One thing that was always abundantly clear is that long-term thinking and discipline is something that you
are, it isn't particularly context dependent nor something you can teach beyond natural inclination. Virtually all of the poor people I grew up and lived around with these manifest traits got out of poverty eventually and never came back. For these people, a positive mindset may be helpful. That combination of long-term thinking and discipline are like compound interest, given enough time you can build substantial value on it no matter how little you start with.
In this sense, poverty is a personality trait trap. If you don't have these traits and you find yourself in poverty, you are stuck because you'll never spontaneously develop these traits. All of which creates a selection bias where the population of people in poverty are naturally depleted of these helpful traits. Many people are born into this position.
If you are in a middle-class situation and lack these traits, you can nonetheless afford some drag loss as a consequence of having excess income -- the median US household can afford to frivolously waste ~$12k/year without materially changing their position beyond lack of wealth accumulation. That is a large de facto safety net for lack of long-term thinking or discipline. Poor people don't have this. Being middle-class doesn't create long-term thinking or discipline, as is also amply evident, but you can afford to make more poor life choices.
In a sense, I agree with the article that it won't materially change outcomes. Even if you can divide people in poverty by these traits, the people with them are likely to get out of poverty regardless, and it does nothing constructive for people without them.
In this sense, poverty is a personality trait trap. If you don't have these traits and you find yourself in poverty, you are stuck because you'll never spontaneously develop these traits. All of which creates a selection bias where the population of people in poverty are naturally depleted of these helpful traits. Many people are born into this position.
If you are in a middle-class situation and lack these traits, you can nonetheless afford some drag loss as a consequence of having excess income -- the median US household can afford to frivolously waste ~$12k/year without materially changing their position beyond lack of wealth accumulation. That is a large de facto safety net for lack of long-term thinking or discipline. Poor people don't have this. Being middle-class doesn't create long-term thinking or discipline, as is also amply evident, but you can afford to make more poor life choices.
In a sense, I agree with the article that it won't materially change outcomes. Even if you can divide people in poverty by these traits, the people with them are likely to get out of poverty regardless, and it does nothing constructive for people without them.