What Really Keeps Poor People Poor

Thu, May 26, 2011

Disruption, Personal

jayzThe New York Times has a great piece this week about how top colleges (many of which are heavily subsidized by the government) are, in their words, largely for the elite. It’s well worth reading. In it, Anthony Marx, the president of Amherst College, is quoted as saying the following:

“We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,” Mr. Marx says. “Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.”

There’s a lot of evidence that suggests that the admissions policies of the top universities tend to perpetuate the notion of rich getting richer. This post isn’t meant to argue for or against that point. Rather it’s to argue another point which is that when you look at this issue the larger concern here shouldn’t be that people from lower-income families aren’t able to receive as good of an education as people from higher-income families. That’s of course very important but the critical factor is that people from lower-income families aren’t able to gain access to the same networks that higher-income families have access to.

One of the articles that has been influential in my thinking here was Malcolm Gladwell’s 1999 article in The New Yorker entitled “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg“. I’ll let you read the whole thing but suffice to say it’s the story of an unlikely “super connector” named Lois Weisberg and includes this very pertinent passage:

If the world really is held together by people like Lois Weisberg, in other words, how poor you are can be defined quite simply as how far you have to go to get to someone like her. Wendy Willrich and Helen Doria and all the countless other people in Lois’s circle needed to make only one phone call. They are well-off. The dropout wouldn’t even know where to start. That’s why he’s poor. Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation.

Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation. When the high school senior from the inner city doesn’t get into Harvard or Yale, she’s being isolated from the networks that could allow to reach the highest rungs of society. In all fairness, many people from impoverished communities have been able to access these networks in recent decades and it has lead to some of the greatest success stories of our time. Michelle Obama. Sonia Sotomayor. Even a story like Lloyd Blankfein’s (Goldman Sachs CEO/Chairman) is largely one of accessing networks (through a full ride to Harvard) that would have been normally inaccessible to a son of a Postal Service worker.

As Gladwell states in his article:

Minority-admissions programs work not because they give black students access to the same superior educational resources as white students, or access to the same rich cultural environment as white students, or any other formal or grandiose vision of engineered equality. They work by giving black students access to the same white students as white students — by allowing them to make acquaintances outside their own social world and so shortening the chain lengths between them and the best jobs.

We live in an age where with a solid Internet connection and someone to guide you through the process of self-education (admittedly something many people don’t have) you can learn just about anything. Certainly enough to qualify for some of society’s highest-paid positions. But unfortunately that’s not enough. Because despite the fact that it’s easier than ever to learn the things that will qualify you for a well-paid position in the world, it’s not easier (perhaps even harder) to gain access to the networks that will let you achieve your full potential.

Waiting for Superman paints a very compelling picture about the dire situation in our inner-city schools. And the point that it might not be that schools reflect their surroundings but rather that surroundings may reflect their schools is well worth pondering. But it’s often overlooked that the most tragic part of children from the inner-city not gaining access to elite schools probably isn’t the fact that they might be losing out on access to a world-class education. Rather, it’s that for most that was their best shot at gaining access to an elite network.

So can we change this? I think we can. It starts with recognizing the problem for what it is and doing what we can to teach kids from impoverished backgrounds not just how to read and write but how to become upwardly mobile in their networking. That might sound strange but it’s not like there aren’t role models for how to do this. Guys like Russell Simmons or Jay-Z. How do we instill in our less privileged youth an attitude and aptitude for rising up the ranks and meeting the people they need to meet Lois Weisberg-style, regardless of what university they happen to get into?

Sounds like a hell of an idea for a world-changing non-profit. If you know of anyone doing anything like this I’d love to talk to them.

This post was written by:

Jon - who has written 40 posts on JonBischke.com.


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  • cbp
    As someone from a poor background who has gained access to successful circles, I'm actually pretty tired of dealing with priveledged elites who seem to have no idea what the real world is like.  I'm seriously contemplating taking a job with much less "prestige" as a results.  Simply providing access is not going to solve the problem.  There are huge cultural and value barriers that are night and day between the strata of society, and you are fooling yourself if you think this is going to be solved, ever.
  • Vhodgdon
    Maybe I missed it, but I did not see the connection between genetics and poverty memtioned, except in the comment about the welfare system.
  • asdf
    Jay-Z says "All us blacks got is sports and entertainment"
  • 1motorpsycho
    Amen! I like the fact that you pointed out isolation. That is what it boils down to.
  • Pookdoo
    jay z is god
  • Network out of Poverty
    I have worked with high risk young people around the world for thirty years. A major emphasis to my work has always been "Poverty is a lack of healthy relationships." We've followed the premises of "Six Degrees of Separation," and now, "Six Pixels of Separation," to help young people build positive social networks around their own compelling vision statements. This article affirms what we've been doing and I want to say -- on the street -- this really works. Helping young people -- who often feel they are victims -- come to a point where they can say, "I can network myself out of my current situation," is so much healthier than "waiting for superman." Thank you. Jerry Goebel - Communities of Trust
  • I love this, and I want to tweet you all over the place, how can I do this?
    "Poverty is a lack of healthy relationships" is the best I have heard on
    this. Thank you.
  • Kabir
    Great post, carry on.

    Kabir

    Best Linux Hosting
  • Jojo
    Russell admits that he rose to the top by selling drugs
  • The internet has opened that playing field a little bit over the past decade. It is now easier to have the same access to information even if you come from an impoverished background. 

    The biggest difference is that if you come from a poverty, most of the burden is placed on the YOU to make that change. I moved to US at a young age of 15 with nothing in my pocket and needed to really persevere to where I am today. Speaking from experience, it requires a lot of motivation and persistence to stop that viscous cycle and make a different future for yourself. Its not handed down to you BUT it is achievable. Thats what we have always called achieving the 'American Dream'. 

    Now the question is, what percentage of people are able to push themselves? What tools, mentor-ship programs, curriculum can be developed to motivate the masses to move towards that direction?

    Good post.
  • Andy Rankin
    You might like to check out  Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever. Just getting into Princeton doesn't get you into Cottage Club.  Some networks are tough to crack if you weren't born with blue blood.
    http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Mer...
  • Thanks for bringing up Kirn's book, Andy!  I also went to Princeton, and I often had difficulties getting into Cottage Club too. (I wasn't interested in joining, but even attending the parties there could be a trial - there'd frequently be a bouncer, even on nights when the club was near empty.  I snuck through the kitchen once or twice (along with the windows of some of the other elite clubs) before deciding that eluding doormen and risking injury was a degrading way to try to make friends.
  • New reader--great post.  Social capital has always been key in social mobility.  I work at a prominent charter network in Philadelphia which turns around failing public schools.  Like many charters aimed at closing the achievement gap, we have a very selective hiring process and a rigorous, comprehensive teacher evaluation system, because we know that it takes an excellent teacher to get dramatic results, particularly in a population of high need.  Something which our schools also do, which I think makes us somewhat unique, is build "college prep" life skills into our social and emotional learning curriculum.  Kids in wealthy suburbs have parents who think nothing of throwing a few thousand down for a Kaplan test prep course or personal tutor; our families could never afford that, so we build SAT Prep into the course catalog.  Kids in wealthy suburbs also have an abundance of college connections and tend to have grown up in a "college culture"--i.e., their parents have likely gone to college, and they've probably grown up assuming and hearing over and over again that they're going to college, so they have an in where our students might not.  For instance, filling out a FAFSA form might be a mere annoyance to a middle-class family in a Main Line suburb (if it's even necessary), but even the simplified FAFSA forms could be enough to deter a student from applying for schools.  A more well-off students might have parents who have the luxury and time to shuttle them back and forth on multiple college visits; we compensate by arranging college visit field trips.  Our seniors have a whole course on college readiness.  We regularly have college acceptance rates above a 90%.  

    We have plenty of brilliant students--many of our graduating classes meet or surpass the average on state tests--and we prepare them as best as we can, but even with all of our best laid plans, we're finding that we're not yet at the college graduation rates that we want. What we're realizing is that, once they're at college, it's tempting for our students to drop out.  Why?  Because the majority of their network is not at college with them--they're back home in their neighborhoods.  It's not even an issue of schoolwork; many of our returning students who make it through their freshman year comment on how well-prepared they were academically.  It's an issue of socialization; a common trend we noticed were students not even leaving for school in the fall, because it was so easy to stay behind with their friends. We know that having a social network is integral to our dreams of college graduation for all of our students, so we're taking steps to build up an alumni network that will help alleviate student anxiety about leaving home for school.  

    Anyway, this post outlined a truth which seems pretty obvious and simple to those of us with first-hand experience, but seems to be hard to grasp for those without.  Thanks for the enlightenment.
  • Good stuff Vivresavie.  My sense is that America's addiction to bootstrap narratives not only tempts us to overlook how rare class mobility really is, but also prevents us from seeing some of the social phenomena that hinder mobility.  The example of kids who've been accepted to college but choose not go because they fear leaving their entire networks behind is a really moving example.
  • I think you're forcing a false choice here, Jon. (The title feels like a bit of a giveaway: What "Really" Keeps Poor People Poor).  It's not as if poor people have equal access to everything BUT the top networks.  They also frequently lack access to all sorts of other important things as well - including decent food, education, health care, and safe neighborhoods. (Along with other crucial stuff, of course - like a sense that opportunity really is out there, and that hard work will be rewarded.  If you come from a place where opportunity isn't very visible, believing in it might feel a lot less realistic.)

    In other words, it's not a choice between networks and resources.  Poor folks deserve both, and addressing poverty adequately will require both. 

    I worry that you're underselling the value of education, too - that you depict it as mostly about the kind of job it can land you after you graduate.  To my mind, part of the deprivation of not getting to go to the school that your talents warrant is that you don't get to BE in a top school, alongside other smart folks who could push you to grow!
  • poverty is a belief structure, first .. one that results in having little money.
  • geniusnowblog
    Here's a fun little game. Go through the comments, and identify which ones came from some actual experience, and which ones come from denial. Among the denial comments, see if you can identify which are from trustafarians, and which from folks who think they're just "temporarily" on the wrong side of the tracks and can climb out of it. 
    Of course your networks count. If you're honest, you recognize that a poor kid at an Ivy is already behind the curve, because he or she didn't go to the right prep school. Microsoft was built on Lakeside, after all. What's depressing is this blame the poor because you can't admit you have privilege.
  • "The chain" as you call gets longer the more unequal a society is.  Read "The spirit level" it's as good as they say it is
  • Stacey G
    The problem is not the poor lacking access to elite networks, but elitism itself. We live in a society that puts power in the hands of a dispropotionally small group of people and the vast majority of people are seeing their wealth diminish and their schools failing to give their children a proper education. So what if the ruling class is becoming more diverse? That is NOT what democracy looks like. As long as we continue to limit the distribution of wealth and power fairly we will continue having this conversation focusing on 'what is wrong with poor people.'
  • Educating people to 'climb the social ladder', so to speak, is one thing, but if you look at most ghettos, those same impoverished people don't even seem to be motivated to move up any higher than the top levels of the ghetto they live in.  Why else would we see tricked-out Escalades out in front of houses that look no better than roach motels?

    As for Welfare, people can complain all they want about it enabling laziness, but considering the fact that the money that comes in from Welfare is not enough to do anything with other than simply exist, it's no wonder almost no one escapes from it.  If Welfare money was significant yet finite, then we might see people actually escaping from their poverty.
  • Reyna
    "those same impoverished people don't even seem to be motivated to move
    up any higher than the top levels of the ghetto they live in." = racism.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
  • Tom B
    Birds of a feather ... Yes, well educated, rich people associate with each other And well-educated, middle-class people hang together. And poor dropouts hang together. And yes, having rich friends is an advantage over having middle-class friends, and having middle-class friends is an advantage over having poor friends. But, the idea that putting uneducated poor people at elite universities is going to give them the connections to succeed is laughable. If the elite or the middle class wanted poor friends, they could easily find them. Would those who favor this networking idea befriend the uneducated poor person or use their influence to help someone unqualified apply for a position? If so, your influence would not last long.
  • BillSeitz
    There's one paragraph (in the original) that seems like such bad-faith twisting that it makes me question the whole piece. "...found that top colleges gave no admissions advantage to low-income students, despite claims to the contrary. Children of alumni received an advantage. Minorities (except Asians) and athletes received an even bigger advantage. But all else equal, a low-income applicant was no more likely to get in than a high-income applicant with the same SAT score. It’s pretty hard to call that meritocracy."

    Yes, white-and-asian lower-income people have something to complain about, but to pretend that advantages for non-asian minorities don't count as lower-income help is just ridiculous.
  • Great read. Thank you for writing this.

    I am a networking geek, a
    "connector" according to Gladwell. Some ppl are "mavens." While networking can
    be taught, some ppl's greatest strengths are different.

    And
    all-too-often, when ppl make it into certain circles, they don't invite
    others in. Great networking is about laddering each other into circles
    inhabited by fascinating ppl.

    Lastly, you cited Jay-Z as a model for success. I have been listening to hip hop since '82, was a competition bboy, and a
    professional human beatboxer in college. I love hip hop.

    I
    say this, because I am connected somewhat to the culture of hip hop.
    Jay-Z was a crack dealer. (I appreciate the resourcefulness of making "a
    dollar out of 15 cents.") But in my opinion, Jay-Z is hugely
    narcissistic.

    We need to redefine what success is. It's not all about clocking G's and flaunting wealth.
  • Great read. Thank you for writing this.

    I am a networking geek, a "connector" according  And some ppl are "mavens." While networking can be taught, some ppl's greatest strengths are different.

    And all-too-often, when ppl make it into certain circles, they don't invite others in. Great networking is about laddering each other into circles inhabited by fascinating ppl.

    Lastly, you cited Jay-Z as a model for success. I have been listening to hip hop since '82, was a competition bboy, and a
    professional human beatboxer in college. I love hip hop.

    I say this, because I am connected somewhat to the culture of hip hop. Jay-Z was a crack dealer. (I appreciate the resourcefulness of making "a dollar out of 15 cents.") But in my opinion, Jay-Z is hugely narcissistic.

    We need to redefine what success is. It's not all about clocking G's and flaunting wealth.
  • Shervin
    This was the topic of my keynote in Algeria in December 2, 2010 for the President's Summit on Entrepreneurship. It was titled Towards a Small World. I argued that technology is enabling people to transform their networks to small world networks and that this will lead to freedom movements in places like Algeria and the Middle East. That revolution can tranform poverty and opportunity within our own nation. Let's talk. -shervin pishevar
  • Charleswestcott
    Great point. What benefits do come with diverse networks ? Robust and expansive experiential elements add to a reality based education.
  • Internet
    What a load of PC nonsense. This argues that nurture is deterministic rather than nature. There have been studies about black vs White IQ, but I'd be banned from the Internet for speaking the truth.
  • Have just remembered Dave Eggers and his pirate club in San Francisco. He gave a talk about it on TED (http://bit.ly/jM4bIu).

    This is hugely interesting - the idea of latch-door kids being able to get top level homework help from neighbourhood professionals. Not quite what you are referring to, but is definitely a step towards it.
  • One of the more genuine and humble articles on this topic that I've read. Lots of food for thought. I'm very intrigued to hear who is working on this issue in a different way - social mobility meets networking meets education meets role models.
  • Jon, thanks for the post.  It's really interesting, and I think there is great importance in helping poor people build networks.  

    One complexity which I'd point out is there are thousands (or millions) of networks depending on what you're trying to achieve. For instance, I have a really deep Silicon Valley internet entrepreneur/VC investor network, but a really poor network of actors/musicians/sports stars (sadly!).  I guess your assumption might be that if you're wealthy or go to elite schools, then you can gain easier access to any network you want?

    One other point I'd make is that people need to exposure to the right social circles, education, and good habit formation very early on - much earlier than most people believe.  People begin making choices before they even reach high school which will often determine how far they will go in the rest of their life.  

    For instance, if I (or my family) decide that education is important for me, then by the time I finish elementary school, I need to start learning good study habits, advance in pre-requisites, strive to get into good magnet schools (even the worst inner city school districts have 1 or 2 accelerated schools), begin placing highly on standardized test scores, etc.  This will lead me down a path that will likely lead to admission into top tier colleges (regardless of my family's income level).  

    The question is how do you reach kids from families and neighborhoods where this kind of behavior and early discipline isn't the norm?
  • I definitely agree with this post, with one caveat: the idea that you access a better network mainly through higher education. I have built an extensive professional network over the years, but the percentage of it that resulted from my Harvard education is zero, yes zero. I did eventually reconnect with my Freshman Greek teacher (who is now a good friend), but that was only after a span of 30-odd years.

    I mention this only because I *expected* to make connections at Harvard.  But it just didn't happen that way.  Part of it may have been because I was in a field I didn't continue to pursue (Classics); part of it may have been that I was only there three years, and one of them off-campus, and wasn't very social, but I do think that we need to question what is the best way to give underprivileged kids access to better networks, and not just assume that improving the number of them who go to elite schools is one of the better techniques.For example, being on a First Robotics team might be more important than going to an elite college.
  • Hi Jon

    How do you rationalize your viewpoint with Zagorsky's research that found "The smarter you are, the more money you make..."
  • Mona
    Dear  Jon,
    My   name   is  Mona and  I  am  an American  English  professor  living in  France  (it  is  2:00  am here  and  I  had  to  write  this  to  you  because  I  was inspired  by   your  work.)

     Via  English, I  teach  courses on  everything from  entrepreneurship to  creativity  to  the connection  between technology  and  education.  I just  came  across your  article, "What  Really  Keeps  Poor People Poor."  I  agree  with  your  thesis and  would  like  to talk  with  you  about  a  serious  project  I  am  working on  which  seems  perfectly   suited  to  your  call  to  arms: "How do we instill in our less privileged youth an attitude and
    aptitude for rising up the ranks and meeting the people they need to
    meet Lois Weisberg-style, regardless of what university they happen to
    get into?
    Sounds like a hell of an idea for a world-changing non-profit. If you know of anyone doing anything like this I’d love to talk to them."
    I  have  already  contacted  Thione  Niang about  this  project  and  he  is  definitely  interested (check him out on Facebook)

    You   article  was beautifully   and  eloquently  written,  I  am  a huge  Jay-Z  fan (currently   reading his book), a  life-long educator  and  coach.  I  am   not  (yet) tech  smart but  am  fast  learning.  Would   you  please  contact  me  via  e mail?

    Sincerely,

    Mona  Penn-Jousset   mjnysf@yahoo.fr
  • James
    In 1994 I started a nonprofit called O.P.T.I.O.N.S. The acronym stood for opportunities provided through interactively organized network systems. It brought successful professionals in as speakers for subsidized lunchtime seminars for at risk Washington, DC high-schoolers. After consistent attendance, essays, and identification of a future professional career choice the kids got 4 week internships that partnered them with a mentor. We landed kids at elite firms including Lockheed, Marriott, Hogan&Hartson etc. I was 22 at the time and lacked the business management skills to build it correctly, but ended up placing just over 200 kids over the course of 4 years. We were the "inroads" for bad kids we used to joke. Of course the kids weren't bad, but they weren't the gifted and talented who usually find their way out independently. We did good, and there is from that experience a blueprint and hundreds of adults now as professionals who can testify to the programs impact on them. Some have expressed an interest in restarting the program as well.
  • M. underwood
    James,

    I'm really interested in OPTIONS. It sounds like a great model to inspire and develop disadvantaged young people.

    I'm also interested in scaling such  mentoring through technology, which provides great

    opportunities to find right young people to mentor, engaging them in a

    process of personal development by using brands like Google and Nike,

    and then leveraging the skills of their respective workforces.



    I would like to explore ways in which mentoring programmes and

    technology businesses could could partner together, including peer

    mentoring between our respective high-potential leaders, in-kind

    support by way of strategic advice from Google’s experts and smart

    ways that technology could make learning easier



    It would be great to discuss this further. I'd like to know more about

    your business, and your feel on the success rate of your initiative. macunderwood@gmail.com
  • Good analysis, but one key point is missing: "elite" networks are not static.  The minute a new person joins a network, that network changes slightly, for better or worse depending on what the network wants to accomplish. "Successful" people drive changes in their networks; they don't sit idly by.
  • I gotta disagree with you where you said it's harder to gain access to the right networks now than it was in the past. I don't think it's ever been easier for a talented person to get noticed and find fulfilling work. You've got to have the drive to continuously be learning and improving yourself. Lack of that drive is what keeps people poor. There are some people you can drop off naked in a foreign country, who never had a formal education, and they'll have found a way to make six figure salaries a year later. And then some people, you can lead them to water, hell you can pay for them to go to Harvard...makes no difference. And this cuts across all classes, because I know a lotta basically dumb and helpless people who grew up with tons of money, easily got into Ivy League schools, and frankly were just as dumb when they came out. And I know hustlers with ten times the brains who can, and do, take guys like that for large amounts of cash on a regular basis.
  • What Josh says seems true to me. But I would add this -- and I hope it is
    not taken as evidence of paranoia -- that though it seems easier, it is in
    fact not that easy. I notice that networks that I would not normally
    associate with, who seem "higher" in value than the community from which I
    come, do seem culturally to come across as threatened or fearful of that
    interaction. I recently interviewed at a prestigious university for a
    position that they advertised. It was a change making position / role, and
    the feedback from the interview was, "We love what you see, and you are
    visionary in your approach. But we are not willing to change that much."
    Again, this could say more about me, but I think it does speak to the fact
    that Institutions exist in order that they do not change, not so that they
    will change. And the migration of new communities into those communities
    means only one thing: CHANGE.
  • That's probably true, but in a way, the whole purpose of institutions is to be...institutions. i.e. structures somewhat resistant to change, capable of riding out short- or long-term periods of instability, for the sake of longer-term continuity. At least, I think that's what they're for. I don't like them any more than anyone else does, and the longer they've been in existence the more intractable they are. But I'm more interested in starting new ones than challenging old ones, and I think most capable people are, too. Whether you view a given institution as either the source of your trouble, or as the make-or-break ticket to membership in the grand old club, either way, you're choosing to play by its rules. Remember they exist for our good as a civilization; we don't exist to serve them. They're more useful for detaining rich idiots from engaging in a total melee against the rest of us, than they are in suppressing the poor. The poor don't see that as their function, but without those institutions to hold members to some code, we'd be living in Libya. Groucho said he wouldn't want to be part of any club that would have him as a member. Karl said just burn down the clubhouse. I say, let them all have their fun, they can call me when they actually need something of value produced.
  • Tonikinner
    Proving again that it is not what you know, but WHO you know.
  • I think you make a good point, although It's kind of difficult to think it all through. I call it the racism problem of economics. It's also good to consider mental problems in this context.

    I've described some pretty far out + related observations at http://stephan.sugarmotor.org/...

    Cheers,

    Stephan
  • Jonathan
    This article doesn't really say anything Pierre Bourdieu hasn't already said. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
  • Actually, I am working on something like this, and will have more details in the next few months.
  • Succeeding via connections is for people with no talent at building great products.

    Reflecting on people I know who have succeeded by building products, they don't have ivy league connections and connections have nothing to do with their success.
  • The very best builders, the top 0.1%, can get along without connections, sure. But for the rest of us, it's still critical.
  • Gregfreeman
    So, you actually believe that special help is "critical" for 99.9% of people. That is sad to hear. It is that prevents people from even trying to chase a dream. It is a built in excuse.

    I have degrees, and I have worked for famous companies. I never received any help. Moreover, I am far more proud of the things I have done on my own: from carpentry work as a teen, to creating my own companies as an adult. There is nothing like the feeling of adding another new job to the community.

    Stop the negative thinking. If you are; healthy, honest, hard-working, reasonably intelligent, and have a good idea, you have all it takes.
  • I think we probably agree and just are using different terminology. I was referring to the fact you need human connections to find partners, employees, investors, mentors, etc. But I think you're saying you can build those connections yourself even if you didn't go through some ivy league program. 

    Cowboy Coder above just make it sound like you can sit in a room and build something out of nothing with no outside help, and I was responding to that. Maybe it was his name that made me assume that was his point.
  • David
    I don't buy it.  Your line:

    "Because despite the fact that it’s easier than ever to learn the things that will qualify you for a well-paid position in the world, it’s not easier (perhaps even harder) to gain access to the networks that will let you achieve your full potential."

    With knowledge comes power.  If you have the same knowledge of someone in a well-paid the opportunities will come as long as you advertise yourself.  You're essentially advocating people should join elite networks before they learn which doesn't make much sense at all.  Actions speak much louder than degrees, if you have knowledge and passion for a topic you should be practicing it.  If you're any good at it you will be noticed no matter how rich or poor you are.
  • Part of advertising yourself is picking the right market(elite networks)
  • @David: Children of affluent parents "join elite networks before they learn", which may not make sense, but does indicate that there is at least some cause-effect relationship here.
  • Yeah, and children of affluent parents fail. All the time. Because unlike their parents or grandparents, they never had to struggle for affluence, and their skill set becomes "networking" and b.s.'ing, which are great skills to have in a bubble, but kinda crud when Madoff screws you outta your trust fund.
  • Great post!  

    This meme has been floating around the social network analysis community for a few years:  Poverty is not a lack of money, it is a lack of connections!

    But, see how those in poverty can reveal the connections of rich slumlords and assist their city attorney in fixing a problem...
    http://orgnet.com/slumlords.ht...
  • Michael McGrath
    As the old joke goes:  Young guy wandering the streets of Cambridge, Mass. trying to find his way to Harvard Yard, stops a man on the street, "Excuse me, sir, how do I get to Harvard?"  Man says - "Study, son, study!"  To get into an elite school you have to start with being academically good enough to make it.  Not just get in - make it through.  Some of the best approaches to solving the problem you posit have focused on helping promising, poor students early on.  "Prep for Prep" (for one) seeks to get these students ready for elite prep schools (an almost sure path into elite colleges) by intensive tutoring and mentoring starting at an early age with those who show intellectual promise.  Schools like St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware then can provide full ride scholarships (along with even travel money since poor students lack any means to "compete" with other students of means), and then, just maybe, some of these poor but intellectually capable young people can finally tap into the networks you aptly describe.  Such approaches do work, but they take a hell of a lot of effort!
  • datt
    This is hidden truth about educational and university system.This kind of things can be understand only through experience not by stories of other experience.Yeah in educational system richer getting rich and poorer getting poor like they don't have high standard basic foundation.I like this article especially "poverty is not deprivation it's isolation " this quotation   .
  • Ben Mappen
    Great post Jon!
  • We need to develop a glimpse. This may sound simplistic, but giving someone a glimpse into the dynamics of work culture or social building techniques is all it takes for someone who inherently wants to better themselves - the younger the better. 

    Personally, growing up in Brooklyn, I only had to move one borough over (to manhattan) to develop personally and professionally, but the biggest factor was letting go of the what I was used to in favor of making my life better. Once I had a glimpse of how people were "making" it, I wanted it bad and was able to let go of the provincial attitudes I grew up among. It was worth the initial isolation stage, not being connected to past, unproductive relationships, while slowly building a new set of relationships chosen (partly subconsciously) to give me the best odds of achieving a successful earning strategy.
  • Kron
    True, connections are important to success, even more so than skill or talent (which can be learned). But introducing people to others who are more established and trusted is not the only way. Having good social skills and being able to bring your point across can also work very well.

    These days, it's relatively easy to find a person that can help you advance in your business/life and get a meeting with them, but you'll have to know how to make them interested and show that you can be trusted - and if you've practiced public speeches (even if with your friends), you definitely have more chances at achieving that.

    Of course, this is the hard way, but my point is that anyone can succeed, no matter if they had connections from birth or not.
  • Colin Jenken
    One of the reasons that these networks work is because they allow for trust.  Trust in the work ethic of the other person or the same outlook on a certain subject and so on.  We have a method for this now but it's currently a privacy concern, Facebook/Linked-In.  What if we could supplement this with some kind of trusted reputation value.  Something along the lines of BitCoin ( a unit of measurement with a unique identifier and ability to share some of it with others ) but for showing that you are trusted.   One could generate reputation value buy getting other people to approve of them.   This would show that they are trusted by others and by enabling them to share their reputation wealth they can help with raising those people up in trust.  This could also allow for people to become trusted without having to be located close to each other.
  • All the great inventors and company founders in the US before 1900 and probably for decades after come from the poor.  Everybody was poor.  Poor people were capable of great things.

    But then we started making the poor sit still all day for 8 to 12 years.  And we started paying them for being poor and more if they had more babies.  

    And if they made starting making money and went over an arbitrary amount of money, we cut them off.  If they scrimped and cut coupons and saved their money, we cut them off.

    Lesson learned?  Watching tv is easier than learning how to work.  Saving money is stupid.    Hustling is for losers.

    So now its a big shock that some poor people have succeeded.  As if it wasn't very common in a free country before the tranquilizing effects of welfare.  As if most middle class people don't have to back very many generations to find poverty in their family trees.

    Yes, it can be changed.  But not without questioning all of the ways we're manipulating people.
  • dmh
    General Assistance amounts to about $3-400 a month on average and then  only lasts for about 3-4 months.  Are you really calling that "paying people to be poor"???  Being working poor really sucks and involves heaps and bounds of regressive taxation and a system that is designed to charge you more the less you can immediately pay, taking shit all day and then just have some bozo with a political agenda (usually a liberatarian apologist that has never had a sick family member that couldn't afford to get medical treatment just to stay alive) demonize the bottom poorest.

    I agree with your assessment that arbitrary cutoffs in public aide is a bad policy, but you've blown the welfare system way out of proportion... and glamorizing a time in the 1800s when people in tenements were dying of TB, sharecroppers lived in a segregated feudal system, the list goes on... And then idolizing the 1 or 2 historical accidents that came out of it?  That's really disenheartening.
  • guest
    that isnt true..as long as you are pregnant or have a child under 18 you can get food stamps, AFDC which is like child support if you have a dead beat dad in the picture among others you can get this forever just keep on having babies and dont work too much and it is big bucks $250 min for food stamps for first child $250 min afdc for first child oh and dont forget the tax refund you get woohoo so you can go get yourself a big tv and sit on your fat butt
    or smoke crack or whatever it is you do. 
    PS I have been there and I used the system to get myself out of the poverty cycle graduate and move on to another social class. My family and friends cousins etc did not many years later they are still on it babies having babies. From my point of view, I would have been more careful and not got myself into this situation if I knew I couldnt get a give check of food stamps.
  • From a historical standpoint 1835 was the golden birth year for boys who aspired to strike it rich in America.  The nation was still under-populated with a great ratio of humans to resources. Children born in 1835 came of age after the Civil War and at the dawn of the industrial revolution.  The "self-made men" of this time were not competing with existing powerful corporations.  They were inventing a new segment of the economy.  Historians mark this period as the greatest era of social mobility in the U.S.

    By "making the poor sit still all day for 8 to 12 years" I am assuming you are referring to schooling?  I am wondering if this is a call for a return to child labor?

    Before child labor laws, in the period of the fabled "self-made man," you might end up on a factory floor or deep in a mine shaft when you'd barely mastered walking.  Young mine workers, exposed to poisonous dust and constant danger, earned 25 cents for a 12-14 hour day in the dark.  There was no retirement or social security so workers often kept working 12 hours a day until they could no longer stand rather than risk slow starvation.

    The wealthy of 1900 amassed some of their wealth by creating working conditions that modern people abhor.  Only 3.5 percent of the workforce was unionized by 1900.  Workers were forced to endure whatever a boss could dish out.  It was common for people to work 12 hour shifts in 117-degree factories, seven days a week.  Working men lost limbs, were crushed and poisoned.  If you lost your arm in a machine, ou got back to work or were let go to starve because you couldn't work any more.  Women who packed soap were exposed to soda that ate away their fingers.  Flower packers were slowly poisoned by arsenic that was added to bring out vivid colors.

    People were paid in company scrip that was only good at the inflated company store, this in a time when food costs in the best case already accounted for 50 percent of the typical salary.  

    Between 1868 and 1875 an estimated 500,000-- about half the New York City population-- lived in slums with as many as eight people sharing a living room of ten by twelve feet and a bedroom of six by eight feet.  The rent per square foot of squalor was actually 25-35 percent more per foot than that of fashionable uptown apartments.  Filth and crowding led to mass epidemics of cholera and yellow fever.  For every Andrew Carnegie there were thousands of poor people who were too sick and exhausted to do great things.

    So yes, in the golden days before welfare, some exceptional individuals were able to prosper by creating an industrial economy from scratch in an amenable environment and they were well celebrated.  It is, however, important to put it in the full context of what life was like in the time.  We cannot bring back the conditions of the pre-industrial era in order to invent it again.  Nor, I believe, do we want to return to the era of nightmarish poverty that this time was for a great many people. 
  • Jk
    A child born in 1835 came of age in 1856, five years before the start of the US civil war.
  • Utter nonsense. Indeed, dangerous nonsense.

    In any environment, the exceptional are more than likely to do well -- quite well, in fact. That is why they are exceptional, whether exceptionally talented, possessing exceptional energy or just the ability to work hard.

    But most kids growing up, in whatever stratum of society their origins lie, are, by definition *not* exceptional. They huddle around a median. The difference is that it is increasingly the case that those from poor backgrounds who are, say, a standard deviation above the median (again, in the qualities mentioned above) have many fewer opportunities than kids at the same place on the curve who come from upper class backgrounds. And that has become increasingly the case.

    If anything, you destroy much of your own argument; tax rates have been historically low over the last thirty years or so, and, if anything, pure social welfare spending has gone down (what increase has occurred can be directly traced to rising health care costs, more dollars -- even after adjusting for inflation -- for the same level of service). That would seem to produce exactly the conditions you claim to be hoping for.

    No, what's really happened is that, as a result of external factors, the value of "the deal" has risen wildly while the value of a day's work has -- and the value placed upon it -- has declined precipitously, particularly when weighed against the consistent level of productivity gains that have occurred.

    The kinds of things that led to the expansion of the middle class were things like free public higher education (as practiced in the City schools in New York, for example), the GI Bill, unions strong enough to make sure that their members shared in the growing prosperity, pulling up the wages of workers in general. The public sphere was revered; we did basic research, built roads and bridges, went to the moon.

    And then, a certain level of comfort having been reached, it all started to crumble. WE started believing our own press clippings. We started to believe that concentrating wealth in a few hands was a good idea -- when, in fact, it's the least efficient place for money to be. We pitted workers against each other. We said, "Look over there. *He's* getting a better deal than you..." All along the way, the money increasingly flowed up the food chain.

    Consider the thing that have gone up the most in price over the last few decades. They tend to have one thing in common: Each holds the key to class mobility. Healthcare. Higher education. Housing.

    If you're not a deep abiding fan of capitalism, the need for a change is obvious. But even if you are, the need for change should be equally obvious: the current situation is not sustainable. Concentration of wealth kills off demand. Customers. And without customers, no business can survive.

    You are, of course, completely free to ignore me (and even say some unkind words; no problem, that's your right), but I would urge you to reconsider your rather facile and self serving position. Think about it.
  • Guest 2
    tl;dr
  • Guest
    Artie, didn't have time to read your full response, but regardless I call b***s***. Alan makes a valid point, even if it is not the complete and full answer. Liberal apologists don't like the idea that just maybe some people don't give a darn and just maybe they had at least some role to play in the bed they made for themselves. Just a thought. It is not the full answer, but to discount that even at some slight level it might come into play is cowardice. My take at least.
  • darth_schmoo
    I didn't bother to read a word of your response, but you're completely wrong about everything.
  • anon
    I think your points are good, but I think you are being careful, and the expense of identifying deeper issues.  

    "and doing what we can to teach kids from impoverished backgrounds not just how to read and write but how to become upwardly mobile in their networking"
    This sounds like a great thing to work towards, but how do we help kids at home?  How do we improve parenting from generation to generation?  Well to do kids often do well because they achieve support or structure at home.  I was extremely lucky to have parents that pushed me every singe day. 
    What do you do as a kid when your parents don't keep strict rules and you lack real role models?  When other kids with worse off parents are able to convince other kids to run with them?

    I do agree that giving under privileged kids access to higher education is a very good goal, but how do you educate someone at the normal college level who has dropped out of high school, or checked out even earlier?  Who can barely read at a high school level? I don't know if the solution is to try to force them through something they are not prepared for.

    I think it's easy to blame teachers for the perils of the under priviledged in our educational system.  It's hard to blame a larger cultural and social system that is failing in many ways, not all of which are easy or "safe" to publicly identify.
  • Common
    You pretty much nailed it anon. Kids develop their foundation at home. If the home is broken you can guarantee that child is at a huge disadvantage. You can give them a diploma then send the individual to Harvard but without the foundation that comes from the home that individual is still unlikely to succeed. Why won't someone write an article about the statistics of broken homes in these "poor" areas and how we go about fixing that problem?
  • One way to help kids is to make day cares as cheap as possible. The kids of just those parents who can't afford them may be the most to benefit.  - S
  • joeyshurtleff
    At every point in my Silicon Valley career, it's been my network and my ability to leverage that network that have opened all sorts of doors for me. I've been iterating on an idea to help others better leverage their networks, but it's still very much a work in progress, and it's currently aimed primarily at young professionals. Solving this problem for younger folks is certainly much harder (and much harder to monetize).
  • What about older folks? Once upon a time I was exceptional and people thought I would go places. However, although I've always performed well and creatively in the workplace, I've never got into the right networks. When I learn a new skill well, noone wants it anymore- they want a person with a different background to have my skill. I've tried 4 careers and haven't climbed further than junior levels in any of them, despite doing well and being appreciated. Now I'm unemployed, with a postgrad degree and employers want me to have more experience in the things I had jobs in before- but recently. Catch22. I don't think it's worth sticking around for my allotted span without an income. I feel as though much of my life has been wasted- both to me and to the society I wanted to contribute towards. Most people my age are thinking about retirement, but I have a young head on young-feeling shoulders and I'd like a career so I can earn some superannuation for my old age!
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