You're deploying a really fucked up stereotype of poor people being heavy drinkers and alcoholics. It's like saying let's go to the ghetto and participate in the culture by doing something self-destructive and negative. That kind of slumming is offensive.
You might as well have said go to a Mexican neighborhood and buy some weed and smoke out on the corner, or say go to a Black neighborhood and buy some crack and smoke it in the car, and then check out how fucked up the situation is.
Or how about go to the trailer park, buy some speed, snort it and check out how jacked up the hillbillies are.
I read the whole article, and even share some of your sentiments, but that one part really upset me. It kind of killed the article for me.
You didn't have context. It's not an article, it's notes for a talk I gave. The audience were a bunch of Las Vegas hacker kids and entrepreneur types, who tend to be forty drinkers anyway. It was shorthand for "sit and chill outside". Which I think they understood.
On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time being poor and being around poor people -- in the ghetto, in rural trailer parks, etc -- and actually, in my extensive experience, poor people do tend to be heavy drinkers. Are you seriously suggesting that sitting around in the hood getting your beer on isn't a staple of working class life? If so, we've been experiencing completely different parts of America.
There are drinkers of all classes, but I think people who have more money drink more alcohol, and more people drink at all. That's been my experience. Just to verify, I did a search on the topic, and research bears it out.
The one big difference is how and when people drink. I think poor people tend to drink at home, maybe in the yard, out in the sun, but don't drink at bars. Middle class people are more likely to drink at bars, or drink indoors at home. That's what you do when you have more money and nicer interiors. :) (And it's probably easy to quit drinking when you can't afford it.)
The exception might be winos and alkies, who are poor because they are alkies. I think the constant presence of socially non-functional addicts in poor communities is probably a contributor to the stats in the linked article.
And that article states something that I mentioned in another comment: that people with more money drink to socialize and network.
[Edit: I can see how the statement would work for that audience... but it's still a damaging stereotype. Now we know it's not grounded in fact, and worse than I thought.]
And it's Josh. Josh Ellis. Since you sort-of asked.