When drawing conclusions, like "stress effects those struggling to get by worse than the relatively well off", I would always err on the side of evidence over imagination. Imagining something isn't even an observation.

That is a mischaracterization of the comment you responded to. He was appealing for another commenter to imagine the impact of stress on one who is struggling economically given what we know about the effects of stress. We don't have to set up a peer-reviewed study to do that. We can both imagine and yield to evidence.