I spent all of my life blaming my upbringing for my problems: Class I was born into, parents level of education deciding of mine, lack of family money so no property ladder, lack of holidays. My life changed when I realized that some people make better choices and I can’t always blame outside factors for my own poor decisions
Of course hard work and conscientiousness and the ability to practice delayed gratification will hugely affect a person's outcome if they've been born into an environment of social and economic disadvantage, but it's still no guarantee that they will lift themselves out of some degree of poverty. To keep trotting out this mantra is to assume that people who remain poor must just never have tried hard enough.
Some people are far better equipped to make those good choices in the first place. Even among all the people who've had a somewhat hard start in life, they aren't all dealt identical cards. And luck and being in the right place at the right time plays a huge part in outcomes.
That said, I do agree with you to some degree. There is often a culture of learned helplessness.
Some people keep making the same old mistakes and poor choices and then act bewildered, indignant and hurt when its pointed out to them that that's exactly why nothing ever gets better in their life and frequently gets much worse.
This can be about wasting money you don't have to waste, by constantly prioritising the wrong things, culminating in debt and arrears that threaten to make you homeless, or it can be about other aspects of your life where poor judgement and daft choices are forever holding you back from sorting your shit out. For example having six kids when you were barely holding it together with two.
It's not just working class or benefits dependent people who do this - plenty of middle class people do to. But they are perhaps better cushioned to weather it, so it doesnt get so drastic so quickly and is less noticeable to the outside world.
It does strike me though, that there is so much defensiveness around this subject. If you bring attention to any individual who has (and as an example, let's go for the biggest tropes and cliches here) three kids by different men and pregnant with a fourth, none of the fathers giving any financial or practical support, in housing paid for via housing benefit/universal credit that's paid directly to her, and she's managed to get into massive rent arrears.
When she's photographed in the paper doing her sad face about the threat of homelessness and having no food in the cupboards for her children, you can clearly see she has lip fillers and botox, very complex tattoos and fancy 'nail art, ' maybe spray tan and a boob job, and three French pugs in the house, or whatever...(insert unnecessary excessive spending of choice)
And you just know that the initial outlay costs and then the ongoing maintenance of all of that runs into thousands of pounds, it's hard to not want to point out the obvious.
Her priorities are wrong and not only are some of her day to day choices poor, but her life choices are often poor too, which just compounds the problem.
Her rent arrears would be nil or at least much smaller and her children would have more food if she had different priorities. It's simply a fact.
But to shine a light on any individual like that causes others who are stuggling to be incredibly defensive and indignant, because they assume that you must think the same about them. But why would you?
If they aren't living the same way and they aren't making the same stupid choices, then why take it upon yourself to feel judged in the same way?
It's like someone moaning about dog owners letting their dogs crap on the pavement and not picking it up, and loads of dog owners who do pick it up saying 'How dare you accuse me of not picking up my dog's poo.'
Er...they didn't. 