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That's the problem with poverty, as I well know: once one is impoverished, it's almost impossible to get out of it by one's self.

Once one starts sliding into the abyss, there are interest fees, late fees, fines, collections, repossessions, court fees, extra days lost to work because of those things as well as poor health (and no health insurance), et cetera. Lucky poor people may have as their most valuable possession a car, which is also a depreciating asset with its own array of fees, fines, and so on.

A poor person's entire life is a risk comprised of difficult choices between various other risks, often lived only one to two weeks away from homelessness, malnutrition, and death. A lottery ticket is nothing compared to deciding whether to eat or pay bills, whether to drive to work without an inspection sticker or stay home, whether to eat the moldy cheese or go hungry. It doesn't take long to notice that and begin to take it into account, and when one does, a way out is even less visible.

Fifty-two dollars a year isn't going to help a poor person get out of that quagmire, ever. If these researchers have a strategy for "investing" that same fifty-two bucks, I'd sure like to know about it. I'll bet with a lot of hard work you could turn it into a hundred in ten years--still worthless. Do it every year for ten years and you might have, what, maybe a couple thousand? Still worthless to those of us being nickeled and dimed, still unlikely to balance the sheet.

Furthermore, poor people have no way to "invest" their paltry sums, anyway. What are you gonna do? Buy a bond and pray you don't die in the years it takes before it returns you a couple of bucks?

So what's left? The words of Livy: "In difficult and desperate cases, the boldest counsels are the safest." When you're burning in Hell, your only chance for relief is finding that snowball. But you probably have to be in Hell to know that.