What is Reddit's opinion of Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass?

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Theodore Dalrymple has an excellent book on this:

Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass

Thing is, it's not 30 years, and it's not just Britain.

Been reading some Theodore Dalrymple link tax. Was wondering if any others have read it and what they think. Seems a bit bleak to me, he seems to insist things are getting worse but I don't think the statistics bear that out. That aside I agree with his diagnosis of the underclass mentality, but it's not clear what he thinks can be done about it.

When I think of "valiant defenders" of the poor to the upper class, I don't think of random reddit posters, I think of people like J. D. Vance and Chris Arnade, people who are not exactly lacking in underclass connections.

As far as preferring to socialize with your own class, most people do. Classes are cultures, and unless you're a true cosmopolitan - which is rare - most people are going to be more comfortable surrounded by people of their own culture.

That being said, I do not see "white-knighting" as requiring any kind of illusions about the nature of life in the underclass. It is simply an assertion that 1) all human beings, no matter their social or economic circumstances, have a right to dignity and 2) our current elites have abdicated their responsibility to create a society that provides dignity to all.

Theodore Dalrymple's <em>Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass</em>. It's the observations of a prison doctor. I wonder if the reader might recognize himself in it and change his ways.

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Bottom-Worldview-Makes-Underclass/dp/1566635055

Even better, he has an entire book

> Basic Economics by Sowell

Classic. I should probably re-read that one. Another book on poverty you might like is called Life at the Bottom written by a british doctor basically trapped in extreme just world fallacy but makes some good arguments that people do it to themselves. So that's a good counter argument book to my own position. Poverty is a really complicated subject that I think everyone over simplifies.

Sowells Black Rednecks White Liberal and JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy are on my reading list as well. If you like economics I also HIGHLY recommend Mark Blyth. I can't get enough of his stuff lately. Here are some of his interviews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rxrjhWTdv8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzbH2YE4a24

I too think Joe earned his wealth but he seems to be very hard on working class american in a lot of his interviews and doesn't seem to get the the mechanisms for climbing the ladder and building your own business are largely broken in the states due to crony capitalism and outsourcing and monopoly and a hundred other issues.

This. I'm a libertarian, but the writer who most consistently challenges my beliefs is the cultural conservative Theodore Darlymple. You really would have to be completely ideologically blinded to not see, on reading history, just how powerful a force religion is in human affairs.