'Education' is not limited to financial education, surely. Mentorship could be a good starting point for the social support that many poor folks seem to lack, and that might make it hard for them to earn money in the first place. Not sure what's 'insulting' about parent's claims, they seem quite sensible and supportive to me.
Perhaps I read it badly, but to me GP's claims sounded like they believe people wouldn't be poor if only they were more educated, that with a little mentorship everyone could learn how to stop being poor. The example of the neighbor squandering her money and not educating her children seemed to reinforce this idea - she has the money not to be poor, she just doesn't know how to do it. This is probably true in her particular case, based on GP's recording, but it is insulting to generalize it to the vast majority of poor people who would know very well how to save 1500 dollars and not to spend it on same gaming system, if they only ever saw that amount of money all at one time.
