Upper working-class people attribute poverty to lack of caring and willpower

Evidence

The rationale for their lower status turns chiefly on two things: their lack of education and therefore failure to know what they want or failure to understand lifesmanship, and their general indifference. It is particularly this “not caring” which seems so salient in the upper working class mind. This is consonant with the general view that success is a triumph of the will and a reflection of ability. Poverty is for lazy people, just as middle status is for struggling people. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2226

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The moral-evaluation engine here — ‘not caring’ as the salient sin in the upper working-class mind, and poverty-theodicy as ‘triumph of the will’ — is dense, layered material that challenges the reader’s own assumptions about how class attitudes form.