Ghetto With A Good Job

IMO - One of the worst situations possible is for a earner in a family to be "Ghetto with a good job".
This is common in the area which I now live.
The local refineries pay $130k+ a year to people who have little to no education or acculturation.
This is fine... for that one generation - but this just adds to the rate of failure for subsequent generations.
The kids talk about how they are "rich" but themselves have no ability to do anything but work at Mac Donald's.
While economically middle-class - socially, many are just ghetto-fab.

The problem is that the family has resources but little understanding of the best way those resources should be used.
Usually, that one generation buys all of the rewards that are generally ascribed to success - but there is rarely any investment in the success for the family's future generations.
The family doesn't create any generational wealth.

Maybe that old commercial that warned to 'pass along one's values as well as one's wealth' went largely unheeded within many of our communities.
It seems that many parents have made things too easy for their children without a proper support system (morality, education, productive friends, etc.) to sustain that lifestyle.
The value of having a good work ethic seems to have eluded today's youth, but the value of consumption hasn't.
And without the education, social skills or connections to maintain the lifestyle to which many have become accustomed - many of these will be worse off than they would have been if they were forced to earn what was their own.

I refuse work on the homes of people who live this way.
Most can't afford me - not because they don't have the money, but because they don't have the money to spend on what they are asking.
I cannot, in good conscience, upgrade a house with pillars and tile floors when the money should be spent on "Your Baby Can Read" instead.
I cannot take money from a family who wants a new pergola - but they are working too much overtime instead of spending time with their children.
I cannot help a family self destruct on consumption.

How can I tell that they are are still Ghetto?
Because the pieces don't quite match up.
These are the homes that have the cars of their grown-ass children (who still live there) parked on the front lawn.
These are the homes that have large rooms but have every piece of furniture pressed against every wall. (This is usually a remnant of living in small spaces where there was no other choice. In larger rooms, the design concept is to set up little vignettes to delineate the use for each area.)
These are the homes that have huge lion sculptures that take up way too much room for the area being decorated.
These are the homes that have really nice stuff - but come across as tacky.
These are the people who claim a college degree but still speak as though they just came off the block. (Simple conjugation of verbs goes a long way in making an impression and opening doors of opportunity.)
These are the people who are more worried about appearance than they are of performance.

But the thing is - most Ghetto people don't know that they are ghetto.
Kind of like Nene calling that woman from Escape "ghetto". (Yeah... I watched TRHOA.)
The woman from Escape knew that she came from the hood and still had a bit of hood in her,
but Nene thought that she was upper-class even though she is the most ghetto of the bunch.