My economics professor did a similar thing in college did a similar thing. He constructed a menu that would sustain a human for about $1 a day. The largest expense item was liver - for essential B vitamins. His point was this took care of needs. Everything else was wants. A good guy. He mocked Keynes and used ‘Capitalism and Freedom’ as one of the texts.
We did the same thing at Stanford where the business majors were “required” to undergo this experience and write your paper about it. Yes, we spent 2 nights at a homeless shelter pretending to be poor. Lib professor was adamant he could turn us into liberals...
The experiment backfired. My classmates and I were in agreement: the homeless dudes PREFERRED to have free stuff from the gubmint’ and didn’t make an effort to work. Seriously. These were their words. They get free medical, dental from other pre-med and dental majors working there for their internships.
TWO, Once the experiment was over, one of my classmates was asked by the lib prof ‘what did you learn from this experience?” My classmate answered “I’ll work my ass off and get rich so I don’t end up in that place.”