this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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They probably mean things like Klarna, micro loans through Paypal or Venmo or Cash App etc.
A whole lot of online retail apps these days either use Klarna or their own in house ... well its all differently subcontracted for each one, but there are a ton of different ways to do buy now pay later plans.
They have bad interest rates compared to a credit card you could get with the same credit score, generally.
On a side note: I love how on the one hand we get stories like this about American consumers having absurd monthly credit payments and barely any cash on hand, but at the same time we get stories and even Fed numbers saying consumer credit is doing fine actually.
Sezzle and Affirm now too. Also Four, Afterpay and whatever that like weird Amazon sponsored one is that sorts is Amazon pay but isn't.
There are a fucking lots of buy now, pay later apps these days.
Also side note: And yeah the credit debt is actually in check because it's kinda the battery that powers the economy of the United States.
As long as people can still make minimum payments that is.
But seriously it has the spending power as a country as it does mostly because of the sorta guaranteed debt payments from the general populace. It's why it loves people that generate huge debts and pays them back poorly. People like Trump and just upper middle class putting 10s-100s of thousands on debt are viewed as financially great for a reason.
Financialization is generally something that happens in the stage right before a society largely collapses, historically.
Its a huge contributor to wealth inequality.
It all works until it doesn't.
But yeah, thanks for adding those other popular after pay systems I forgot!
Oh for sure it's a super unstable bad idea but it works really well for a short time for those at the top. We really are just riding that edge out of hubris from those in charge.
I can only assume the Fed and government agencies make a point of only reporting metrics that show everything is fine. Lying with data is easy if you're in control of how it's summarized.