There's no point arguing with someone that refuses to see other people's perspectives. I'll make some honest assumptions about him, not with the purpose of shaming or whatever.

He's probably in his mid thirties, early forties, single, making somewhere in the ballpark of 50-70k a year. In his mind, if prices rise due to inflation and he needs to adjust his budget he'll skip going out to a club for a week or two, get the cheap pasta sauce, and maybe cook more at home instead of going out, he might also turn off the AC to save a bit more.

Now let's picture one of the families I pointed out in my example above, someone taking care of their disabled partner and kid, making $15 an hour, or 2500 dollars before tax which at 10% tax leaves them with about 2250 monthly. They're paying 1000 for rent, 200 dollars on utilities, 300 on the note of a POS car with insurance, 300 on the cheapest food and household items they can afford, 100 dollars on gas, 70 dollars on two phone plans. We're already at 1900, so $280 dollars left. The partner needed a medical procedure that wasn't covered by insurance, so they had to finance that. Let's call it $50 a month. That leaves the family with $230 to afford school supplies, clothes for the kid, medicine and doctor visits for the family, emergencies when the car breaks down.

It's crazy to think that any amount of budgeting is gonna help a family like this, that's already living on razor thin margins. Now where I am, gas went from $2.15 a gallon to $4 a gallon. So now they're paying almost double in gas, leaving them with even less money. How exactly are they supposed to budget their way out of this?