You mean being able to pay the rent, send their kids to university, pay their medical expenses without getting bankrupt? Because that's the kind of life most people aspire to.
> You can't outrun financial idiocy.
Following this line, most people are financial idiots, which means they are responsible for their poverty?
Your whole comment is conflating poor financial planning with actual poverty.
If you break people into: those legitimately without enough resources to get by, those who would have enough if they knew how to manage money, and those who have enough whether or not they can manage money; I would wager that the people with enough money but terrible planning skills would be the plurality, whether or not they were the outright majority.
Once you slip into the "I can afford this because I can make the monthly payments" line of thinking, you are pretty much by definition living at the cusp of your means. That's where most people are, whether or not it's a good idea for them to be.
Financial illiteracy is a better term, since I don't see why we should expect financial planning to be an innate ability.
At some point we have to decide if we want people to consume the most they can or if we want them to be "responsible".
I guess maybe the difference in my mind vs illiteracy and idiocy is that someone illiterate in a matter may still manage to put together that whatever they are doing isn't working and maybe they should try something else.
The idiocy comes in when people know it's not working, and know it's designed not to work, but dammit if they aren't going to live that way anyway and complain the whole time.