The persistence of poverty

One's efforts have to look like they can turn into something:

The more the poor regard themselves as lagging the rich (rather than doing better than, say, their peers back home in Gujarat), the more stupid risks they will take. That's why poor immigrants are more value-maximizing than the poor that have lived in America a long time and adapted to American norms and expectations. The immigrants don't regard their burdens as insuperable and they are on standard downward-sloping marginal utility curves.