3 ms·

A lot of Americans don't seem to have any self-discipline when it comes to consumerism, and they're all carrying credit cards. Once you're underwater on thousa

A lot of Americans don't seem to have any self-discipline when it comes to consumerism, and they're all carrying credit cards. Once you're underwater on thousands of dollars in credit card debt, while still addicted to consuming unnecessary junk for your overall happiness, it's like a real-life version of OOM thrashing.

slively 4y ago
I’ve always thought there’s a tipping point of fault when such a large amount of people have a problem. Small % of folks with the issue? Maybe a personal responsibility thing. Half the population can’t come up with $1000? Large amount of credit card users carrying a balance? Large swaths of people over consuming? There’s something else at work here and I struggle to point to the individual as the source of the problem.
- pengaru 4y ago
  It all seems like predictable outcomes of capitalism run amuck. At least it's not illegal yet to live without credit cards and/or lead a frugal life. But it is arguably part of the problem IMO that credit scores have become so necessary it's difficult if not impossible to find an apartment without one. That alone is a forcing function pushing young Americans to rely on credit, greasing those consumer wheels by decoupling their spending from their earning at a young age.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
    My employer keeps track of my credit worthiness. People have been fired by my employer for having bad credit because they present a risk to the company. I cannot keep my employment without maintaining good credit. Maintaining good credit cannot be done without taking on debt.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      You can maintain good credit with empty credit lines. Not amazing credit, but good.
    - nostrademons 4y ago
      You don't actually need the debt balance, you just need the payment history. I had zero debt in the decade between paying off my student loans and taking on a mortgage. Credit score ~820 at that point. I had credit cards but auto-paid them in full every month and never carried a balance. It's the payment history that your score cares about, not the balance. You actually end up with a lower score if you have a higher balance.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    > . That alone is a forcing function pushing young Americans to rely on credit, greasing those consumer wheels by decoupling their spending from their earning at a young age. I'm Canadian and lived in the US for several years and can attest this is a strange system. Here (Canada) credit scores are starting to become more and more common but this is a new thing, and probably something we 'borrowed' from the US. When i moved to the US I had a credit score of zero and a really good income. I had problems finding a place to live as everyone asked for my credit score. I finally bought a car and took out a loan which i paid off a few months later simply to attempt to build a "credit score" and make my life easier. Things may be different now, but I dont recall ever being asked for a "credit score" when attempting to rent in Toronto many years ago.
- kennend3 4y ago
  > Large swaths of people over consuming? why do you feel this indicates anything behind what it is, "Keeping up with the joneses". Large swaths of people do strange things with their money on a regular basis : - State Lotto tickets - people visiting casinos Individuals are not the "source" of the problems, group think, media, etc encourage it. Just because my neighbour has a new car doest mean i need one too? Back to the core point, the US does have a bias towards overconsumption. During the financial crisis Stimulus packages were issued to "encourage spending" https://www.thebalancemoney.com/stimulus-checks-3305750 https://www.thebalancemoney.com/stimulus-checks-3305750 DEFINITION A stimulus check is a direct payment made by the government to its citizens. Unlike tax credits, which come as deductions from taxes owed during tax filing, stimulus checks are designed to give immediate relief to taxpayers and encourage stability and spending during an economic downturn.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
    Let’s play this out. What happens if everyone stops playing state lottos, and engaging in vices like drinking, smoking or doing drugs? Take it to the logical extreme. I’ll help. Virtually every state experiences massive budget shortfalls overnight. Police departments become critically underfunded. Schools become insolvent. Pensions go underwater. Massive unemployment occurs do too bars, detox centers, etc closing. This unemployment cascades as the supporting industries and businesses experience severe austerity. I can continue but I trust that I’ve painted a grim picture of what will happen if rampant consumerism stops. The only way America can function without drastic change to the fundamental assumptions used by economists is by correcting people to engage in financially destructive or illegal behavior.
    - kennend3 4y ago
      > Take it to the logical extreme. That is a pointless exercise. If state lotto ticket sales dried up they would most likely raise taxes.. but let your crazy theory run wild and end with "pensions go underwater". Thank goodness we have state lotto??
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  Half of the population are below average intelligence.
- mbrodersen 4y ago
  It is always the individual when they have a choice. The moment you start blaming society or the gods or whatever you have basically given up.
  - slively 4y ago
    I hear that, but also predatory marketing does work. We have to take responsibility for our actions, but I do see times when other are also culpable for bad decisions people make.
anm89 4y ago
People get mad when you say this, but it doesn't necessarily contradict the fact that American's are in a rigged game and get raw deals. On top of that they have been conditioned to have extremely low self discipline and at the end of the day, screw themselves over as much as the system screws them over. It's not about assigning fault. But if you wanted to fix the problem, understanding the role people's own decision making factors into it would be a big part of it. The system leads them to water but at the end of the day, they choose to drink.
- bombcar 4y ago
  When billions of dollars are spend on ads yelling “Drink” - sure there’s a personal decision but there are also external forces. And if the end result isn’t healthy for society then perhaps society has to step in.
MandieD 4y ago
Debt that you can’t quite get in front of will make you a bit nihilistic - it took moving abroad to a country where the shops had limited hours and many of them didn’t take credit cards to help me reform. Oh, and dating (then marrying) a guy who was raised with a particularly strong version of that culture’s aversion to consumer debt (he couldn’t fathom borrowing money to buy a car). I speak of Germany, circa 20 years ago. Unfortunately, consumer credit of all sorts has become a lot more available and accepted here, and I’m worried for a lot of the people around me for when the looming global recession really gets going, and we see the full impact of Putin wrecking the energy order Germany had allowed itself to be lulled into - those higher energy bills won’t start showing up for a lot of folks before next year. But not my husband’s family, or us - we live small, in a culture that still doesn’t pressure us to live as large as US culture, especially my Texan culture, does people in our general walk of life.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Credit is too easy to get and restricting it is very politically unfavorable. And when it’s easy to get people who would be better off not getting it will get it. The only solution may be to make bankruptcy even easier until the banks stop being dumb.

slively 4y ago

I’ve always thought there’s a tipping point of fault when such a large amount of people have a problem. Small % of folks with the issue? Maybe a personal responsibility thing. Half the population can’t come up with $1000? Large amount of credit card users carrying a balance? Large swaths of people over consuming? There’s something else at work here and I struggle to point to the individual as the source of the problem.

pengaru 4y ago
It all seems like predictable outcomes of capitalism run amuck. At least it's not illegal yet to live without credit cards and/or lead a frugal life. But it is arguably part of the problem IMO that credit scores have become so necessary it's difficult if not impossible to find an apartment without one. That alone is a forcing function pushing young Americans to rely on credit, greasing those consumer wheels by decoupling their spending from their earning at a young age.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
  My employer keeps track of my credit worthiness. People have been fired by my employer for having bad credit because they present a risk to the company. I cannot keep my employment without maintaining good credit. Maintaining good credit cannot be done without taking on debt.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    You can maintain good credit with empty credit lines. Not amazing credit, but good.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    You don't actually need the debt balance, you just need the payment history. I had zero debt in the decade between paying off my student loans and taking on a mortgage. Credit score ~820 at that point. I had credit cards but auto-paid them in full every month and never carried a balance. It's the payment history that your score cares about, not the balance. You actually end up with a lower score if you have a higher balance.
- kennend3 4y ago
  > . That alone is a forcing function pushing young Americans to rely on credit, greasing those consumer wheels by decoupling their spending from their earning at a young age. I'm Canadian and lived in the US for several years and can attest this is a strange system. Here (Canada) credit scores are starting to become more and more common but this is a new thing, and probably something we 'borrowed' from the US. When i moved to the US I had a credit score of zero and a really good income. I had problems finding a place to live as everyone asked for my credit score. I finally bought a car and took out a loan which i paid off a few months later simply to attempt to build a "credit score" and make my life easier. Things may be different now, but I dont recall ever being asked for a "credit score" when attempting to rent in Toronto many years ago.
kennend3 4y ago
> Large swaths of people over consuming? why do you feel this indicates anything behind what it is, "Keeping up with the joneses". Large swaths of people do strange things with their money on a regular basis : - State Lotto tickets - people visiting casinos Individuals are not the "source" of the problems, group think, media, etc encourage it. Just because my neighbour has a new car doest mean i need one too? Back to the core point, the US does have a bias towards overconsumption. During the financial crisis Stimulus packages were issued to "encourage spending" https://www.thebalancemoney.com/stimulus-checks-3305750 https://www.thebalancemoney.com/stimulus-checks-3305750 DEFINITION A stimulus check is a direct payment made by the government to its citizens. Unlike tax credits, which come as deductions from taxes owed during tax filing, stimulus checks are designed to give immediate relief to taxpayers and encourage stability and spending during an economic downturn.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
  Let’s play this out. What happens if everyone stops playing state lottos, and engaging in vices like drinking, smoking or doing drugs? Take it to the logical extreme. I’ll help. Virtually every state experiences massive budget shortfalls overnight. Police departments become critically underfunded. Schools become insolvent. Pensions go underwater. Massive unemployment occurs do too bars, detox centers, etc closing. This unemployment cascades as the supporting industries and businesses experience severe austerity. I can continue but I trust that I’ve painted a grim picture of what will happen if rampant consumerism stops. The only way America can function without drastic change to the fundamental assumptions used by economists is by correcting people to engage in financially destructive or illegal behavior.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    > Take it to the logical extreme. That is a pointless exercise. If state lotto ticket sales dried up they would most likely raise taxes.. but let your crazy theory run wild and end with "pensions go underwater". Thank goodness we have state lotto??
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
throwaway22032 4y ago
Half of the population are below average intelligence.
mbrodersen 4y ago
It is always the individual when they have a choice. The moment you start blaming society or the gods or whatever you have basically given up.
- slively 4y ago
  I hear that, but also predatory marketing does work. We have to take responsibility for our actions, but I do see times when other are also culpable for bad decisions people make.

anm89 4y ago

People get mad when you say this, but it doesn't necessarily contradict the fact that American's are in a rigged game and get raw deals. On top of that they have been conditioned to have extremely low self discipline and at the end of the day, screw themselves over as much as the system screws them over. It's not about assigning fault. But if you wanted to fix the problem, understanding the role people's own decision making factors into it would be a big part of it. The system leads them to water but at the end of the day, they choose to drink.

bombcar 4y ago
When billions of dollars are spend on ads yelling “Drink” - sure there’s a personal decision but there are also external forces. And if the end result isn’t healthy for society then perhaps society has to step in.

MandieD 4y ago

Debt that you can’t quite get in front of will make you a bit nihilistic - it took moving abroad to a country where the shops had limited hours and many of them didn’t take credit cards to help me reform. Oh, and dating (then marrying) a guy who was raised with a particularly strong version of that culture’s aversion to consumer debt (he couldn’t fathom borrowing money to buy a car). I speak of Germany, circa 20 years ago. Unfortunately, consumer credit of all sorts has become a lot more available and accepted here, and I’m worried for a lot of the people around me for when the looming global recession really gets going, and we see the full impact of Putin wrecking the energy order Germany had allowed itself to be lulled into - those higher energy bills won’t start showing up for a lot of folks before next year. But not my husband’s family, or us - we live small, in a culture that still doesn’t pressure us to live as large as US culture, especially my Texan culture, does people in our general walk of life.

bombcar 4y ago
Credit is too easy to get and restricting it is very politically unfavorable. And when it’s easy to get people who would be better off not getting it will get it. The only solution may be to make bankruptcy even easier until the banks stop being dumb.