I recently read a few articles that made me stop and think about the basic assumptions we hold about wealth and poverty.
 What the Rich Do
The first article was a remarkable piece by Dave Ramsey who created a list of the 20 Things the Rich Do Every Day.
I have provided the link above and directly quoted the list below:
1. 70% of wealthy eat less than 300 junk food calories per day. 97% of poor people eat more than 300 junk food calories per day. 23% of wealthy gamble. 52% of poor people gamble.
2. 80% of wealthy are focused on accomplishing some single goal. Only 12% of the poor do this.
3. 76% of wealthy exercise aerobically four days a week. 23% of poor do this.
4. 63% of wealthy listen to audio books during commute to work vs. 5% of poor people.
5. 81% of wealthy maintain a to-do list vs. 19% of poor.
6. 63% of wealthy parents make their children read two or more non-fiction books a month vs. 3% of poor.
7. 70% of wealthy parents make their children volunteer 10 hours or more a month vs. 3% of poor.
8. 80% of wealthy make Happy Birthday calls vs. 11% of poor.
9. 67% of wealthy write down their goals vs. 17% of poor.
10. 88% of wealthy read 30 minutes or more each day for education or career reasons vs. 2% of poor.
11. 6% of wealthy say whatâs on their mind vs. 69% of poor.
12. 79% of wealthy network five hours or more each month vs. 16% of poor.
13. 67% of wealthy watch one hour or less of TV every day vs. 23% of poor.
14. 6% of wealthy watch reality TV vs. 78% of poor.
15. 44% of wealthy wake up three hours before work starts vs. 3% of poor.
16. 74% of wealthy teach good daily success habits to their children vs. 1% of poor.
17. 84% of wealthy believe good habits create opportunity luck vs. 4% of poor.
18. 76% of wealthy believe bad habits create detrimental luck vs. 9% of poor.
19. 86% of wealthy believe in lifelong educational self-improvement vs. 5% of poor.
20. 86% of wealthy love to read vs. 26% of poor.
It is a great list, but this is not the story I want to tell.
I decided to write this article because I stumbled over two other articles directly opposing Ramsey’s views. I found the first on CNN.com and the second on the Huffington Post.
A Defense of the Poor
In the first article, What Dave Ramsey Gets Wrong About Poverty, Rachel Held Evans suggested that Ramsey had some common sense ideas, but then dispatched him with the following words:
One need not be a student of logic to observe that Corley and Ramsey have confused correlation with causation here by suggesting that these habits make people rich or poor.
For example, a poor person might not exercise four days a week because, unlike a rich person, she cannot afford a gym membership. Or perhaps she has to work two jobs to earn a living wage, which leaves her little time and energy for jogging around the park.
A poor family may eat more junk food, not because they are lazy and undisciplined, but because they live in an economically disadvantaged, urban setting where health food stores are not as available: a so-called âfood desert.â
Evans then took Ramsey to task for overlooking systemic “injustices” before concluding that Ramsey’s approach is “uninformed,” and that “God does not divide the world into the deserving rich and the undeserving poor.” This is true, but God’s judgement of the poor was not Ramsey’s point. In her zeal to defend the poor, she missed the point. If the poor do these things, they would likely grow more wealthy.
A Defense of Poverty
In the second article, Here’s Why Poor People’s Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense, Linda Tirado wrote the following:
Rest is a luxury for the rich. I get up at 6AM, go to school (I have a full course load, but I only have to go to two in-person classes) then work, then I get the kids, then I pick up my husband, then I have half an hour to change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 12:30AM, then I have the rest of my classes and work to tend to. I’m in bed by 3. This isn’t every day, I have two days off a week from each of my obligations. I use that time to clean the house and soothe Mr. Martini and see the kids for longer than an hour and catch up on schoolwork. Those nights I’m in bed by midnight…
When I got pregnant the first time, I was living in a weekly motel. I had a minifridge with no freezer and a microwave. I was on WIC. I ate peanut butter from the jar and frozen burritos because they were 12/$2….
I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don’t pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It’s not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn’t that I blow five bucks at Wendy’s. It’s that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be….
Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It’s why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It’s more basic than food.
Tirado’s article was personal. I appreciated her honesty.
As you can imagine, readers of the Huffington Post loved it (with 451,000 Facebook likes and 57,837 Facebook shares in a little over a month). Why? Perhaps it fit their narrative of how the world works:
- The rich are greedy and they have luxury because they are rich.
- The poor are poor because the system (racism, sexism, capitalism) keeps them down.
*Note: Â Tirado received over $50,000 by people who read her piece and then generously donated to her.
Personal Responsibility
Ramsey talked about habits of the rich. In contrast, the other articles seemed to explain away why these habits would not work.
The key difference was responsibility and choice.
Lacking Responsibility
I was reminded of a passage in Life at the Bottom. Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist, discussed his observations of the worldview of the poor in prison in England. In one particularly poignant passage, he discussed the difference between these prisoners and the average person that he treated. The prisoners often spoke in a passive voice.
Instead of saying, “Then I stabbed him,” one of these poor inmates was far more likely to say, “and then the knife went in to him,” as if it was not propelled by his own hand. Such statements were lacking personal responsibility.
Poor prisoners in England are not alone. Not how Elliot Spitzer said the right words, but spoke in third person as he explained his actions on the Tonight Show:
Note how he said, “It [hubris] affected me,” not “I did it,” or “I had this type of hubris.” He was simply acted upon. He was “taking responsibility” without actually taking responsibility.
I have seen this phenomenon in my own experience as the Director of Graduate Programs in the School of Business at Charleston Southern University. A student who makes excuses do not tend to last very long. However, another student with the exact same issue, who takes personal responsibility, generally weathers the storm.
Personal Responsibility vs. Structural Inequalities
From my perspective, Dave Ramsey is right.
Do more of these things and you increasingly position yourself for greater success. It may not be direct causation, but the person who continues to do these things tends to prosper over time; a compounding effect begins to work in his favor.
Now, the critic may object that the system is stacked against the minorities, women, and those without because the real problem has to do with structural inequalities.
This may partially true. Certainly racists and sexists exist. In our capitalist system there are winners and losers. There is no doubt that the system works better for some than for others.
Yet, if I were a betting man, I would place my money on the poor female minority who engages in the behaviors Ramsey listed over the middle-class male Caucasian who engaged in the opposite behaviors. This would be to bet on personal responsibility over whatever “privilege” the critic thinks the system might provide the favored.
Personal responsibility eats privilege for breakfast.
Read the list again, and see if you disagree.
-Darin Gerdes, Ph.D.
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Dr. Gerdes is the Director of Graduate Programs in the School of Business at Charleston Southern University. All ideas expressed on www.daringerdes.com are his own.
