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Lessons from COVID-19 VI: Sacrifices

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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, Trump has wavered on the practice of social distancing. One reason for the wavering is that billionaires have argued for getting back to work during the pandemic. Put in neutral terms, the gist of their argument is that maintaining the current pandemic practices will cause damage to the economy that will far exceed the damage done by sending people back to work. This is a classic utilitarian position in that the right action is the one that creates the greatest good (or the least harm).  Lieutenant Governor  Dan Patrick has advanced a similar, but much harsher argument. On his view, the damage done to the economy by the means taken to protect people from the virus far outweighs the damage done by putting people at risk. He went so far as to claim that he would be willing to die for the economy and seems quite willing to sacrifice other seniors as well. While this is obviously not a mainstream view, it has been getting some traction on Fox News and encourages Trump. While the billionaires and Patrick at least acknowledge that there is a downside to their proposals, there are those who see the deaths this approach would cause as a good thing—another plus rather than a minus. Presumably some of these are trolls, perhaps Russians trying to get Westerners to kill each other.

While it is tempting to simply dismiss the billionaires as greedy sociopaths who are happy to sacrifice the health and lives of others to add a bit more to their already vast fortunes, they do raise an important general moral problem: to what extent should some be sacrificed for others? We are already allowing, and rightly praising, the sacrifices being made by people such as health care workers, grocery store workers and many others who are risking exposure for the good of others. As with the billionaires’ argument, this is morally justified on utilitarian grounds: the few put themselves at risk for the good of the many. They are literally keeping us alive by taking care of us, ensuring that food is still available and so on. It is, I think, inarguable that these sacrifices are good, essential and heroic. It is also inarguable that some of these people will die because they are staying at their posts, doing what must be done to keep us and our civilization alive. In the case of these essential goods and services the risk is warranted—though everything possible should be done to reduce the risk. But what of the broader economy?

The billionaires are correct that a badly damaged economy would be harmful to workers—one merely needs to look at what happened to workers during the various depressions and recessions inflicted upon them over the years. Things were already quite bad for many even before the pandemic and the economic damage will make things even worse. As such, there is certainly a good argument for getting the economy back on track as soon as possible. But does the utilitarian argument support the billionaires’ view?

When engaging in an honest utilitarian calculation of this sort, the three main factors are values, scope and facts. In the case of the facts, one must honestly consider the consequences.  The scope determines who counts when one is assessing the harms and benefits. The values determine how one weighs the facts and what is considered good and what is seen as bad. It is a fact that the social distancing practices are doing economic damage—many people are unable to work, many businesses are either closed or operating at minimum levels and so on. It is also a fact that relaxing social distancing to get people back to work will result in more infections which will cause suffering and death. The billionaires and those who disagree with them both agree on these facts; but they disagree about matters of scope (who counts) and value (what counts more). The billionaires have generally shown no concern in the well being of workers and it would be absurd to think they suddenly care—as such, the scope of their concern would seem to be, at most, their economic class. In terms of values, the billionaires clearly value money a great deal—more so then the well being of the workers (otherwise they would provide better pay and benefits). As such, their argument makes perfect sense to them: relaxing the restrictions would seem to benefit them financially and the harms would, as always, be suffered by others. Those who think that everyone counts and who value life and health over profits for billionaires will see the matter rather differently.

It could be objected that while the billionaires are interested in their profits, they are also correct in their claim that workers will be hurt more by the ongoing economic damage. As such, we should relax the restrictions because it would also be better for the workers.  There are two main replies to this argument. The first reply is to argue that the billionaires are wrong in their assessment: even in their economic terms, relaxing the restrictions would cause more economic damage than keeping them in place. To use an analogy, imagine a business in a large building that is on fire. One could argue that having the firetrucks pump water into the building will do a lot of damage and that the fire should be mostly allowed to burn out naturally while the employees continue to work. But this can be countered by pointing out that allowing the building to burn will do far more damage in the long term—and kill more people.  As such, unless the goal is short-term profits and long-term disaster, then it is best to keep social distancing in place until it is medically unnecessary.

The second reply is that people will suffer, as they have been for a long time, because of the economic and social structures that we have constructed. We have vast resources to mitigate the harm that will be done—the problem is that these resources have been hyper concentrated into the hands of a few and thus most people lack the resources to endure the pandemic on their own (and many lacked the resources to endure “normal” life before the pandemic). The truth is that we can get through the economic harm of the pandemic if we are willing to share the resources and wealth that we all created. But the billionaires would be right if it remains business as usual—hyper concentration of wealth and rage at even the idea that the richest should become slightly less rich so that others can avoid the horrors predicted by the billionaires if the many are unwilling to risk their lives for the profits of the few. It is indeed ironic that the billionaires have a fix on hand for the all the harms they predict: the economic and social structures could be adjusted for the good of us all, rather than focused on the good of the elites.  I certainly expect the usual objections of how the billionaires and rich earned their great wealth and that the lesser people are just lazy takers eager to get something for nothing.  Those who have served as able enablers of vampire capitalism bear their share of the blame for where we are today, and I must admit that I am exhausted by their evil bullshit.

The lesson I hope we learn here is that the sacrifices of those in essential areas, like those working to provide food and health care, are morally justified and laudable. Another lesson is that the sacrifices extracted from the many by the few to expand their wealth are neither justified nor laudable. What is perhaps more horrifying than the billionaires’ view that people should die for the economy is that they believe they can make such statements in public with impunity and without fear of consequences. I hope, in vain, that more people will see this vampire capitalism for what it is and they will work at changing the economic and social structures so that we will be able to endure not only future crises but everyday life.

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Preying on Veterans

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While most profess respect for veterans, there are also those who prey upon them. There are two main reasons veterans are so often targeted by scammers. One is that they are a conduit to federal money that can easily be tapped. The second is that veterans are often vulnerable. One aspect of this vulnerability is, ironically, financial. While veterans have access to federal money, they are often in short term financial need. Another aspect of this vulnerability is inexperience. This can be financial inexperience—someone who has spent years in the military may be unfamiliar with the workings of the civilian economy. Another example is higher education—veterans are often the first in the family to attend college and can be targeted by for-profit colleges that are essentially scams to direct federal money into private pockets.

One recently exposed strategy of targeting financially vulnerable veterans is the practice of paying a veteran a lump sum in return for all or some of their monthly benefits check for a length of time. There are two main problems with this practice. The first that it targets veterans who are in financial difficulties and need money now (for example, to buy a car so they can get to their job). The second is that there are extremely high commissions (up to 50%), hidden fees and interest rates of up to 240%. As an illustration, one veteran received $2,700 to put a down payment on a car but ended up owing $27,000. Targeting the vulnerable and engaging in such predatory financial practices would be bad enough; going after veterans merely makes it worse. There is also the concern that these exploiters are scamming federal money—something that should enrage those who are outraged when they hear tales of welfare fraud.

It could be objected that these practices are simply how the free market operates. If someone freely gives informed consent to agreement and they fail to consider the consequences, then what happens is on them. They are not forced into the agreement and the purpose of business is t maximize profit, not to worry about whether veterans are being driven into debt and bankruptcy.

The easy an obvious response is that they are not freely giving informed consent. As noted above, veterans typically accept such agreements when they are in times of financial difficulty—they are effectively coerced into desperate actions. They are also not informed. As noted above, veterans (like many non-veterans) are often ill-prepared to deal with financial matters and many of the details of the agreements are hidden from them. As such, these agreements are often entered under coercion and in ignorance. Naturally, if a financially well-off veteran who fully understood everything wanted to engage in this sort of agreement, then the consequences would be on them. But a well-off and informed person would not engage in such an agreement. As such, this practice is wrong.

Assuming that such agreements are wrong, the practical matter is what to do about it. One thing that is already being done is that lawsuits are being brought against those running these schemes. Unfortunately, the scammers can easily operate online and simply create a new company when the old one is shut down. There are also laws being proposed against such practices, but if they are not federal, then the scammers can simply operate out of a scam friendly state.

There are also possible solutions that would address the factors that make veterans prey. The first is to provide veteran’s with basic training in finance and scam recognition. The challenge is to make the training non-boring and effective; otherwise it will just be a box-check sort of thing. The second is to do more to address the financial vulnerability of veterans. One option would be to have non-predatory versions of these payments that allow veterans to tap into their long-term benefits to address short-term needs without getting into financial ruin. A better option would be to address what gets veterans (and non-veterans) into these desperate situations. After all, if veterans were not in dire financial situations, they would not need to seek such desperate and harmful “solutions.”

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Opportunity Hoarding I: Mobility

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In the wake of the college admissions scandal of 2019 the media briefly focused on how the wealthy use their advantages to secure admission to the best schools. As part of the coverage, there was some discussion of opportunity hoarding, a concept developed by Richard Reeves in his Dream Hoarders. The gist of the concept is that opportunity hoarding occurs when parents try to seek advantages for their children in ways that are harmful to others. One extreme example would be parents disparaging children competing with their own for school admission. The practice of opportunity hoarding raises many important moral issues that I will address over the course of a short series of essays. I will begin by discussing the concept of economic mobility in the context of opportunity hoarding.

Americans want to believe in economic mobility—that by hard work, people will be better off than their parents. While people tend to just talk about economic mobility, it is important to distinguish between two types: relative mobility and absolute mobility. In both types, mobility is a matter of moving up or down relative to one’s parents. Relative mobility is measured by comparing the economic ranking of current adults relative to the rankings of their parents. This can be illustrated by an analogy to running road races. When comparing two road races, my relative performance is a measure of my place in the second race relative to how I placed in the first race. If I placed better in the second race than in the first one, then my relative performance was upward. If I placed worse, then my relative performance would be downward. In this analogy, the race is a generation: the first race would correspond to the economic ranking of the parents and the second would be analogous to the current adult’s ranking.

Absolute mobility is a measure of whether the current adults have a higher adjusted (for inflation and such) income at the same age as their parents. Going back to the running analogy, my absolute performance would be a measure of whether I was faster in the second race relative to the first race. As before, the first race is analogous to the parents’ income and the second is analogous to the current adults’ income. While both measure improvement (or decline) there are some important differences.

A critical difference between the two is that relative mobility is a zero-sum game: if someone moves up, someone else must move down. To illustrate, the top 1% can only be 1% of the population: if Sally moves into the 1%, then she pushes someone else down. The analogy to the race illustrates this as well: if I move into first place, then I push someone else into second place. In contrast, absolute mobility need not be zero-sum: my getting more income does not entail that other people get less. Going back to the running analogy, my getting faster between races does not make anyone else slower—in fact, everyone could get faster. Because of this, a country could have little or no relative mobility, but exceptional absolute mobility.  Using the running analogy, the same people could place in the top 10 in race after race while everyone is also getting faster. Because of this, distinguishing between the two types of mobility is critical—especially when it comes to opportunity hoarding.

If relative mobility is low, then children almost always stay in the same economic class as their parents. For example, if Sally is born to parents in the top 20%, then she will probably stay there. If it is high, then people are likely to move up (or down) relative to their parents. While it is tempting to think that low relative mobility would always be bad, this is where absolute mobility becomes rather important. If relative mobility is low but absolute mobility is high and widely distributed, then most people will be better off than their parents—though they will still be in the same relative place as their parents. Going back to the running analogy, everybody is running faster—but people keep getting the same places in the races. One could imagine a very desirable society that has very low relative mobility but exceptional absolute mobility. Imagine, if you will, a nation in which Bartholomew Billionaire’s family has always been in the top 1% and owns dozens of houses, several yachts, three private jets and 100 luxury cars. Living in the same country is Paula Poor whose family has always been in the lowest 1% of income earners. But her family now owns a modest residence, her children are attending state college, and she and her husband can easily afford good insurance, good food and the occasional vacation.

 This would seem to be far better than a society with high relative mobility but with a history of awful absolute mobility. People readily moving up (and down) from generation to generation might seem good, but if income does not improve (or worsens) from generation to generation, then moving around more freely would be worse than being “stuck” in a good situation. Going back to the running analogy, this would be like be races in which people did not get better (or got worse), but different people made it into the top 10 each race.

A society in which both types of mobility are low would also be a bad scenario: those stuck in the lower income classes would not move up relatively or absolutely. While those in the upper classes would be secure, their lot would also not improve much relative to their parents. This would be a rather stagnant society. But what about real countries, such as the United States?

Currently, the United States has low relative mobility: people tend to stick within the class of their birth. Absolute mobility used to be good, but income has stagnated and currently the United States has lower absolute mobility. As such, many Americans are worse off than their parents and are stuck in their economic class. In this situation, downward relative mobility would be rather bad: one would be moving towards or into an economic class inferior to that of one’s parents—downward mobility.

Those in the upper classes (the top 20%) are aware of what downward mobility entails and, if sensible, they endeavor to prevent this by giving their children all the advantages they can. While doing the best one can for their children is generally the right thing to do, it can become morally problematic when these efforts actively harm the opportunities of others—perhaps by locking them out of moving upward. Richard Reeves and Kimberly Howard have discussed the phenomena of the glass floor—a metaphor for the various factors that keep the children of the well off from sinking into the lower classes. This floor is obviously a ceiling for others—even if there is no malicious intent, to the degree that it keeps the children of the upper classes from descending it also keeps the children of the lower classes from ascending. This is for the obvious reason that relative mobility, like the places in a race, is zero-sum. My victory is your loss. But it should not be simply assumed that this is immoral, hence the need for additional essays on this subject.

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Inheritance & Monopoly

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The current “death tax” in the United States allows a person to gift or donate up to $11.18 million tax free. The catch is, of course, that they must die. The Republicans have long made it clear that the “death tax” is a hated foe, but they also like to present a narrative of a free market and almost all Americans love to praise fair competition and equality of opportunity. As such, Americans like inheritance and fair competition. As with many cherished beliefs in belief sets, these two are at odds with each other: allowing significant inheritance conflicts with fair competition and equality of opportunity. While it is easy enough to argue for this point, it makes more sense to make people feel the unfairness inherent to inheritance. This can be done by playing my special variant of Monopoly.

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Almost everyone is familiar with Monopoly. For those who are not, the rules can be found here. The gist of the game is that you win by driving all the other players into bankruptcy by using the rules of the game. In normal play, the outcome of one game does not affect the next: the game is an equal opportunity ideal in that everyone starts with the same resources, in the same place and with a chance to win based on ability and luck. My proposed variation adds in inheritance rules. This variation requires playing multiple games.

Monopoly Inheritance!

Rule 1:  The first game in the series is played normally using the standard rules.

Rule 2: Upon the conclusion of a game in the series, the winning player records what they possess at the end—money, property, houses, and hotels.

Rule Three: At the start of the second and later games in the series, one player is randomly selected to receive the game possessions of the winning player from the previous game. The receiving player is the heir and the possessions make up their inheritance. The other players start normally. The game is otherwise played using the normal rules, with the exceptions noted in these rules. The series ends when no one wants to play it anymore.

Inheritance Variations

Players can experiment with these variations to make the game more “realistic” or “fairer.” The rules need to be set prior to play.

Fractional Inheritance: The heir receives a percentage of the possessions of the previous winner (75%, 50% or 25% are suggested). Property is selected by drawing the property cards randomly. Round up.

Multiple Heirs: Two players are randomly selected to be heirs, dividing the possessions of the winner of the between them. This can be a 50-50 split or a 75-25 split at the discretion of all the players.

While a player who is not the heir could win the game, the heir obviously has an incredible advantage. Anyone playing by these rules who is not the heir can easily see how unfair the game is. This should help people feel how inheritance of significant wealth is inconsistent with having a fair and competitive economic system.

From a philosophical standpoint, the first game could be considered a state-of-nature game (of the sort envisioned by Locke) in which everything is initially available to all and property has yet to be divided up.

The players in the second (and subsequent) game are obviously taking on the role of the next generation. Since birth is random and inheritance is not merited by effort, the heir is selected at random rather than being the previous winner.

As with any analogy that compares something simple to something vastly more complicated, this analogy will break down quickly. To illustrate, the real-world features multiple heirs, there is no equal start for everyone else, there is not just one game with one winner and so through all the differences. My point is, of course, not that this game variant is a perfect model of inheritance in the United States. Rather, my goal is to get people who are fine with the inheritance system as it stands to play this variant and see if they still feel that this is a fair ruleset for the game. And then to think about whether it is a fair ruleset for the real economy. The question that I want to pose is this: would you play Monopoly by these rules? Why or why not?

As always, I am open to arguments against my view—perhaps allowing and encouraging massive disparities in inheritance is fair and makes for competitive economic system that improves the general welfare.

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Capitalism & Racing

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While analogies, like cars, always break down in the end, they can be useful discussion devices. While on a run, I was thinking about my recent injury-induced lack of racing trophies and this topic kept blending in with that of the division of goods in a competitive capitalist society. This lead to an obvious analogy between road races and capitalism.

Both racing and capitalism involve competition and this generates winners and losers. Winners are, of course, supposed to be rewarded for the victories while losers are expected to reflect on their defeat and try harder next time. When planning a road race or managing capitalism, those in charge must address the nature and division of the rewards for the competition. In the case of a road race, this requires the race director to work out the prizes and decide such things as whether there will be age group awards and, if so, how deep the awards will go. In the case of capitalism, those in charge decide how the laws and polices will divide up the rewards.

While there are many ways to approach the division of the rewards, there are two broad approaches. One is to have a top-heavy reward system that yields the rewards to a few winners. In the case of a road race, this will typically involve all the prizes going to the top three runners or even just the first-place finisher. In the case of capitalism, this will typically involve most of the rewards going to the very top winners with the leftovers divided up among the many losers.

Another approach, broadly speaking, is to spread the rewards more broadly among a larger base of winners. For example, many races have age group awards in addition to the overall awards. Most races also have male and female groups as well, which further divides the prizes of victory. In the case of capitalism, this approach would give less to the top winners and divide more among the lesser winners. For example, under such an approach successful small businesses and successful middle and lower class individuals would get more of the rewards. This would, of course, mean less for those at the top of the pyramid, such as the biggest corporations and the individual billionaires.

One argument often advanced in favor of the top-heavy systems of capitalism is to contend that a broader division of the rewards would be some sort of socialism that would destroy competition. But, this is not the case. A broader reward system would still be competitive capitalism, it would just have a broader division of the rewards. Returning to the race analogy, a race that has a broader division of prizes is no less a race than one that offers prizes only to the first-place finishers. Competition remains, the difference is that there will be more winners and fewer losers.

It could, of course, still be argued that having a broader division of rewards would reduce competition and make things worse. In the case of a race, the idea is that runners would think “why should I train or race as hard as before to try to win the whole race when I can now get a prize for being third in my age group?” In the case of capitalism, people would presumably say “why should I work as hard as before to try to be the biggest winner when I can now get decent rewards for just being moderately successful?”

While I will not claim that no one thinks that way, most runners still train hard and race hard regardless of what sort of division of prizes the race offers. The same would seem to hold true of capitalism—people would still work hard and compete even when there was no massive prize for a few and little for everyone else. In fact, people who know they have little or no chance at the biggest prize would presumably compete somewhat harder if they knew that there was a broader division of the rewards and their efforts could pay off with prizes. Also, in the case of capitalism, people already work hard for small prizes when they know they have no chance of ever getting the biggest prize. As such, unless they are delusional or irrational they are not motivated by having a top-heavy reward system. Survival provides an adequate motivation.

At this point, one might want to bring up the example of races that have participation awards—that everyone gets a medal just for showing up. The economic analog would be a form of socialism or communism in which everyone gets the same reward regardless of effort. This, many would argue, would be terrible and unfair.

In the case of races, runners still compete even if everyone gets the same prize (be it the same medal or nothing at all). Because, of course, many people just love to compete for the sake of competition or for reasons that have nothing to do with prizes. It would hardly be a stretch to think that this view also extends into the economic realm—especially since there are people, such as open source developers and community volunteers, who work hard for no prizes. But, there is certainly a reasonable case to be made that people need to win prizes to be really motivated to do anything.

I must admit that while I will still run hard in such a race, I still have a love for competing for prizes. As such, I prefer races that offer competition-based rewards. I am, however, grudgingly tolerant of participation medals—after all, someone who shows up and does the whole race has accomplished something meaningful even if they did not win. Naturally enough, a race can have both participation medals and prizes for winning. In the case of an economy, this would be a competitive system that offered better rewards to the winners, but also provided those who are actively participating in the economy with at least minimal reward. One area in which this analogy breaks down is that the economy has people who cannot participate (the very old, the very young, the ill and so on) and it would be a far more serious matter for these people to get nothing than it is for people who do not finish the race to not get their participation medals.

Poverty & the Brain

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A key part of the American mythology is the belief that a person can rise to the pinnacle of success from the depths of poverty. While this does occur, most understand that poverty presents a considerable obstacle to success. In fact, the legendary tales that tell of such success typically embrace an interesting double vision of poverty: they praise the hero for overcoming the incredible obstacle of poverty while also asserting that anyone with gumption should be able to achieve this success.

Outside of myths and legends, it is a fact that poverty is difficult to overcome. There are, of course, the obvious challenges of poverty. For example, a person born into poverty will not have the same educational opportunities as the affluent. As another example, they will have less access to technology such as computers and high-speed internet. As a third example, there are the impacts of diet and health care—both necessities are expensive and the poor typically have less access to good food and good care. There is also recent research by scientists such as Kimberly G. Noble  that suggests a link between poverty and brain development.

While the most direct way to study the impact of poverty and the brain is by imaging the brain, this (as researchers have noted) is expensive. However, the research that has been conducted shows a correlation between family income and the size of some surface areas of the cortex. For children whose families make under $50,000 per year, there is a strong correlation between income and the surface area of the cortex. While greater income is correlated with greater cortical surface area, the apparent impact is reduced once the income exceeds $50,000 a year. This suggests, but does not prove, that poverty has a negative impact on the development of the cortex and this impact is proportional to the degree of poverty.

Because of the cost of direct research on the brain, most research focuses on cognitive tests that indirectly test for the functionality of the brain. As might be expected, children from lower income families perform worse than their more affluent peers in their language skills, memory, self-control and focus. This performance disparity cuts across ethnicity and gender.

As would be expected, there are individuals who do not conform to the generally correlation. That is, there are children from disadvantaged families who perform well on the tests and children from advantaged families who do poorly. As such, knowing the economic class of a child does not tell one what their individual capabilities are. However, there is a clear correlation when the matter is considered in terms of populations rather than single individuals. This is important to consider when assessing the impact of anecdotes of successful rising from poverty—as with all appeals to anecdotal evidence, they do not outweigh the bulk of statistical evidence.

To use an analogy, boys tend to be stronger than girls but knowing that Sally is a girl does not entail that one knows that Sally is weaker than Bob the boy. Sally might be much stronger than Bob. An anecdote about how Sally is stronger than Bob also does not show that girls are stronger than boys; it just shows that Sally is unusual in her strength. Likewise, if Sally lives in poverty but does exceptionally well on the cognitive tests and has a normal cortex, this does not prove that poverty does not have a negative impact on the brain. This leads to the obvious question about whether poverty is a causal factor in brain development.

Those with even passing familiarity with causal reasoning know that correlation is not causation. To infer that because there is a correlation between poverty and cognitive abilities that there must be a causal connection would be to fall victim to the most basic of causal fallacies. One possibility is that the correlation is a mere coincidence and there is no causal connection. Another possibility is that there is a third factor that is causing both—that is, poverty and the cognitive abilities are both effects.

There is also the possibility that the causal connection has been reversed. That is, it is not poverty that increases the chances a person has less cortical surface (and corresponding capabilities). Rather, it is having less cortical surface area that is a causal factor in poverty.

This view does have considerable appeal. As noted above, children in poverty tend to do worse on tests for language skills, memory, self-control and focus. These are the capabilities that are needed for success and it seems reasonable to think that people who were less capable would thus be less successful. To use an analogy, there is a clear correlation between running speed and success in track races. It is not, of course, losing races that makes a person slow. It is being slow that causes a person to lose races.

Despite the appeal of this interpretation of the data, to rush to the conclusion that it is the cognitive abilities that cause poverty would be as much a fallacy as rushing to the conclusion that poverty influences brain development. Both views do seem plausible and it is certainly possible that there is causation going in both directions. The challenge, then, is to sort the causation. The obvious approach is to conduct the controlled experiment suggested by Noble—providing the experimental group of low income families with an income supplement and providing the control group with a relatively tiny supplement. If the experiment is conducted properly and the sample size is large enough, the results would be statistically significant and provide an answer to the question of the causal connection.

Intuitively, it makes sense that an adequate family income would generally have a positive impact on the development of children. After all, this income would allow access to adequate food, care and education. It would also tend to have a positive impact on family conditions, such as emotional stress. This is not to say that throwing money at poverty is the cure; but reducing poverty is certainly a worthwhile goal regardless of its connection to brain development. If it does turn out that poverty does have a negative impact on development, then those who are concerned with the well-being of children should be motivated to combat poverty. It would also serve to undercut another American myth, that the poor are stuck in poverty simply because they are lazy. If poverty has the damaging impact on the brain it seems to have, then this would help explain why poverty is such a trap.

 

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