> ...want you to spend every penny you can. Everyone benefits from higher prices except the buyer. Even if you're immune to it, there is enough pressure that th

> ...want you to spend every penny you can. Everyone benefits from higher prices except the buyer. Even if you're immune to it, there is enough pressure that the market as a whole tends toward the highest prices people can afford. This is definitely an American cultural phenomenon. Taking on massive debt is no trivial matter, and I can't imagine people buckling to peer pressure on something that will affect them so significantly. It's dumb, financially unsound, and irresponsible. I know for a fact that South Asian/Indian heritage will (generally) never allow themselves to financially shafted like this. (The Indian people I know are usually very shrewd, extremely careful, deliberative, and reflective when it comes to major decisions like this.) What this sort of poor decision making and buckling to external pressure amounts to is a lack of diligence, and a serious failure to look out for your own self-interest. Why and how this lack of self-care has become a part of American culture is puzzling/baffling to me, and is probably a good topic for sociological or anthropological study and research. Perhaps the overflowing abundance of wealth in United States (and other similarly wealthy countries) has made people less careful and more reckless with their money? I'm reminded of an article that appeared on The Atlantic which talked about how many people love paycheck to paycheck (and have very little saved up, even for emergency expenses): https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secr... But as counter-examples, Germany and Japan are first-world countries where people have a habit of saving quite a lot. So this culture of poor financial decision-making (and generally poor self-care) is seeming more and more like a uniquely American thing.