Summary
Gen Z is increasingly relying on “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) services for holiday shopping, with spending projected to rise 11.4% this year, totaling $18.5 billion.
These services appeal to younger consumers with limited credit histories but can lead to overextension, as they lack centralized reporting and encourage overspending.
Experts warn of accumulating fees, particularly when BNPL plans are tied to credit cards.
With inflation and rising credit card debt already burdening Gen Z, consumer advocates caution that these services may worsen financial instability despite their convenience.
This widespread propaganda needs to be countered with grassroots encouragement of more practical relationships with money though. That’s the cultural onus for systematic change. Don’t just shame them, but encourage everyone to live more responsibly and to vote for people who will reign in the creditors spreading this propaganda and loaning easy money to every financially irresponsible person
Without grassroots cultural change anyone who reigns this shit in will face political suicide for taking away their easy lines of credit. We see similar things with things like carbon taxation and other incentives to reduce carbon emissions that involve reducing overconsumption by all people (because yes, the average American is part of the problem too). The elites need to lose the most, but all of us need to live a financially and environmentally sustainable lifestyle and the systemic changes we all talk about wanting will impact our lives.
Only systemic changes will fix systemic issues
Oh wonderful and I suppose we should do nothing to bring those systemic changes about too? No systemic changes begin with changes to our community mindsets. The big creditors want you to not be talking about how they’re propagandizing to convince you to take easy lines of casual credit for fun little splurges and that that’s a trap and you shouldn’t take it. They want you to think that it’s not worth saving money and living within your means and they want you to keep up with the joneses and to make your friends uncomfortable not doing so. And most importantly they want people to feel like any expectation that they shouldn’t get instant and constant gratification is an unacceptable cost. When they get their way systemic change is infeasible. When they are seen as parasites lying to the masses and tricking them into living beyond their means, systemic change becomes possible. Politics are downstream of culture. You can’t change the policy neatly as easily as you can change the minds of those around you
Pretending like individual choices would do anything ignores the fact that these systemic issues can only be fixed with systemic changes
No amount of financial literacy will fix income inequality, we need to redistribute wealth if we want everyone to have the proportional wealth to participate in the economy.