Wealth, risk, and stuff
"Poor people don’t have clutter because they’re too dumb to see the virtue of living simply; they have it to reduce risk."<p>Close but not quite.  In my case at least it's true that when I was poor I accumulated stuff largely out of fear of scarcity, but the various "perfectly good" bits of junk I accumulated didn't actually reduce my risk in any way.  If you replaced "to reduce risk" with "because they unconsciously and mistakenly believe it will reduce risk" you'd be close to the truth.<p>And while it would be harsh to call people still living in the grip of that illusion "dumb" on account of it, it is in fact an illusion.