You obviously have no idea what it's like to grow up poor. The fear, the guilt, the frustration, and the exhaustion that you learn almost as if through sheer osmosis from your parents.
The author is not arguing that you literally cannot compete if you're poor. But it's the very mindset from growing up in poverty that, through almost every interaction you have in childhood, leads you to _believe_ that you cannot compete, which prevents you from even trying. And even if you overcome that feeling (through constant hard work and willpower, such as our author's), say you do try to compete with the rich kids, then your lack of inborn confidence is so obviously apparent that you come off as inexperienced, or insincere. This is perfectly accurate in my own experience.
Mindset inequality is actually an incredible way to describe it.
IMO terms like "mindset" and especially "self-confidence" tends to understate the scope and pervasiveness of what's going on.
Even ignoring stuff like disease or nutrition, I'm willing to bet you could find population-level differences in all sorts of things like pre-conscious fight/flight response, stress hormone regulation, mental estimation of risk/impact, and all sorts of subtle weightings for social-standing and game-theory.
A whole suite of adaptations on the physiological, neurological, and social level, which may be very successful... for the environment the person grew up in.
And in the field of epigenetics, findings that chronic stress or severe stress events impacts your offspring in ways generally agreed upon to be negative (ability to socialize, cope with challenges, etc.) before they're even born, before they're even conceived...
IMO it's worth being very careful in any genetic discussion (epi- or otherwise) before declaring an adaptation to be "negative", especially if it's probably the result of thousands or millions of years of "battle tested" evolutionary winnowing that we can't really see and appreciate. (For example, the side-bonus of sickle-cell anemia is resistance to malaria.)
At best we have to add a big load of qualifiers, e.g.: "For this group in this context during this infinitesimal slice of human history, it didn't seem to help."
I get the author's point, but the style of writing came across as a bit too "poor me" at times.
Supporting family is not something that just happens for those that worked their way up from poor households, the last recession also has created situations where people now who came from middle class backgrounds may be the provider for their family based on poor decisions by their parents.
Thanks for stating the obvious: yes, it was merely a guess. But I am qualified by the measure that I personally grew up poor, like many others, and so can vouch reasonably in the author's favor regarding the reality of his statements.
Insofar as anyone would deny the concept of "mindset inequality" as it relates to one's intellect and poverty, I am perfectly comfortable making uneducated guesses about their upbringing.
Growing up without self-confidence isn't something that is only for poor people. It's a personality trait that people across all classes share.
What about growing up ugly? Ugly people also suffer from lack of self-confidence, that the "good looking popular kids" are better than them.
Everyone has their crosses to bear, whether it's race, wealth, weight, beauty, etc. It's not all poor people have no self-confidence, plenty of people from poor backgrounds with plenty of self confidence.
And yes, you really have no idea what I've been through in my life or what my background is.
Discrimination based on looks seems to be the last acceptable form of discrimination. Nobody seems to think that the fact that all 20 Academy Award acting nominees are well above the median in attractiveness constitutes any form of prejudice:
The author is not arguing that you literally cannot compete if you're poor. But it's the very mindset from growing up in poverty that, through almost every interaction you have in childhood, leads you to _believe_ that you cannot compete, which prevents you from even trying. And even if you overcome that feeling (through constant hard work and willpower, such as our author's), say you do try to compete with the rich kids, then your lack of inborn confidence is so obviously apparent that you come off as inexperienced, or insincere. This is perfectly accurate in my own experience.
Mindset inequality is actually an incredible way to describe it.