Questions like What’s for dinner? and How will I make it to the end of the week? tax a crucial capacity. “Mental bandwidth,” Shafir and Mullainathan call it. “If you want to understand the poor, imagine yourself with your mind elsewhere,” they write. “Self-control feels like a challenge. You are distracted and easily perturbed. And this happens every day.” This is how scarcity–whether of time or of money–leads to unwise decisions.
