Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions
Derek Thompson wrote an article explaining why poor people seem like they make bad decisions. According to scientific studies, it was concluded that poverty itself hurts our ability to make decisions about school, life, finances and such that it imposes mental burden, losing 13 IQ points. However, a comment published on Gawker's Kinja platform by a person in poverty labled "Why I Make Terrible Decisions" explained his reasons for why he makes bad decisions. It was because people in poverty do not plan ahead in long-terms. Whatever they save up now, it will be gone soon as they have to spend it for food, and it's not like saving up meals will get them out of poverty. "We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken." said the man in poverty who posted on the platform. This is why it seems like poor people are making "bad" decisions but in real life, there's no other "good" decision to make nor a reason to make those "good" decisions.
Thompson starts out his article by introducing an interesting information done by some researches, but soon he will oppose. He uses a lot of quotation marks in between words or phrases to emphasize his sarcasm. Also when he explains a concept, he lists the examples so that the readers will be able to understand it better. Later he presents the direct context written by the poor man, letting the readers read exactly what the man had wrote. This can make everyone feel the sympathy. The writing is very convincing, and I think the explanation after the writing was presented in a simple, concise way which made it easier to understand for the readers. Overall I think Thompson's opinions were weakly expressed but the important parts of his points were well delivered to the readers. The article was kept in a short, simple and neat way, always straight to the point.
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