Does not saving prevent those events from happening? How are those events handled without savings? How would giving them more money resolve this problem?
That's not the point. Of course it doesn't - but that unexpected $35 copay for the urgent care visit would've wiped you out, whether you'd bought the $1 lottery ticket or not. At least you had a little burst of "man, if I won, I'd..."
We know from studies that poverty dramatically changes short-term vs. long-term decision making.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5641572/
> How are those events handled without savings?
Be hungry the week after, pawn a possession, payday loan.
> How would giving them more money resolve this problem?
How would having money solve money problems? That's really the question?
I have shown that they do have $500 to cover an emergency but they have chosen to spend it on lottery tickets and tobacco products. You claim that this is due to being poor and how they have poor impulse control and that makes them unable to save the money and instead the immediately spend it. If I give them another $500 why wouldn't they just spent that on more lottery tickets and tobacco products?
You have not. You've shown that after a year of not buying lottery tickets they might have that $500, with the caveat of the fact that we know that's not really how that works - any savings gets wiped out by the next unexpected bill long before that.
> If I give them another $500 why wouldn't they just spent that too?
Where was that suggested? That's a silly approach to the problem.
Far more comprehensive solutions are necessary. Better housing policy, living wage, national healthcare, better regulation (or banning) of payday loans, guaranteed access to banking services, etc.
I don't see how this math works. Lets say my total annual income is $5000 to keep the math easy. My spending looks like this:
get $5000 paycheck (for the sake of ease of math)
spend $3000 on rent
spend $500 on lottery tickets
spend $1000 on food
spend $500 on tobacco
Now I have a $500 bill that I don't have the money for.
Conversely I could:
get $5000 paycheck
spend $3000 on rent
spend $1000 on food
Now I have a $500 bill that I can cover because I did not buy all those lottery tickets.
Your car breaks down. You get a parking ticket. Your kid gets sick. You get evicted and some of your stuff gets ruined by the rainstorm because the landlord put it on the lawn.
If saving money causes more bills to appear as you suggest the solutions seems to be to give the poor less money so they will have less bills.
Sigh. I'm not sure if this is a comprehension issue or if you're deliberately misrepresenting what I'm saying.
Saving doesn't cause bills to appear. The bills are already there. They've likely been piling up for years, and continue to do so.
If you're $20k in debt, and it keeps growing, and every time you've tried to save up a few dollars to pay it down you've had to spend the couple bucks you managed to accrue on yet another critical bill you can't put off any longer, it starts to feel pointless to save.
> you suggest the solutions seems to be to give the poor less money
What?
I laid out specific, systemic interventions that are necessary, none of which require giving the poor less money.
>If you're $20k in debt, and it keeps growing, and every time you've tried to save up a few dollars to pay it down you've had to spend the couple bucks you managed to accrue on yet another critical bill you can't put off any longer, it starts to feel pointless to save.
If they have so much debt buying so many lottery tickets? Seems like a bad idea. What if they never bought lottery tickets to begin with? Who keeps extending them credit when they clearly never pay any bills?
Do you extend this same logic to firms like Amazon? Amazon spends virtually every dollar they make, does that mean they are poor? Should the government step in a give them money because of how poor they are?
I don't see why, "You have to stop buying lottery tickets" is a non-starter when talking about Americas poor. First stop buying lottery tickets, then we can talk about money problems you may have.
Predatory lenders, utilities and hospitals that may not be legally permitted to deny service but can still attempt to collect, etc. They're certainly not getting a 2% cash-back credit line from Chase.
They're also not never paying bills. They're juggling them, so the latest and most critical get paid. Squeaky wheel gets the grease - you'll probably pay to get your car out of impound before you'll pay your kid's school lunch debt.
> Do you extend this same logic to firms like Amazon? Amazon spends virtually every dollar they make, does that mean they are poor?
My "I'm being argued with in bad faith" senses are beginning to tingle.
> I don't see why, "You have to stop buying lottery tickets" is a non-starter when talking about Americas poor.
Again, systemic solutions are required here.
Add "get rid of lotteries" to my systemic fixes list, if you like.