That's the thing: they do know. They watch rich people earn money doing, from their poverty-clouded perspective, nothing. Learned helplessness is a powerful force. It took me years to break out of it. I can see how wrong it was from the other side, but I also know how useless criticism of people inside it is.
Doing what's kept your head barely above water for years seems safer than putting a few dollars away every month hoping it grows higher than the next thing that fails in your car or house. That's if you can get a bank account at all. Everyone knows someone to ask for the number of a good bankruptcy attorney. That's networking when you're broke and defeated.
Wasn't familiar with the concept of learned helplessness and found this interesting study looking it up [0]
> The mechanism of learned helplessness is now very well-charted biologically, and the original theory got it backward. Passivity in response to shock is not learned. It is the default, unlearned response to prolonged aversive events and it is mediated by the serotonergic activity of the dorsal raphe nucleus, which in turn inhibits escape.
Learning how to help yourself isn't as easy as it seems especially when you barely or don't have the means to do so.
Doing what's kept your head barely above water for years seems safer than putting a few dollars away every month hoping it grows higher than the next thing that fails in your car or house. That's if you can get a bank account at all. Everyone knows someone to ask for the number of a good bankruptcy attorney. That's networking when you're broke and defeated.