To put it in perspective, a recent research study[1] conducted by a team of elite PhD economics researchers discovered the astonishing fact that people who face a sudden unexpected financial crisis (such as medical bills, car breakdown, job loss) are surprisingly less likely to become homeless if they can pay their rent/mortgage, while those who cannot pay for their home are more likely to become homeless.<p>(In truth, they went in-depth in calculating percentages and timelines and cost-benefits, etc. That summary trivializes their work.) But the basics of this discovery made by this elite team of academic researchers is something that every single working-class person in the country, even high school dropouts, knows as a simple basic fact of everyday daily life.<p>The idea that you would need to educate and train several people for many years, to the level of being professors at top colleges, then assemble a team and give them a grant to do a study to discover such a common part of daily life seems a bit ridiculous to non-academics.<p>[1] <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6300/694" rel="nofollow">http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6300/694</a>