No trickle...
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Most important? I'll never go into debt, just won't spend money I don't have. It's a no brainer for me.
Most important, because that's how most people start and grow their business, they don't have multimillion inheritance.
Also buying house.
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Most important? I'll never go into debt, just won't spend money I don't have. It's a no brainer for me.
Do you own a home? Do you think that's a worthwhile thing to do? Without debt, home ownership is basically completely out of reach for most people despite the fact that many people will earn enough money to buy a house in their lifetime. It allows you to pay for money now with money later. Debt is legitimately an extremely important part of an economy- there's a reason it's been invented by pretty much every agricultural society in history. As with most financial instruments, it started with farmers - it costs money to plant and grow a crop of grain, but that crop doesn't produce money until you sell it at harvest time so you have an issue where if last year's crop didn't go so well due to weather and you are low on cash in the spring, you can't afford to plant next year's crop and get out of the hole. So borrowing money is the easiest way.
This also works with businesses and governments. Say you want to buy a machine that prints designs on T shirts because you want to sell T shirts. You can't afford the machine now, but you believe that you'd be able to with the money you could make from your T shirt business, so you go to the bank and convince them of the plan, and they give you money up front. Without debt, that T shirt business couldn't happen unless you got a bunch of investors to help you out.
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Me, off in the corner believing debt is immoral
Society legitimately cannot function without debt. I agree giving people predatory "micro loans" for groceries is dystopian but every society that has discovered agriculture has also discovered the concept of debt because it's a natural consequence of an economic order so tied to seasonal cycles. Interest is also not bad, and every society that has developed debt has also quickly developed interest. Societies that have religious prohibitions or taboos against interest find workarounds because it's proven to be a critical part of how economics works. Personally I am glad that I was able to buy a house for hundreds of thousands of dollars I don't have yet because I will be able to pay off that in time and I appreciate that the bank is willing to lend me that money for such a long time at a relatively low rate of return for them. The Soviet Union even had banks that offered loans with interest but they were run by the State. It's kind of unavoidable.
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When you make a CitizenWatch article into a meme (congrats OP):
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Where’d this stat come from. Looking around and another site says 25% made payments for groceries. Another site says 60% split payments when buying - not just for groceries. So I sincerely doubt the stat of 60% making payments just for groceries.
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When you make a CitizenWatch article into a meme (congrats OP):
I mean this sincerely: Am I missing something in their sources? None of their three sources about BNPL support the "60%" number for groceries.
https://pueblostarjournal.org/news/2025/06/03/shopping-buy-now-pay-later-groceries
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/26/americans-groceries-buy-now-pay-later-loans.html
CNBC mentions 60% of general admission tickets for Coachella being BNPL sales.
It and the other two articles state 41%-43% of generally surveyed people simply stating they used BNPL last year, not for what.
I'm not seeing any source for "60% of Americans using BNPL for groceries", and anecdotally that doesn't match anything I'm hearing/seeing in my day to day life. Economy's shit, but this feels a little "narrative"-y for my tastes.
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Where’d this stat come from. Looking around and another site says 25% made payments for groceries. Another site says 60% split payments when buying - not just for groceries. So I sincerely doubt the stat of 60% making payments just for groceries.
Yeah, that statistic is obviously bullshit and people here should notice. They really should notice
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Do you own a home? Do you think that's a worthwhile thing to do? Without debt, home ownership is basically completely out of reach for most people despite the fact that many people will earn enough money to buy a house in their lifetime. It allows you to pay for money now with money later. Debt is legitimately an extremely important part of an economy- there's a reason it's been invented by pretty much every agricultural society in history. As with most financial instruments, it started with farmers - it costs money to plant and grow a crop of grain, but that crop doesn't produce money until you sell it at harvest time so you have an issue where if last year's crop didn't go so well due to weather and you are low on cash in the spring, you can't afford to plant next year's crop and get out of the hole. So borrowing money is the easiest way.
This also works with businesses and governments. Say you want to buy a machine that prints designs on T shirts because you want to sell T shirts. You can't afford the machine now, but you believe that you'd be able to with the money you could make from your T shirt business, so you go to the bank and convince them of the plan, and they give you money up front. Without debt, that T shirt business couldn't happen unless you got a bunch of investors to help you out.
I wonder what the housing market would look like if individuals couldn’t get mortgages, but investors couldn’t either?
Availability of credit has a huge impact on prices, and landlordism is mostly founded on cheap credit.
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Are you thinking about usury? Debt in general is actually one of the moat important threads of our societal fabric
It's not important, it's the cornerstone of modern society. It's a really bad cornerstone though, like great filter level bad
What problem does it solve that couldn't be better solved in another way?
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Where’d this stat come from. Looking around and another site says 25% made payments for groceries. Another site says 60% split payments when buying - not just for groceries. So I sincerely doubt the stat of 60% making payments just for groceries.
This comment on the post indicates that it's a CitizenWatch article, but that article's own listed sources don't support the 60% number either (as I call out in my response to that comment).
I swear there's barely anywhere online anymore where people practice basic skepticism. If it aligns with their existing biases they just slurp it up, no matter how absurd.
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I wonder what the housing market would look like if individuals couldn’t get mortgages, but investors couldn’t either?
Availability of credit has a huge impact on prices, and landlordism is mostly founded on cheap credit.
There are many examples of this being essentially the status quo in many places and historical eras and essentially it just makes housing availability worse since only the ultra wealthy can afford to build expensive structures and they just accumulate more wealth and power. Think about in the middle ages when a local lord would have to foot the bill to build townhouses completely up front but he and his descendants would retain ownership of them and demand payment to live in them for hundreds of years to come. There are places where access to credit is poor today where people basically live in makeshift shacks if they don't rent because they can't afford to buy houses otherwise. There are a lot of ways to fix land ownership and exploitation by landlords, but historically speaking, this was not it. I know nobody likes living in debt and debt can be used for exploitation, but completely abolishing credit simply will not have good outcomes as a whole.
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Most important? I'll never go into debt, just won't spend money I don't have. It's a no brainer for me.
You (and the other guy that replied) are indeed thinking of usury (which is a very evil thing, even frowned upon by most religions), which is the situation of lending assets to for the sake of profit
Debt on the other hand is a more general concept, did you ever borrow a pen from another person? While you were writing you were in debt for that pen (but this is a silly example that can be disregarded)
Did your parents take care of you as a child? In most cultures, thar means you're in debt and owe them care when they get old (though I understand that this varies from culture to culture, but the idea is there anyway)
If you are friendly to your neighbors and they invite you home to dinner several times, you are also expected to pay back the favor sometime down the road, this is another form of debtTo sum it up, debt is much more intrinsic to our behavior as humans than we usually think, even though "formal debt" might not be
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Society legitimately cannot function without debt. I agree giving people predatory "micro loans" for groceries is dystopian but every society that has discovered agriculture has also discovered the concept of debt because it's a natural consequence of an economic order so tied to seasonal cycles. Interest is also not bad, and every society that has developed debt has also quickly developed interest. Societies that have religious prohibitions or taboos against interest find workarounds because it's proven to be a critical part of how economics works. Personally I am glad that I was able to buy a house for hundreds of thousands of dollars I don't have yet because I will be able to pay off that in time and I appreciate that the bank is willing to lend me that money for such a long time at a relatively low rate of return for them. The Soviet Union even had banks that offered loans with interest but they were run by the State. It's kind of unavoidable.
Why was your house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? Because we use debt. How do you think people lived for thousands of years? Home mortgages weren't a normal thing until like 100 years ago
Societies without it found workarounds, because it's easy. It's tempting. It's a money dupe glitch combined with gambling. If anyone uses it, they get an insurmountable advantage over all players who don't. It's moloch, it's the demon of racing to the bottom
You should not be able to spend your future
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Why was your house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? Because we use debt. How do you think people lived for thousands of years? Home mortgages weren't a normal thing until like 100 years ago
Societies without it found workarounds, because it's easy. It's tempting. It's a money dupe glitch combined with gambling. If anyone uses it, they get an insurmountable advantage over all players who don't. It's moloch, it's the demon of racing to the bottom
You should not be able to spend your future
People didn't own their houses for the most part. Have you ever taken even a freshman level economics class, by the way?
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Sadly, Americans are groomed at a young age to dive deep into debt early in life. It has become normalized for most of the population to carry some form of debt (credit cards and student loans are popular choices).
Most people don't even bother making a budget — a task that only needs to be done once a month, and is easier now than ever, thanks to technology.
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it never trickles down.
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Sadly, Americans are groomed at a young age to dive deep into debt early in life. It has become normalized for most of the population to carry some form of debt (credit cards and student loans are popular choices).
Most people don't even bother making a budget — a task that only needs to be done once a month, and is easier now than ever, thanks to technology.
Try and make a budget for minimum wage. Many people can't afford to live even meagerly.
Why bother budgeting if you're just going to lose anyway?
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it never trickles down.
Username checks out.
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You (and the other guy that replied) are indeed thinking of usury (which is a very evil thing, even frowned upon by most religions), which is the situation of lending assets to for the sake of profit
Debt on the other hand is a more general concept, did you ever borrow a pen from another person? While you were writing you were in debt for that pen (but this is a silly example that can be disregarded)
Did your parents take care of you as a child? In most cultures, thar means you're in debt and owe them care when they get old (though I understand that this varies from culture to culture, but the idea is there anyway)
If you are friendly to your neighbors and they invite you home to dinner several times, you are also expected to pay back the favor sometime down the road, this is another form of debtTo sum it up, debt is much more intrinsic to our behavior as humans than we usually think, even though "formal debt" might not be
This is not debt, and I maintain my point. Debt is wrong
If you lend out your pen and they break or lose it, a little bit of trust between you dies. And this is something inevitable over time. If you give your pen to them and they give it back once they get their own pen, trust is built. If they don't, that's fine too... Because you gave it to them
You can't count favors, and you shouldn't have debts. Debts ruin relationships, it feels bad from both sides. It feels bad to know they owe you, it feels bad to owe a debt. It feels like a relief to have it paid back, but it doesn't feel good
You should help people, but when you give someone money to start their business you should never expect it back. You can spread ideas like honor and gratitude, but if the business fails you shouldn't feel like you lost something
If you take care of your parents because they raised you like a child, you're asking for elder abuse. In these cultures, the parents try to chip in however they can... In hard times historically they'd wander out into the wilderness to avoid burdening the family.
But the term for this is not debt, it's duty. A good person is patient with their children and their parents. A good person does what they can for their family, the whole way through
Shitty people take out their anger on their children and resent their parents for every bite of food
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Try and make a budget for minimum wage. Many people can't afford to live even meagerly.
Why bother budgeting if you're just going to lose anyway?
...You assume that I haven't? I originally had to learn to budget when I was making less than minimum wage, to avoid homelessness. Budgeting can be even more important with less money.
