[astrange]

> The middle class and below live paycheck to paycheck so that's an issue they don't have.

You mean they answer surveys saying they do, according to surveys published in press releases from payday lenders.

They also answer surveys from the Fed saying they have median $8k in bank accounts and that they can pay 3 months of expenses in cash.

These two things are contradictory.

[jvanderbot]

More likely different people are represented in the surveys and general trends are erroneously extrapolated from non-representative populations

[santoshalper]

Much more likely is that self-reporting is notoriously unreliable and "paycheck to paycheck" is a state of mind.

[astrange]

We're better at doing surveys than that.

If you look in the details of the "paycheck to paycheck" surveys, people reporting they make 200k+ a year also say yes to that, so I think it's just unclear what they think it means.