My theory is the two underlying causes are: 1. Inflation benefits spending now. What you want is only getting more expensive. Also, any debt you have is having

My theory is the two underlying causes are: 1. Inflation benefits spending now. What you want is only getting more expensive. Also, any debt you have is having its real value reduced without you having to do anything so why pay it off? and 2. Despair. For a lot of people, they're struggling to make ends meet. There is no concept of saving for the future or even being able to retire. For an increasing number of people the stability of home ownership is increasingly out of reach. The retirement plan for these people is simply to die in debt. Plus people think about their mortality when you go through a pandemic where over a million Americans died and there was massive disruption to people's lives. The real spending power of people has also been eaten away by the rising cost of necessities (which the article mentions).