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So yes, this is true to some degree. But as I mentioned before they are manipulated into' like spending their money on fast food, building credit card debt, financing cars at ruinous interest rates, and you quickly see how it's quite difficult for these people to handle themselves in the modern economy.
Effectively while the poor do have a minimum level of comfort, they need more protection from rapacious capitalists who see them as cattle to be exploited. The underclass are consistently manipulated and coerced into ruining their own lives, and we sit back and do nothing to stop it.
Do you want to make stupid people wards of the state, including having their decisions made by the state? Because that's what it would take to keep them from making bad decisions. You cannot protect them without confining them.
No, as a start I want to stop credit card companies and other financial entities from knowingly pursuing people they don't think will pay them back and will likely struggle with debt. I know that's kind of the business model, but I think it's evil.
We can absolutely do more to protect the consumer - look at the reforms in mortgages after 2008 for instance. It's not a binary where we either take away all the freedom of the underclass or give them maximal freedom. We find a balance between the two.
As long as your laws do not distinguish between stupid people and everyone else, this is basically just making everyone a ward of the state. As long as they don't do that, your "balance" results either in everyone being restricted as is appropriate for the stupid, or the stupid being unprotected from things the not-stupid don't need protection from.
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I am far from convinced that regulators can actually protect stupid people from getting taken advantage of by clever marketing tricks- attempts to prevent alcohol and tobacco advertising to teens have been a dismal failure because alcohol and tobacco companies made ads disguised as psa’s against teen drinking and smoking that were more effective than just running normal ads, for just one example.
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