[U]pper- and middle-class members tend to be future-oriented, purposeful, rational, and self-disciplined. Lower-class people... tend to have a strong present-orientation, are capricious, hedonistic, purposeless, and therefore unwilling to pursue a job or a career with any consistency. People with the former values therefore tend to have higher incomes and better jobs, and lower-class people tend to be poor, jobless, or on welfare. In short, the economic fortunes of people tend over the long run to be their own internal responsibility, rather than to be determined -- as liberals always insist -- by external factors.
1. Reminds me of the age old debate in international development between dependency and modernization theory. Dependency theory: poor countries suck and it's OUR fault. Modernization: poor countries suck and its their own fault. I've always been more inclined towards modernization theory... but not sure if it works so well on the level of the individual. Poor people are poor and it's because their lazy and hedonistic; vs. Poor people are poor because society keeps them down.
2. Also reminds me of some psychological research that shows "success" is linked to the ability that people either have or don't have to defer gratification. Here is a cool Ted about the "marshmallow test."
Also, there is an excellent RSA video about perceptions of time that clearly applies. People who can defer gratification live more in the future than those that do not.
I'm not sure if this whole theory of time perspective is correct or not, but it makes more sense than "poor people are lazy."
