[uoaei]

> better management of personal financial capital won't be effective in helping people who can't cover an unexpected $400 expense, because those people have no financial capital to begin with

One of the biggest tells for who is on what side of the "the economy is strong! what's the big deal?" debate is whether they have invested capital. The economy being strong only helps people who are literally invested in the economy. This is not the case for a large swath of American citizens because they have no capital to begin investing.

The pundit/technocrat/plutocrat/professorial-managerial classes of people all take it as a given that investment is even a thing. It's the fish-asks-what's-water of armchair economics. If everyone's a shareholder of something, then sure, the economy being great means everyone is benefiting. But if that money is limited to circulating among people with financial instruments working for them (in a literal sense), then obviously there's a large portion of the population who is being left out.