(cross-posted from my blog) As a young environmental activist, I lived the stereotype by not giving money serious thought, both personally and politically. There is a point where the less money you have, the less you care about it, even though you should care more. Let's call it financial learned helplessness - a state of mind where you believe that you will never have money, so when you do have some, and you get the chance to save and compound, you pass on it and spend the money. I think this sentiment is common. While you might say: "Well, that just proves my point that poor people are poor because of their own decisions and lack of discipline", someone else might say: "Well you don't understand that, had you grown up in the same circumstances as they did, with the same brain they were born with, you would have done the same". And then you might respond with: "Maybe that's true, but we should still say that they make bad decisions and have no discipline because shaming someone is a powerful social tool to incite change." And then someone would reply: "In an ancestral-like environment, that may be true, but in today's world, people will always have the option to walk away from your shaming, so what you're really doing is driving them away". And you might then say: "It still makes sense to shame them, because if it becomes a popular sentiment, they will have nowhere to hide, and this will nudge them to make better decisions". But then someone would respond: "In addition to being cruel, that's very unlikely. But seeing how a lot of poverty is just being born in the wrong family or wrong neighborhood, it's also false." And then this debate would become a debate about social mobility, inherited capital, or free will, which we all know doesn't exist because nothing in this world is free except refills. All of this is related to personal financial ability though. The other side of that coin is political views surrounding money, or what you might call economic literacy