Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like
oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter
to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it
would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do
such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on
brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less
money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A
millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an
unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of
the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say
when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to
eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is
always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth
of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and
we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are
at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you
to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than
brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery
that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the
English-man's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a
temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.
Yes, but before that excerpt Orwell pointed out that the financial margins involved in eating healthily on the minimum income were much narrower than the "why don't they just" contingent knew or admitted. That doesn't carry over to the contemporary US as self-evidently as the psychological point does, but I suspect that it does carry over somewhat.
I do encourage anyone who hasn't already to read the whole chapter http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html : it's not really very long though I felt that the relevant parts were a bit too long, all together, to fit in a comment.
I'm glad I didn't read that book when I was still "poor", it's so relatable and hits hard. I recommend it for anyone kind of wondering (he's not exactly kind to the working class, but he does try hard to understand it all and does have insight).