The difference is when you have no savings and minimum wage is $10/hr (or whatever), you can recoup a $100 loss in a couple days. I used to play poker with a woman whose husband lost decades worth of savings.
Not to minimize that person's loss, but 60% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, and I don't assume that the people I observed only went once to the casino. Minimum wage earners tend to have nothing left over by the end of the month. My point was only that it's not the dollar magnitude of the loss that matters, it's the ability of the gambler to sustain the loss whatever the dollar amount.