It is just a matter of priorities and knowledge, and who is here on Hacker News reading what I wrote? Is it a population that can afford these suggestions or isn’t it?
There are plenty of people in the US who can barely scrape together enough to feed themselves for a day. Telling these people to just spend more money isn't helpful.
If you are fortunate enough to have a fixed location and are able to survive in general society, I can assure you, you can find some way to scrape together a rolling supply of beans and rice.
If nothing else, these are served in abundance at food banks. I should know because I have friends in some parts of the country who are homeless & regularly used food banks. They had no place to store long term stuff (although I have found buried caches before, I don’t know people who regularly do that) so my advice wouldn’t apply to them, but if someone went to a food bank and had a fixed location for storage, I am sure they would have no trouble being able to secure a large supply of rice and beans.
A large issue with poverty is it generates a mindset where these kinds of preparations are much lower priority than daily survival, so that would be a more reasonable reason to point at I think.
You sound like someone who is very privileged, who has not had to deal with the same circumstances that people who live on the Res have had to deal with. What's worked for you, an individual, in your own life in your own circumstances obviously doesn't work for these folks and just because you think you may know better than them doesn't mean you do.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've unfortunately doing this so frequently, and posting so many flamewar comments, that I think we have to ban this account. These things are the opposite of what HN is for, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
More than half of people in the United States may not be able to cover a $1k emergency expense from savings.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/01/19/56p...
While some of that effect is due to economic choices, much of it is not. It is difficult to prepare for a long-tail disaster when you're facing oodles of short-term needs.