>Perhaps this implies that no matter how rich society gets, there'll always be people who just burn though whatever they earn. This would partially explain why people in poor countries like China and India are still able to save a greater percantage of their income than people in western countries who earn an order of magnitude more.

What's the connection there you're implying [1]? I would think that the higher (capacity to) save is an artifact of peer pressure/ecosystem effects. If a frugal person is still expected to have a big house, or else be seen as weird, that imposes a constraint that forces a lower savings rate than they prefer.

It's a hard Gordian knot to cut, but once everyone expects normal people to pay a certain expense, you can get stuck in that kind of bad equilibrium.

[1] between "some people always burn through everything" and "people in some poor countries have higher savings rates than in rich countries"