[markovs_gun]

Plus being poor is essentially an IQ debuff. I remember I had a week where I had my identity stolen, had a large unexpected medical bill that I spent 20 hours on the phone with my insurance trying to figure out why I was getting said bill*, my grandma was sick, and I was having a tough time at work. If I were slightly less well off or didn't have a job where I could take a day off on short notice to sort all of this out( or as is often the case, both at the same time), that week could have started a cascade effect that would have outright ruined my life. I was so stressed out that week I was forgetting really basic things and doing things wrong, I wasn't sleeping, and all I wanted to eat was junk fast food because it was fast and easy and I didn't have to think about it.

The thing is, a lot of poor people live like that every day. I have some friends who are a single car problem away from being financially destitute because of the death spiral that can come from being poor- your car that you drive to work breaks down and you don't have the money to fix it. You lose your job because you can't get to work, and you can't get another job because you don't have transportation. Public transit is non existent in most of the US. You can get another car, but it's a junker at an insane interest rate and that's another expense you don't need. So yeah in that headspace I can understand feeling like financing a burrito could make sense. If you're already not thinking straight and you're tempted by a simple pleasure that feels like the one thing you can control in life and you know you're going to have the bank balance tomorrow, I can see it.

People wanting stuff like this doesn't mean it's rational to use or moral to offer. It's a symptom of a society that is fundamentally broken, that is designed to keep people on the razor's edge of their current economic status and in constant fear of losing what little they have.

*If you're curious how this happens, I take an expensive medication for a chronic illness and my insurance randomly changed how they pay for it without informing me before I got hit with a $2000 bill