We Need To Talk About Mindset
From the time I could walk until the age of sixteen, I was a cheerleader. Yes, me and my Wednesday Addams attitude wore short skirts, high ponytails, and celebrated violence to boys actively getting concussions playing football.
During my tenure as Torrance Shipman (#theremustbesometorrosintheatmosphere), I learned and lived by a common phrase in the cheer world: PMA, i.e. “Positive Mental Attitude.”
PMA as a strategy employed by coaches and teammates, as well as myself, was effective. It was our great motivator. But it was also dangerous. It kept me compliant.
When it was 100 degrees with 100% humidity at a 2 p.m. Saturday game and you were complaining on the field? Tap into that PMA. As a result, several of teammates experienced heat stroke.
When the hairdresser was putting cornrows in my hair (yes, you read that correctly. Please remember I was 9 and had little agency) and my white ass scalp was pushed past the breaking point and entered into the realm of migraine? Smile and PMA. What happened? My vision blurred, and I blew the basket toss at nationals, walking off the mat to a disappointed parent.
When it was 9 p.m. and I had three hours of AP homework waiting for me at home and we were doing the same routine for what seemed like the hundredth time? Nose down and PMA. As a result, I hated my fucking life.
You get the picture.
As Barbara Huson outlines in her book, Rewire for Wealth, you can change your perspective, your career, your money. Even, your entire life by engaging in these psychological practices. Recognizing, reframing, and responding to thoughts actually transforms the neural pathways in the brain through neuroplasticity.
You see, mindset is a tool, and as such can be used to help or hinder. Lately I’ve been seeing mindset weaponized—a tool of rugged individualism over our collective plight of capitalism. And I have a big problem with this.
The personal finance version of PMA is an “abundance mindset,” and listen, I’m not here to shit on mindset when it’s used responsibly. I use mindset as a meditation and habit-building tool. It’s powerful and should be used and marketed to with care.
When mindset is used like below, it’s time to take a steamy dump on it:
Listen, Brad, this shit… this isn’t helpful. Why? You’re using mindset as a way to shame people who have been systemically fucked. Who have seen and know that money corrupts. Who live in a world where you are only given the upper hand if you’re born rich or with a bevy of privilege.
It also completely ignores economics, history, and data.
The system IS rigged:
The system we’re operating under and subjected to (consensual as well as forced) is capitalism. And capitalism isn’t just an economic system. It’s a societal one. You simply cannot separate money from politics, religion, history, ethics, sociology, or anything else in our culture.
Capitalism relies on expropriation, exploitation, and “the non-compensation of a portion of workers’ labor time” in an economic sense, while using political power, white supremacy, male dominance, and ecological destruction to uphold its hegemony in a societal one (Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism).
At the very base level, capitalism, especially late-stage capitalism (which we are operating in presently), can only work on a rigged system. Its very modus operandi separates owners from producers, with capital benefiting owners far greater than producers.
When consider, “between 1979 and 2020, workers’ wages grew by 17.5% while productivity grew over three times as fast at 61.8% (CNBC), while government and corporate power has quickly consolidated into an oligarchy protecting capitalist interests, the argument of “the system isn’t rigged” predictably falls flat.
And I’m not even touching cost of living, the housing market, for-profit healthcare, or college education shifting from a public good to a private investment! Capitalism is pervasive and no amount of PMA can undo the chains it keeps us in.
The three macro-trends that made this possible during the last 40 years? The conversion of stakeholder capitalism to shareholder capitalism, the transfer of collective labor power to monopoly power, and the financialization of the economy (Reich, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It).
In other words, corporate growth was deregulated, union participation was effectively eliminated, and financial markets, institutions, and elites gained greater influence over economic policy and economic outcomes (The Levy Institute).
This instilled an oligarchy over a democracy and further entrenched the characteristics of late-stage capitalism we all exist in today.
Capitalism is also inherently racist, misogynist, colonialist, and oppressive. Please reference slave-based plantation capitalism, the prison-industrial complex, reproductive labor vs. production labor, the pink tax, invisible labor, immigration law, and a general history of the United States among other colonizing countries.
So, sure, if you’re a rich, white dude, the system isn’t rigged. But for the rest of us, the system has been rigged in this country since The Philadelphia Convention (Lehmann, Rich People Things).
Money DOES corrupt:
This one is just a matter of scientific study. And most of the studies say that, yes, money does corrupt.
Here are three studies for you to check out:
You can also deduce from the data below and general deregulation that when there is no cap on excessive wealth, there will be no cap on the exploitation of workers.
(Reich)
You GOTTA be born rich:
The American Dream as it was presented to us from the WWI era is dead. What lingers is the idea of class mobility, a lore so entrenched, its permanently embedded itself in our cultural zeitgeist. It seems that no matter what the numbers and data show, the exceptions outweigh the rule.
The rags to riches narrative may make conservatives and capitalists feel warm and fuzzy inside, but the reality is, “those in the top 20% of the income distribution earn nearly nine times more than those in the bottom 20%” (Rank, Eppard, The Guardian).
In America, the top 5% of the population own three-quarters of the entire financial wealth of the country, while the bottom 60% possess less than 1% (Rank, Eppard, The Guardian). And guess what? 60% of wealth is inherited (Buchholz, Forbes).
In other words, wealth in this country is controlled by the few and without being born into such wealth. The data supports the probability you’re likely to not achieve this status of wealth organically due to economic factors outside of our individual control. Factors like inflation, credit card debt, and student loan debt (Ceesay, Entreprenuer). Economic factors made possible and by the aristocracy and upheld by militarization and legislation.
The rich are also the most protected class in the United States. See corporate tax laws, tax loopholes, estate planning, real estate, lobbying, legacy admission, the above mentioned financialization, and again general history of the United States.
Conclusion:
These toxic ideas are constantly peddled online and are far too common, accepted, and widespread in the personal finance community and industry as a whole.
If you’re disenchanted and find yourself having a less than PMA, you’re not alone and the data backs up your very valid point of view.
Dr. Brad Klontz’s idea of “poor mindsets” ignores reality while attempting to gaslight readers into believing the bootstraps myth is still a viable option in 2023.
And if you’re thinking, “Calm down, Vee. It was just a Thread. Not even 20 words.”
I will not.
If you hustle and grind, wake up at 5 a.m., work five jobs, eat beans and rice, sell what little you own, kneel before God and self-flagellate while worshipping the dollar, you can be rich too! And then… then, you’ll be worth something. Don’t forget to buy my book!
This brand of content perpetuates the insidious and pervasive idea that the conditions the lower and middle classes find themselves in is of their own failure (both moral and financial) instead of a systemic one. It encourages class infighting instead of solidarity and words have always and will always hold power… especially when virality is possible in the digital age. That’s why I’m using my own here.
At the very least, calling these ideas “poor mindsets” is exploitive and manipulative. If you hold these opinions, don’t worry—you just have a “lack mindset,” and you need to do some inner work to heal your negative money perspectives and shift into an “abundance mindset.”
I hope between the lines of this blog post, you’re reading my eyes roll.
It’s not just a Thread. It’s a discourse that desperately needs changing if we are ever have an honest discussion about personal finance and close the wealth gap, the gender pay gap, or solve any of the other myriad plights capitalism causes.
These mindsets aren’t “poor.” They are rooted in reality.