We’ve been discussing “personal finance” guru and get-out-of-debt guru Dave Ramsey’s misunderstanding of poverty. See part 1: Dave Ramsey, McDonald’s, and the personal salvation of personal finance. And part 2: Ramsey’s II, challenging Pharaoh.
I’m calling this post part 2.5 because it’s not about Ramsey specifically, but it is about the corrosive, misleading and destructive ideology he preaches and teaches — the ideology that says poverty is a matter of “You reap what you sow,” that poor people are poor because they’ve made bad choices, and that poor people can cease being poor by making good choices.
Here are three smart posts by three women who know better.
Elizabeth Stoker: “The ‘Dependency’ Argument”
One thing that a proper fear of God does is dissuade hemming and hawing about doing the right thing. When we properly understand that God does not abide by our indifference toward the suffering of others (which is clear and beautiful as daylight in Matt. 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and goats), we are inspired not only by our love of others but also our fear of Him to correct that suffering. When real love and genuine, healthy fear are in place, there is no time for jacking around and figuring out how best to force others to end their own suffering; the immediate moral injunction, we realize, is not upon the suffering, but upon their brothers and sisters.
And it’s this immediacy that the conservative position wholly lacks. Solutions to crippling poverty like “get yourself a job” ignore the immediate urgency of poverty. Poor people with no recourse have immediate, urgent needs: for consistent and healthy food, for consistent and safe shelter, for healthcare and for community at the most basic level. Welfare programs meet these immediate, urgent needs. Telling poor people to work it out for themselves and find a job patently ignores the immediacy and urgency of the problem, namely that people are suffering and that it’s possible to alleviate that suffering.
Tressie McMillan Cottom: “Why Do Poor People ‘Waste’ Money on Luxury Goods?”
Why do poor people make stupid, illogical decisions to buy status symbols? For the same reason all but only the most wealthy buy status symbols, I suppose. We want to belong.
And, not just for the psychic rewards, but belonging to one group at the right time can mean the difference between unemployment and employment, a good job as opposed to a bad job, housing or a shelter, and so on. Someone mentioned on twitter that poor people can be presentable with affordable options from Kmart. But the issue is not about being presentable. Presentable is the bare minimum of social civility. It means being clean, not smelling, wearing shirts and shoes for service and the like. Presentable as a sufficient condition for gainful, dignified work or successful social interactions is a privilege. It’s the aging white hippie who can cut the ponytail of his youthful rebellion and walk into senior management while aging black panthers can never completely outrun the effects of stigmatization against which they were courting a revolution. Presentable is relative and, like life, it ain’t fair.
In contrast, “acceptable” is about gaining access to a limited set of rewards granted upon group membership. I cannot know exactly how often my presentation of acceptable has helped me but I have enough feedback to know it is not inconsequential. One manager at the apartment complex where I worked while in college told me, repeatedly, that she knew I was “Okay” because my little Nissan was clean. That I had worn a Jones of New York suit to the interview really sealed the deal. She could call the suit by name because she asked me about the label in the interview. Another hiring manager at my first professional job looked me up and down in the waiting room, cataloging my outfit, and later told me that she had decided I was too classy to be on the call center floor. I was hired as a trainer instead. The difference meant no shift work, greater prestige, better pay and a baseline salary for all my future employment.
… At the heart of these incredulous statements about the poor decisions poor people make is a belief that we would never be like them. We would know better. We would know to save our money, eschew status symbols, cut coupons, practice puritanical sacrifice to amass a million dollars. There is a regular news story of a lunch lady who, unbeknownst to all who knew her, died rich and leaves it all to a cat or a charity or some such. Books about the modest lives of the rich like to tell us how they drive Buicks instead of BMWs. What we forget, if we ever know, is that what we know now about status and wealth creation and sacrifice are predicated on who we are, i.e. not poor. If you change the conditions of your not-poor status, you change everything you know as a result of being a not-poor. You have no idea what you would do if you were poor until you are poor. And not intermittently poor or formerly not-poor, but born poor, expected to be poor and treated by bureaucracies, gatekeepers and well-meaning respectability authorities as inherently poor. Then, and only then, will you understand the relative value of a ridiculous status symbol to someone who intuits that they cannot afford to not have it.
Linda Tirado: “This Is Why Poor People’s Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense”*
Nobody gives enough thought to depression. You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn’t give us much reason to improve ourselves. We don’t apply for jobs because we know we can’t afford to look nice enough to hold them. I would make a super legal secretary, but I’ve been turned down more than once because I “don’t fit the image of the firm,” which is a nice way of saying “gtfo, pov.” I am good enough to cook the food, hidden away in the kitchen, but my boss won’t make me a server because I don’t “fit the corporate image.” I am not beautiful. I have missing teeth and skin that looks like it will when you live on B12 and coffee and nicotine and no sleep. Beauty is a thing you get when you can afford it, and that’s how you get the job that you need in order to be beautiful. There isn’t much point trying.
… It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There’s a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there’s money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.
Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It’s why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It’s more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that’s all you get. You’re probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don’t plan long-term because if we do we’ll just get our hearts broken. It’s best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.
* UPDATE: That piece is from Gawker, which now reports that Tirado’s personal circumstances are … complicated. She’s apparently not utterly destitute. Horrors.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In