.

Other people are born with the same opportunities but not the same values and
don't take advantage of those opportunities.

Its not the poor neighborhood. Its the poor ideas in people's heads. Change
that and the neighborhood changes too.

~~~
hackuser
> Its not the poor neighborhood. Its the poor ideas in people's heads. Change
> that and the neighborhood changes too.

An interesting notion, but is there any data that backs it up?

~~~
stretchwithme
You need proof that better ideas produce better results?

------
spo81rty
I was born in a trailer park in Oklahoma. Lived in a 1 bedroom shack, and then
lived with my grandparents until high school after my parents got divorced. I
grew up very poor. But I loved computers, thanks to my dad having a Commodore
64.

I excelled at math, loved computers, and went to DeVry to do computer
programming. I was the first in my family to go to college. Started my first
tech company at 22.

With a lot of hard work, I believe anyone can break out of poverty.

~~~
eropple
While it's cool that you've managed to do that, at the same time I think "with
a lot of hard work" trivializes the amount of insanely hard work that large
portions of the working class _does_ do, with almost nothing to show for it.
Poverty traps are real and they are very, very difficult to escape from, and
in many ways it's destiny-by-dart-board.

~~~
wallflower
I recall an anecdote about a college professor who had students pull cards out
of a bucket. What card you pulled out of a bucket determined your fate as a
person born during the Middle Ages. Most of the cards were peasant or died at
age n (where n < 25).

I used to joke with some of my fellow geeks (ok, I still do) that if we were
born two or three hundred years earlier, we would have had a horrible life in
the fields, farming.

Going back to why I replied, the sad fact about an information age economy is
that working with information or your community (e.g. coding or using that
information to trade) is leveraged and worth more than pure manual labor. At
the highest level, you have CEOs with insane networks of personal
relationships (I knew a family friend once who, with one phone call, got the
best eye surgeon in the state to do an emergency operation on one of his
friend's friends) and surgeons who can save lives. At the medium level, you
have coders.

From a rational economics standpoint, everyone is expendable. But the
replacement costs are quite high for those higher up the power-law curve of
the information economy.

~~~
hackuser
> I used to joke with some of my fellow geeks (ok, I still do) that if we were
> born two or three hundred years earlier, we would have had a horrible life
> in the fields, farming.

And some people with the talent to code don't have the physiology to last long
doing manual labor.

------
coldtea
Statistics and chances. Some poor kids are bound to thrive eventually -- and
chances make sure those kids have some things that other poor kids don't (a
mentor in their life, a parent who isn't working 2 jobs or drinking but can
spend some time with them, live in a good school district, their curiousness
wasn't beaten out of them by bad early experiences, looks enabling them to be
taken for better than other poor kids are, a chance higher IQ, etc.).

The same way millions can finish a game in Easy mode, but there are still some
people that can finish it in Hard and Ultra Hard mode.

[http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-
plate](http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate)

~~~
ap22213
Yep, luck.

I'm the child of a single mom of 4 who made $7000 / year, and I'm the first of
my extended family to graduate college and the first millionaire (my younger
brother got to middle class). Luck is the way that I succeeded.

1st, being born with a high IQ helped. But, that clearly wasn't enough since I
had the lowest IQ of my family. And, 40% of my gifted class didn't even
graduate high school.

2nd, being born with a personable and friendly demeanor helped a lot, probably
more than my intelligence. However, by having intelligence, I was better able
to make good choices of friends.

3rd, being born with height potential was huge. It's been clear to me that
people in powerful positions are much taller than average.

4th, being born with symmetric features and attractiveness was important.
Again, this attribute helps in making and keeping relationships. And, when
people think of someone, they often think of me first.

5th, being cautious and risk adverse was hugely important. I was involved with
the gangs and criminal activity like many of my peers, but I was extremely
careful about what things that I would do. Also, many of my peers ended up
having kids in their teens, which was very devastating. Many became addicted
to drugs and died. Many died of accidents and suicide. Of my friends, over 15
died before I was 25 (I lost count).

6th, having a mentor was good for me in making good life choices. A retired,
highly educated engineer took me under her wing and mentored me in my late
teens. Before I met her, I had not even considered going to college. I looked
forward to being a manager at a retail store. Even though I was in the honors
and gifted program and ranked #11 out of my class, I never once received any
college guidance from my school. So, her help was amazingly helpful.

7th, (sorry, this is getting long), living at a time when college was
affordable and accessible was critical. I went to college in the 90s when
tuition was under $2500 a semester, and I was accepted with many marks on my
academic record. Even though I wasted time in college, I was able to graduate
with only $40k in debt.

8th, picking the right major was extremely important. I floundered around for
a couple years at college and almost dropped out. Then, I had a roommate who
turned me on to computers (I never had one, since they were very expensive). I
took a couple programming classes and found it to be a creative outlet. And,
at the time, graduates were making $30-45k, which seemed great to me.

But, looking back on it all, it was mostly luck. I wish I could say that I had
some part in it, but really, I didn't.

The only very important (maybe most important) decisions that I made didn't
happen until I was over 30. I moved to a wealthy area and I married up.
Without doing those things, it would have been much much harder to gain access
to connections and capital.

~~~
nathanasmith
I had a comment in mind I was going to go with but when I clicked reply in a
new tab, I notice you ninja edited putting in the last line where you came
clean and admitted that there _was_ a little something you did that made a
difference.

My question is this, ignoring your edit, if you say it was all luck based on
the 8 points here, am I to conclude that anybody with these advantages would
all have the same outcome no matter what they themselves did (taking into
consideration the likely variability of behavior in context of your profile).
If they worked their asses off, they would be no more successful than you are
now and if they had just did the minimum, they'd be just as successful as you
are.

I'd surmise this would not be the case so it seems likely that how hard one
works, given the hand they're dealt, means a little more than you think.

~~~
ap22213
What I mean (and tried to put into context with my last paragraph) is that for
someone below poverty, luck is the most important factor. Moral factors like
work ethic don't matter. I've known lots of people with incredible work ethic
for whom that quality has not helped. They're still working hard at their
retail jobs (or laid off from their hard labor ones) 20 years later. Some work
ethic is required, no doubt, but it's much less than most people out of
poverty believe. In contrast, if one is well-connected and wealthy to begin
with, luck and work ethic aren't important at all. Even being financially
irresponsible doesn't have much effect in that case, in my experience.

------
archildress
One of my favorite podcasts, Hidden Brain, had a great episode this week about
"Grit", which one of the researchers defined as "passion and perseverance for
long-terms goals."

"The thing that was revelatory to me was not that effort matters—everybody
knows that effort matters," Angela told Shankar. "What was revelatory to me
was how much it matters."

I still think there's this question of "why do some kids have more grit than
others?" to be answered, but perhaps this is a start?

Worth a listen:

[http://www.npr.org/2016/04/04/472162167/the-power-and-
proble...](http://www.npr.org/2016/04/04/472162167/the-power-and-problem-of-
grit)

~~~
savvas_tj
The "why do some kids have more grit than others?" questions could just come
down to mix of inheriting that trait and/or living in an environment that
fosters the development and growth that trait.

There is an interesting book called "The Sports Gene" that has a section that
talks about how someone bred sled dogs based on their "grit" characteristic
and was able to be a successful dog sledder because of it.

Also that book is also a great read about how inherited traits and environment
interact with each other. And thanks for the podcast suggestion.

------
askyourmother
Some of the most famous self-made wealthy individuals in the UK were from poor
backgrounds of varying degree. I remember more than one stating that they felt
if they wanted to escape that world, they had to make their own luck, grab
every opportunity, be ready to change direction if fortuitous winds prevail,
and essentially be there in body and mind to really give it a go. In some
cases they literally start with nothing - failed school exams, work to acquire
a very small amount of capital, see their first opportunity and go for it.
Which can be seen as a series of well executed gambles.

~~~
neffy
Yes, it's something of a selection problem.

The assumption behind this belief set is that they were the select few who
could do this. There is an alternative hypothesis that out of the large number
of people with poor background who did this, they were the few somewhat
randomly selected to succeed.

Certainly if you look at their biographies there seems to be a consistent
element of right person in right place at right time - which suggests that
there might be a lot more 'right people' than get lucky.

~~~
WalterBright
My father told me that the reason most people don't recognize opportunity is
that it comes disguised as hard work.

I.e. nobody is going to get lucky by watching TV.

~~~
hackuser
With due respect to your Dad, the implication that poor people are simply lazy
is highly speculative and doesn't seem to match the data, including lack of
resources and opportunity around them.

~~~
WalterBright
I agree that it isn't necessarily about laziness. As I said elsewhere, it's
about working smart more than working hard - but it still involves actively
doing something. But I do agree with my dad in that opportunity often goes
unrecognized.

------
whiddershins
Hidden in this article is the assumption that the 25 year old working at
chick-fil-a is beyond saving, so we must try to do better with future
generations.

That's really sad for me. That guy is still a kid, from where I sit. And he
will likely be doing work that bores him to tears for the next 50 years.

We should be talking about fixing that. Figuring out a way to send some smart,
creative, in poverty, 30 year olds to four year college for free.

~~~
corysama
IMHO, that's a very negative extrapolation from the article content. We
absolutely should be talking about fixing that --just not necessarily in this
particular article.

------
bane
This really resonates with me.

My family was initially very low-middle income, and some poor business and
personal decisions caused us to fall, for a time, into poverty -- even
spending several months homeless and living out of a motel.

The area we eventually ended up in was very rural, fairly poor with quite a
bit of rural poverty around -- my immediate neighbors didn't even have running
water or an indoor bathroom.

Having spent my earlier years in a more urban environment, I found the local
children hard to relate to, and the distances between me and kids I got along
with well enough were vast enough that they may as well have not existed. My
parents worked very long hours and as a result I spent huge amounts of time
virtually alone.

Somewhere along the way I got into BBSs and the world opened up to me. My
"life-raft" was a happenstance introduction to the demoscene and the discovery
of other kids in my metro area who were interested in technology, art and
global perspectives. It also happened to dovetail pretty nicely with my other
school interests (music and art).

I saved money to buy my first soundcard and learned how to upgrade computers.
The desire to be part of the demoscene caused me to dive deeply into keeping
up-to-date computers in my house and I learned to cobble together pretty
decent ones for the time with very little money.

This kind of intense hardware/software experience got me my first job and an
entry into the IT world where I grew in skills and ideas, and eventually put
myself through university up to an M.S. (the first in my family) with the help
of some grants.

Because of those connections I met my wife and have held great and wonderful
jobs since then and have had a chance to travel the world and see things 10
year old me, sitting at the desk looking at pictures in history textbooks in
the rented motel room my family lived in, would have never imagined I'd ever
see in my life.

It wasn't all smooth running, there were many struggles and many times I
_almost_ never made it. But one helpful hand, or a caring boss or teacher,
helped me get through it. I never took the SATs for example, barely graduated
high-school, was nearly bankrupt in the middle of college due to a medical
emergency. I never want to repeat the stress and anger of that time again, but
I know it wasn't all just me, I had plenty of help and that, combined with
desire from my life-raft seemed to be what did it.

------
computerjunkie
Story time. I grew up in a African nation were political instability,
corruption and a poor economy for a country is not surprising. My family was
doing fine, not great, but my parents valued education, kindness and respect
above anything else. They did everything they could to ensure that we got the
best education. It was until when my father fell ill and passed away when I
was 10, thats when things started to go downhill.

My mother had to provide for a family on her own. Most of the relatives from
my father's side didn't bother to help, they had their own problems to deal
with, add all of this on top of a economy which was non-existent in 2008. We
had no place to stay for 4 months because we couldn't afford rent. I couldn't
watch shows my peers watched because we couldn't afford cable/satellite TV,
let alone a place to stay. There was food, electricity and water shortage for
years(still is). Inflation was so high the government had to discontinue the
currency.

Teachers in my public school began to flee to other countries so that they
could still provide for their family.I had to teach myself Physics, Biology,
Chemistry and Mathematics.I took up subjects I was never assigned to do in
order to get decent grades so that I could go to college. I had to do two A
levels, instead of three because teachers thought my grades weren't good
enough, other students made fun of me because of this.The environment I was in
was a perfect recipe for disaster, for a young mind.

But here I am, with a degree in Computer Science and working for a software
company with like minded people because my father bought and introduced to me
a cream rectangular box, big monochrome monitor and taught me how to type with
a keyboard at the age of 5. This machine would become my identity project.
Computers have been my survival tool, my passion, even when my peers thought I
was delusional for pursing a career in Technology(they even made fun of me for
thinking I had a chance).

Environment plays a big part in your life but _you_ have the choice to let it
dictate your life or you take the wheel and determine your future. I could
have given up but I _chose_ not to, even though everything around me
constantly said I should.

I'm not in a place where I can say I made it but, but its sure as hell better
than what I have experienced in my late childhood and adolescent years. For
those young folks that are reading this and are in somewhat a disadvantaged
situation, stay positive,stick to your identity project and never give up!

------
intrasight
Why do some rich kids fail?

~~~
josh_carterPDX
In my opinion, I think it has to do with their up bringing. If they were
raised to have everything handed to them it's easy for them to give up when
faced with adversity. I wasn't raised in a home of wealth, but I certainly saw
kids growing up who did and could see their attitude towards things were
certainly different than my own.

If you've never had to struggle, how do you know how to handle it when you are
struggling?

~~~
hackuser
It's interesting that people are careful with stereotypes and analysis of poor
kids, but have no problem using them for wealthy kids.

Kids born into wealth, at least moderate wealth, are much more likely to be
successful than kids born into poverty, so it seems they figure out that
struggle thing eventually.

~~~
josh_carterPDX
I don't disagree with that, nor was it my point. I just think that people that
know what struggle looks like are more inclined to know how to handle it when
it occurs.

------
empath75
There are a whole lot of tech jobs where learning on the job without a degree
is completely viable. Seems like grabbing these kids out of high school is a
business opportunity. I'm pretty sure that any random kid that's into anime
and collecting cards can learn to do tech support.

~~~
spo81rty
Myself and the other 3 main programmers in my last company all lacked a
college degree. I think a degree is pretty useless for software development.

~~~
djKianoosh
I appreciate the fact that yall made it without a degree. But I wouldnt say
"useless". More like "not necessary". A software engineering or CS degree can
be useful, but not necessary to have an excellent career.

~~~
eropple
Agreed. I was a _pretty good_ programmer before I got a CS degree. But I can
say, honestly, that my degree program (not even a particularly good one) made
me a much better one. I've consistently ended up in roles where other people
in those roles were five to ten years older than me, not because I'm a
supergenius (jesus, I'm not) but because I was able to derive some real
synergy from the academic fit-and-finish applied by college to my existing
skill set, and the lessons I learned in school to the skills I've learned
since.

And when I say "my courses", I don't just mean CS. I have a B.A., not a B.S.,
because I wanted more breadth than being a mushroom sweating it out in the
computer science lab. I did pick up a lot of actually useful, practicable
knowledge around algorithmic analysis (turns out that intuitively
understanding Big-Oh is really useful if you don't want to be a bottom-level
code grinder), distributed systems (there's a reason I'm still the guy who
acquaintances go to when they need to build such a thing), and low-level
computer architecture (which still has to matter to _somebody_ even when
you're using very high level languages), but the humanities were fantastically
important, too. Political science and economics courses have been invaluable;
poli-sci for having something of a mental map of groups and organizations and
an idea of the way that they change and flow in a larger community, and
economics from the perspective of microeconomics, specifically the study of
elastic goods and demand curves in general.

I might have stumbled on what I learned in college, especially around "how to
learn", without going to college, but I think it's more likely that I
wouldn't, or that I would have dismissed it as unimportant, because one of the
greatest benefits of college was twisting my arm to do things I didn't want
want to do (and those were among them. I also graduated with under $30K of
debt--state schools aren't that expensive and I'd been working summers--after
four years, and paid it off by age 27, while working at companies that
_definitely_ would never have looked at me twice if I didn't have a degree and
making a lot more money for it.

------
venomsnake
In short - being passionate for something is helping forward. Having no safety
net meants you have only one shot. If all the stars allign correctly.

That is not surprising at all. People are their best when they are engaded in
something bigger than themselves.

------
HN123467
Throwaway account, fyi.

I grew up in my folk's shop. Not really all that poor, I guess, in comparison
to some of our customers. I mean, all 6 of my family at least had a toilet and
a TV. All us kids still feel that good eating is Chef Boyardee and Twinkies
(really). To this day, my brothers take all the bell pepper bits out of their
Denver omelets at IHOP, one by one. Just can't stand the taste of fresh
veggies. Power went out from time to time, but we did have it. We all did
sports year round, mostly because it was a valid excuse to not work at the
shop for my folks, that was nice I guess and means we weren't all that bad
off. That shop was not fun either. It was an autoshop, so grease and asshole
customers was life. My pants literally stood up on their own after work in the
summers, there was that much grime in the fibers. The shop was a tin shack, so
the winters were frozen and the summers were 120+ everyday by 11am. Still
meant you had to fix the transmissions though. We all knew lathes and welders
by 10 years old. Firefighting and carpentry became routine as us children were
put to work. Don't misunderstand, I love my folks and I loved my life, but
that child labor was not safe, though we all didn't know it at the time. Dad
never had algebra, mom got to geometry, but that's it. The pastors would not
shake Dad's hand as the grease that bakes into your fingernails makes you
'dirty' in their eyes. I love Jesus with all my heart and am a Christian, but
the church can go _fuck_ itself long and hard with the wrong end of a steel
rake.

Ok, have I proved my 'poor' cred then? Yeah, it wasn't as bad as other
commenters here, but still, I know man's lot is labor.

And I think that's what pulled all us kids out of it. Grit and a stiff upper
lip. We all had our bones scarred by that life of labor. So, when it came to
school and all this BS 'achievement metrics' that the colleges use to let you
in, it was comparatively easy for us to accomplish. As such, when folk
complained in college that algebra was too tough, we all found that
bewildering. I went to a UC with my brothers and my sister went to a CSU and
we all did Physics or Chemistry as they were the hardest majors. Nothing else
really felt right as a use of all that money my folks saved up for us. Labor
was our lot, as was Adam's, and we felt that was the only way.

Now we all have good jobs or are in pretty good grad schools. And yes, I
recognize that we had bootstraps to pull ourselves up with, and others do not,
so my own family 'tithes' 10% to some charities we believe in. All us kids do
something similar.

Grit is the only thing that will pull you out. _Hard_ work and Jesus' grace.
Luck is also big, I guess, but you have to make your own luck.

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ben_jones
I feel like you could almost as easily say "Why do some people thrive?"

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rsmsky1
I think it would be good to encourage passion projects and also encourage them
to look at the long term and stay in school although finding a full time job
could provide immediate money.

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cheez
Reading this article is like reading my life story.

Get them out of their environment, let them be free, forgive them for messing
up, and they will thrive.

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samstave
Intelligence?

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Spooky23
Good, attentive parents.

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paulpauper
High IQ, probably.

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AmitShipEasy
No distractions.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
> No distractions.

Nothing like your parents asking you to borrow some money from your side job
so they can pay the bills, as a 14 year old, to start your distraction free
day. /s

There's a million examples like this. Sure, rich kids have busy lives and can
be stressed out by all kinds of high standards, don't get me wrong. But being
poor means you have to think about every single little thing that you do, or
that happens to you. A flat tire, or worse, having your bike stolen, is a
disaster, it can mean weeks of disposable income lost. As a kid I was
constantly stressed out and hopeless about the most insignificant things
because they can hit like a brick. I remember I talked to a kid once who asked
me whether we'd be using graphing calculators in a particular class. He was
wondering whether he should drop the final years of hs maths where we'd be
doing calculus for an easier hs math curriculum, because paying $150 for a
graphing calculator was not an option for him. Distractions like that happen
left and right, things 'normal' kids wouldn't even consider thinking about.
There's a Christmas dinner coming up in 3 months and kids are supposed to wear
something nice and formal? You're already stressing because you'll be the only
kid with a bunch of 2nd hand regular clothing.

In fact quite a few studies have shown that poor people have less mental
bandwidth to deal with their every day lives, because they're bogged down
(distracted) by all of the issues that come with a life of poverty, and that
this lower bandwidth is a big hurdle in achieving the same level of
performance as a normal person.

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kelukelugames
dang, five dollar bet this gets to 100 points. :)

This in response to an earlier exchange about how race and gender related
posts get many votes in the beginning and are then flagged to death, but ones
about class always make it to the top. Is there a way to see how many times an
article has been flagged? I would like to gather data for my assertions.

~~~
gyardley
I too would enjoy seeing this. I submitted an race-and-gender-related article
around a month ago that fell off the front page quickly enough to make me cock
an eyebrow and wonder if the flagging system isn't giving a small percentage
of users an inappropriate veto over certain topics of discussion.

I know I've seen a tool out there that tracks the ranking of HN articles over
time. Perhaps the slope of the descent would serve as a good proxy for
flagging.

~~~
wallflower
Quickly looking at the article you submitted, it was the 'Not a Black Chair'
that floated into the stream about a month ago.

I did not flag it, and I think others may have flagged it. The comment to
point ratio also contributes to front-page decay to avoid flamewars. This
isn't the target audience for comfortable or uncomfortable discussions about
race/gender/privilege. In my opinion, the author of that article exhibited
behavior that, if you take away race and gender from the equation, would be
questionable, at best, if you were an individual working at a company (the
relationship with a coworker and others). Those facts clouded what the author
was saying about race and gender.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11287491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11287491)

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okyup
Because they suffer more. Suffering is good. Without it, we tend to fall
apart. With it, we tend to get better.

