The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: arandomdude on December 19, 2013, 08:58:50 PM
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A good article to remind us all of the privilege we have and the work we all have to do to in our society:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/why-do-poor-people-waste-money-on-luxury-goods (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/why-do-poor-people-waste-money-on-luxury-goods)
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.