It's often not a matter of being responsible, you're 50 with a mortgage and car payment you could easily carry when you were working, now you're unemployed - save? you're under water. Or your spouse gets cancer, MS, etc. Or . . .
And if you're making $40K a year ($20 an hour or so), taking home maybe $2800 a month (after SS, a little income tax, state taxes and fees), renting a 2 bedroom apartment, driving a used car, etc. If your spouse works and you have children, what do you do for child care? Vance can afford a nanny . . .
One reason for this disconnect is the economists who tend to design these programs are tenured with lifetime employment security and a healthy salary, so to them, it's merely a matter of saving (with a matching contribution) discretionary income. If adjunct professors making $24k a year (teaching 4 course a semester) were designing these programs . . .