So first diary, here we go. Please forgive the poor writing I'm an engineering major but there's always hope I'll figure it out. I am currently reading Aftershock by Robert Reich, and one of the ideas he briefly expresses early on got me thinking. The precise sentence was
"Being rich now means having enough money that you don't have to encounter anyone who isn't"
He says this as a contrast to wealthy people before the great depression, but as I read it I thought more about the effect of this isolation on the children of wealthy adults.
The rest that I have to say is mainly anecdotal, but I was really surprised when it happened. I'm not well off, my moms a teacher and my dads a construction worker. Far from poor, but farther from rich. I played ice hockey growing up, and because of this I spent a lot of time with some very well off people that I otherwise would not have met, and what I eventually noticed was that there wasn't a dislike of poverty or poor people in general but instead a complete lack of comprehension of it. I'm speaking about the kids here, their parents were a different story.
There's 2 stories that I think exemplify this lack of understanding. The first is a hockey story that happened on more than one occasion. A few times when I would break a stick in a practice or a game this conversation would occur:
Me - "S*#$"
Teammate - "What? Go buy a new one"
Me - "I can't I'm broke"
This never failed to get me a confused look or even a disbelieving laugh. I was normally mad and the conversation ended there, but when I was reading Reich's Aftershock it occurred to me that there wasn't any malice from them. They genuinely didn't understand the concept of not being able to buy whatever you want. This wasn't limited to equipment, it was car repairs, video games. In the most extreme example our bus broke down on a roadtrip because of a broken fan belt and a teammate offered to buy a truck at the car lot we could see down the road so that we could get the fan belt. My coaches reaction was to say 'No Your dad would kill me'. I was shocked that the proposed solution was to just buy a 15,000 dollar truck, but I was the only one, some of my teammates even pleaded with the coach to let him buy the truck.
The other thing it reminded me of was a recent conversation I had with a friend at college. We were arguing about politics. I don't remember exactly what the topic was, but I got frustrated and said something to the effect of 'We're not all as rich as you' to which she replied 'I'm not rich'. This came from someone who's parents own 4 cars including 2 mercedes, plus an RV, a $100,000+ race car that is her dads weekend hobby, and paying private university tuition in cash. I admit I had no response to her saying I'm not rich, everyone there just stared at her.
Reich is absolutely right when he says being rich means not knowing those who aren't. These are all good people and my friends but it shocks me that they have no exposure to what most people would call reality. While I experienced what was typical for them they never experienced what was normal for people like me. This type of physical class division remind me of a TED Talk Nate Silver did on racism. He talks about how poll data shows that not personally knowing people of another race doubles the occurrences of racism. I believe this idea of predictability by lack of exposure can be applied to opinions of poverty in a similar fashion.
This brings me back to thinking that the rich youth's view on poverty and poor people in general isn't a malicious view but a lack of comprehension. While the parents often believed in their own exceptionalism their children only knew what they'd been exposed to. Most of the kids will go off to college on their parents dime and when they graduate and have a job and a nice house they will eventually grow to share their parents belief in their own exceptionalism. They'll be able to say well I did it, without ever learning that they had an easier path. I think my question is, Is this inevitable? Can something be done between confusion and when they, as Rise Against says, "tell themselves that they've earned this by working hard and playing by the rules"?