> Yet such efforts have been largely unsuccessful at reducing poverty and unemployment
It's unfair to just pick this one intervention and point out it didn't reduce poverty or unemployment. They mostly don't. Whether it's positive mindset, growth mindset, head start early education programs, most psychiatric drugs (NNTs in the 20s)... But we are not coldhearted enough to do nothing so this is something.
And occasionally it works. We treated iodine deficiency to great sometimes spectacular effects, we feed pretty much everyone in the west, not exactly well but to meet their caloric needs, we did win against smoking (don't know why OP derides that).
> When I have simulated a mild version of this experience for middle-class people – using a household budgeting game on a computer where they’re randomly assigned to be poor or financially comfortable – participants have found it to be profoundly disempowering. Those assigned to be poor reported a lower sense of power, and outlooks assumed to be the product of a freely chosen mindset (self-efficacy and locus of control) were diminished by the mere momentary lived experience of trying to meet one’s needs when one does not have enough.
> We treated iodine deficiency to great sometimes spectacular effects, we feed pretty much everyone in the west, not exactly well but to meet their caloric needs
Micronutrient deficiency might turn out to be an enduring problem in the future given how common "food deserts" are in poor areas of the US. Along with countless other things (such as lead exposure, and even something as insidious as general stress and marginalization in early life) it should be addressed as a possible environmental cause of cognitive impairment that might correlate with poverty.
It's unfair to just pick this one intervention and point out it didn't reduce poverty or unemployment. They mostly don't. Whether it's positive mindset, growth mindset, head start early education programs, most psychiatric drugs (NNTs in the 20s)... But we are not coldhearted enough to do nothing so this is something.
And occasionally it works. We treated iodine deficiency to great sometimes spectacular effects, we feed pretty much everyone in the west, not exactly well but to meet their caloric needs, we did win against smoking (don't know why OP derides that).
> When I have simulated a mild version of this experience for middle-class people – using a household budgeting game on a computer where they’re randomly assigned to be poor or financially comfortable – participants have found it to be profoundly disempowering. Those assigned to be poor reported a lower sense of power, and outlooks assumed to be the product of a freely chosen mindset (self-efficacy and locus of control) were diminished by the mere momentary lived experience of trying to meet one’s needs when one does not have enough.
That sounds worryingly similar to priming.