> must simply "lower their standards" to act working class.
You make that sound easy, but I see the situation as symmetric. For example, my wife grew up wealthier than I did - and when it came time for us to buy a car, her first question was "how big a car would we need to comfortably move our family around" while mine was "what's the most affordable?"
it's a completely different mindset - she is frustrated that I default to a poor mindset and I am frustrated that she defaults to a rich one. Neither one is easy to switch.
I'm talking about the case where a person doesn't get to "choose" to act poor. The poor person doesn't get to choose to think other than what is affordable, where someone with more money gets the choice to thinking of things other than affordability, like comfortably. The mindset that develops from a lack of agency in one's life is more traumatizing than one that does have that agency but must learn to change their mindset. Different people might not be as effected by poverty however.
You make that sound easy, but I see the situation as symmetric. For example, my wife grew up wealthier than I did - and when it came time for us to buy a car, her first question was "how big a car would we need to comfortably move our family around" while mine was "what's the most affordable?"
it's a completely different mindset - she is frustrated that I default to a poor mindset and I am frustrated that she defaults to a rich one. Neither one is easy to switch.