I won't speculate about numbers, but until I dealt with people with "spending problems", I had NO IDEA seemingly smart people could be like that!
Simplest way to describe it is that their definition of "I can afford X" is "right now I have more money than X costs". Really!
These people will of course always be poor, regardless of income, subsidies etc.
How many they are is an empirical question, and I haven't seen any data.
One idea to handle them I like is to pay people daily, instead of monthly/biweekly. In the modern computerized world, that should be simple, and could really help some people.
Living month to month from cash reserves is the general way to describe this mindset, and is is the reason the nation sees a significant increase in purchases of durable goods when tax returns roll in each spring.
Your idea of daily payouts is a very clever hack on the system and deserves a practical trial. It would be most interesting to see if it encourages inceased savings on this scale.
Simplest way to describe it is that their definition of "I can afford X" is "right now I have more money than X costs". Really!
These people will of course always be poor, regardless of income, subsidies etc.
How many they are is an empirical question, and I haven't seen any data.
One idea to handle them I like is to pay people daily, instead of monthly/biweekly. In the modern computerized world, that should be simple, and could really help some people.