A bizarre perspective - you seem hung up on the virtue of saving but totally disconnected from the material implications - even if you saved 50% of your income for a year at that time, you’ve finished with $2400 in the bank - how long is that going to float you? About a week in my case.
It’s plainly true that for a significant number of people, even those who satisfy your moral sensibilities around money, they won’t have had sufficient time at sufficient incomes to have enough saved for a significant period of unemployment to retrain.