Aside from homeschooling not being possible here - attending a proper school is mandatory, with even a single day of truancy punishable by strict fines for the parents - there is a curious advantage to being a position of having nothing to lose.<p>Whereas many working class families toil long hours and weekends at minimum wage jobs just to be able to pay the rent on their small house or apartment and so that they don&#x27;t lose what little they have, those who have fallen upon hard times (particularly through misfortune, rather than their own laziness or fecklessness) have the opportunity of taking greater risks and investing more in themselves and in their future.<p>It leads to this weird kind of envy where poor natives look at wealthy second-generation immigrants whose parents fled poverty (often becoming the landlords of the poor natives) and wonder where the hell they went wrong.