No, that's disgusting.

Trickle-down is a perfectly wholesome synonym for horse-and-sparrow economics, so named because sparrows pick undigested oats out of horseshit. Why'd you have to go and make it gross?

Me, off in the corner believing debt is immoral

Are you thinking about usury? Debt in general is actually one of the moat important threads of our societal fabric

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 mean trickle trick? Because that's the trick, it doesn't.

Most important, because that's how most people start and grow their business, they don't have multimillion inheritance.

Also buying house.

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.

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.

It trickln't

Many societies also develop a system of redistribution or debt forgiveness. It's known that too much debt accumulation in too few hands cause increasingly bigger issues or that circumstances change. But there are always those that need to learn the lesson again.

When you make a CitizenWatch article into a meme (congrats OP):

S&P 500 just hit an all-time high. Meanwhile, 60% of Americans use Afterpay for groceries. First-time homebuyers have fallen to 24% from 50%. - Citizen Watch Report

The S&P 500 just closed above 6170. Nasdaq is over 20000. Every financial outlet is painting it as strength. But if you step away from the screen and - Citizen Watch Report

Citizen Watch Report (citizenwatchreport.com)

"Thank you my liege"

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.

I mean this sincerely: Am I missing something in their sources? None of their three sources about BNPL support the "60%" number for groceries.

U.S. Shoppers Turn To Buy Now, Pay Later For Groceries As High Costs Bite

Americans are increasingly using buy now, pay later loans for groceries and more of them are also paying those bills late, according to a new spending survey.

Forbes (www.forbes.com)

Pueblo Can’t Afford to Wait: Buy Now, Pay Later Moves from Luxury to Survival

Rising costs affect all of us. Together, we can face them, support one another, and build a stronger, more resilient Pueblo — one issue at a time.

Pueblo Star Journal (pueblostarjournal.org)

More Americans are financing groceries with buy now, pay later loans — and more are paying those bills late, survey says

Consumers are using buy now, pay later plans to pay for essentials such as groceries, as concerns around the economy grow.

CNBC (www.cnbc.com)

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.

Weird stat aside, I was watching a podcast with Scott Galloway yesterday and he made a comment about Jerome Powell bringing inflation down to 2% without triggering a recession, and I had to facepalm. The rich, even those with a shred of empathy, are massively out of touch with what the 99% are experiencing right now.

Yeah, that statistic is obviously bullshit and people here should notice. They really should notice

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.

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?

Not many societies developed a system of redistribution. We live in one of the extremely few that have, and it took a lot of smart people a lot of time (and infighting) to get into something that works.

We just need to apply it.