We shouldn’t push a positive mindset on those in poverty
I feel this article buries its focus in a lot of narrative, as the core point is very accurate I believe but you have 2400 words to try to explain<p>&quot;not everyone handles bad situations the same way&quot;<p>This is a really tough article for me as personally, I moved to Seattle with &lt; $300 to my name and somehow made it work. For a few years, I lived on rice and eggs, going to concerts&#x2F;shows was a treat, and free2play games took up my weekends.<p>The article tries to convey how the mindset of being poor, not knowing if you&#x27;ll have enough money for food or common (western) comforts each week wears on the mind, and I do think this is true. From a very privileged position, I have the opinion that a lot of &quot;raise your status&quot; schools are just garbage meant to fleece the appropriate amount of money from persons in need. (e.g., bootcamps or specialty  IT schools. My personal take is they teach how to press buttons&#x2F;write very narrow and specific code and how to raise support cases with vendors, not how to understand what you&#x27;re working with)<p>I do not even pretend to understand &quot;real&quot; poverty; I&#x27;m extremely lucky in that I had the option to leave the US and work abroad where the capacity to learn was a considered element of the position. Despite the experience I have in System Administration and Programming, I&#x27;d probably fail most US interviews simply because I lack the certifications to appease recruiters and I don&#x27;t have the certification history to appease hiring managers.<p>I find this article to be very US oriented (maybe UK? Not as clear for me), and the way the US treats the poor is abysmal. When I was still living in the US, I recall huge fees for medical procedures that the Doctors deemed seriously necessary (possible cancer), but insurance companies denied as the results were negative, and thus not necessary. Positions constantly asked for N years experience for technologies only around for (N-X) years, or expecting 5 technology stacks to work for 35k USD or less.<p>Now that I work outside of such a system, I deal with the persons who __are__ hired for such positions, and naturally they lied from top to bottom on their CV to get the position; I don&#x27;t blame them for lying their way into the position, but I do fault them for expecting others to fulfill each technology stack for them.<p>The US has a huge issue with education and poverty in general, with education being so much for pay. I faced so much pushback for paying my student debt in advance and had a few months of argument with payment lenders when I paid my student debt a good number of months in advance, and I cannot see any justification for this. (It truly took 6 months to get a confirmation that my debt was paid in full)<p>From my perspective, far too many systems in the US benefit from the poor having no other choice. I paid $3500 for a biopsy that by all means I feel should have been covered by my insurance. Four months into the event, I had already spent 80+ hours defending my position and _not_ paying prevented me from moving to a new apartment.<p>Compared to moving to eastern Europe, the cost of the same procedures was $100 USD up front, no surprise bills later, insurance didn&#x27;t bat an eye at this cost.<p>The US is built on bilking the poor for every penny; there&#x27;s no wonder that there is such a negative mindset on those who haven&#x27;t lucked out on life.<p>I am so happy I was able to find a way to get out of the US, despite all of my complaints about it. Hearing my friends and family tell me about &quot;how great&quot; it is, despite carrying $100K + in medical debt is just appalling. Every action of their life for programmers, nurses, doctors, and other such privileged positions is undermined by the fact that every system they rely on is designed to fleece them for as much money over their entire life as possible.<p>It&#x27;s a sick and disgusting system that seems resilient to change no matter how many people realize it&#x27;s absolutely awful.