Being poor is actually associated with making modally appropriate decisions. That is to say that people adjust to it.
Case in point is discounting: offer someone £20 today or £100 in a year. A person poor enough will likely take the money now, and this is because it has more value to them now.
People aren't awful, they're adjusted to circumstances that are awful, being the products of a sick system. Properly provisioned welfare - a genuine safety net instead of a humiliation - could prevent the circumstances that lead to this kind of adjustment.
Economics has much to say about how people value things differently based on their circumstances. There is no "better" or "worse".
This assumes that everyone is a rational actor. Unfortunately, assuming that everyone is effective at allocating resources or time is unsafe and wildly inaccurate. My mother's hours spent cutting coupons rather than finding a job (over years) misvalued the long term impact of having a job and developing a career. My father's allocation of money that we did not have to cigarettes rather than a savings account had extremely negative long term effects.
I grew up around poor people, and I saw their mistakes. I made their mistakes, and I still do. Which isn't to say that all poor people are incapable of making effective financial decisions, just that the distribution is skewed; there are "better" and "worse" valuations of things, and fundamentally people who are worse at making these valuations will on average be poorer.
Case in point is discounting: offer someone £20 today or £100 in a year. A person poor enough will likely take the money now, and this is because it has more value to them now.
People aren't awful, they're adjusted to circumstances that are awful, being the products of a sick system. Properly provisioned welfare - a genuine safety net instead of a humiliation - could prevent the circumstances that lead to this kind of adjustment.
Economics has much to say about how people value things differently based on their circumstances. There is no "better" or "worse".