Read thorstein veblen and your mind will be less boggled.
Poverty means:
A)Very short time horizons.
B)Money spent on outward appearances of “wealth.”
Among other things, these are some of the pathologies of poverty. Those expensive sneakers or jackets may be the best things a poor kid owns. They are not viewed as “extras” that go along with a nice place to live or a long term financial plan, though that is what they may signal.
A nice pair of Jordans is a lot cheaper than a closet to put them in.
And chicks don't often see your closet first...
I had lunch once with a professor from UNLV who gave my department a talk on poverty. He said they think of things differently and gave me an example — family doesn’t have a refrigerator, so their church takes up a collection and gets them a refrigerator. The family sells the refrigerator and goes to Disneyland. We find this mind boggling, but the family figures they’ve been OK without a refrigerator, but they’ve never been to Disneyland.