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Ep. 1839 - Household Debt Is Getting Out Of Hand. Here's Why It's At An All-Time High.

37m 21s

Ep. 1839 - Household Debt Is Getting Out Of Hand. Here's Why It's At An All-Time High.

Despite strong macroeconomic indicators—low unemployment, high stock markets, and robust GDP—the lived experience of many Americans reveals deep financial struggles. This paradox stems from the widespread availability of credit, especially through student loans and "buy now, pay later" apps, which normalize debt and obscure real affordability. People often misunderstand debt, treating credit limits as free money, leading to reckless spending. This behavior distorts markets, driving up prices for cars, education, and housing. Women, particularly Black women, bear a disproportionate student loan burden with low earning potential and high repayment rates. Meanwhile, job growth is concentrated in low-wage, government-dominated sectors like education and healthcare, which offer little economic value. These trends are reinforced by viral YouTube content showing financial failure, reflecting a society where personal responsibility has eroded. Though GDP and debt levels may appear stable, the underlying structure of credit access and financial illiteracy is creating systemic costs. Without accountability, this financial model risks destabilizing the economy, especially as rising debt burdens and speculative practices—like margin trading—expose vulnerable individuals to sudden loss. The solution lies not just in economic data, but in restoring financial literacy, responsibility, and equitable access to opportunity.

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6342 Words, 35634 Characters

English
It's one of the most common questions people have. If the economy is doing so well based on every official metric, then why are there so many anecdotal indicators, which we all see in our day-to-day lives, that Americans are struggling financially? If the stock market is near all time highs, unemployment is low, everybody is extremely, one might say, excessively well-fed, then to all our appearances, we're doing pretty well as a country. So why are so many people complaining about food prices and the cost of living and the difficulty of getting a job? Has everyone gone insane? Have we become a nation of winers unwilling to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps? Are the numbers cooked? Well, there has to be some explanation, but no one seems interested in providing one. So just give you a sense of how bizarre this particular dilemma has become. At the moment, as America ranks as the single wealthiest country on the entire planet, one of our most popular homegrown genres on YouTube involves car repos. Yes, car repos. Most of the time in these videos, people don't realize that cars being repossessed because they fail to make their monthly payments. The tow truck pulls up, grabs the car, and it's gone within about 30 seconds. But every so often, the deadbeats realize what's happening, and they frantically run out into the Walmart parking lot, pants around their ankles, pleading with the guy to give them their car back. And every case, the driver is completely unmoved by their desperate please watch. , and be true. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, can we get in? Come on, man. True. No, good. Now you can imagine a couple of reasons why this content is popular. Obviously, it shows people at one of the lowest moments in their life, which is always appealing for a certain segment of the population. It's a self-esteem boost for a decent number of people. But for being honest, part of the appeal is that, you know, for one's deadbeats are actually suffering consequences for their actions. They thought they could simply stop paying their car note, just like they'd probably stop paying rent, child support, and everything else. But there's one instance, justice arrives in the form of a tow truck driven by a guy with a million YouTube subscribers who simply doesn't care about their excuses. He's looking to make some content while also getting paid by JP Morgan or US bank for returning the car. Doesn't really care about anything else. In an environment where bad behavior is constantly forgiven, this kind of video is voyeuristic as it is. It could also be refreshing to see for some people at some level. Also, unlike cops, which goes out of its way to find white methods to mock, there's clearly no hesitation here to broadcast real-life footage, regardless of the racial demographics that may be involved in these repos. That's all the same that there's no getting around the fact that in a prosperous country, you wouldn't expect car repos to be a particularly popular or prevalent genre. This is idiocracy level content, the kind of video that should be leading the charts in Pakistan or Sudan, not the United States. There are many more examples, some of which will go through in a second. In particular, there's the massive popularity of videos by Dave Ramsey, Caleb Hammer, and others who routinely interview complete morons, who have racked up tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Here's one of them to give you an idea. My credit card, I maxed it out to 4,000. What do you mean you maxed it out? Maxed it out or maxed it out? So, my max, I got confused with the credit debt and the credit limit. So, my parents got me a credit card and I ended up getting a max credit limit of $8,000. So, I could spend up to $8,000. That's what that means, right? So, I would use it and I would take my boyfriend, we would just started dating, we would go out. 12,500. On it now? When I looked at it last, yeah. Me and my boyfriend made my friends, we would go out and I'm like, oh, I'll pay for everybody. I got it. I'll spend the money to worry about it. It's just a credit card. So, I would pay and pay and pay and then I called my mom one day and I wanted her to be proud of me. So, I was just like, hey, I've got $4,000 credit on my credit card and she's like credit limit or credit debt. I was like, what's debt? And she's like, oh, that's bad. I'm like, oh, really? Okay. So, it's $4,000 debt then. She's like, that's bad. Why did you do that? I'm like, I thought that was good. She's like, no, your credit limit at the time, it was $8,000. So, I was like, okay, well, the credit limit's $8,000. That's good, right? And she's like, yes, but you were $4,000 in debt. So, I started paying it off maybe like for a month and then my mom and dad, they were like, when was this? Last year. Okay. And then what? And then they're like, you're not going to pay this off in time. Give it to me. So, my parents took it and they're still currently paying it off right now. Now, I have to be honest, I always assume that credit card companies had to work a little harder than this. I thought they needed to use a variety of psychological tricks to convince women to spend money they didn't have, like reward points that you can only spend on an overpriced travel portal or promotional APRs that leave you with a massive interest bomb at the end or the Super Bowl ads with Samuel Jackson that convinced you it's cool to have a credit card or something. But actually, the credit card companies didn't need to do any of that. They're dealing with people who don't even understand what debt means. They think about that. They're clueless about the concept of owing money to someone else. So, really all the credit card companies had to do was give women like this a credit limit of $8,000 and some of them would apparently assume that they're basically getting a statement credit or a voucher worth $8,000. It's free money. I should call her mother to brag about her credit limit without understanding that she was talking about her debt. It's an important reminder that no matter how many dumb people you've encountered in your life, you've probably never spent any significant amount of time interacting with like the dumbest sorts of people. Truly, there is no bottom. I mean, there are people walking among us who are willing to admit on camera that they do not understand the concept of credit or debt. And until very recently, we've been importing millions more people every year, many of whom can't speak English or even less informed than this. And these people are getting access to credit. They're spending it without even realizing what they're doing. And as a direct result, the prices for everything you buy are going up. Now, this is an economic concept that needs some explanation because no one ever talks about it. When everybody, even complete morons who can barely dress themselves, is given access to thousands of dollars in credit, then markets immediately become very distorted. No one asks themselves, can actually afford this. Instead, they think in terms of monthly payments, or as you just saw in that video, they don't think at all. They simply swipe the card and then call their mother to brag. Now, when this view becomes mainstream and it has, then demand goes up while supply does not change. And as we know from the principle of supply and demand, the result is that prices increase. Now, we see this in a variety of industries from colleges to cars. The moment the federal government made it easy to obtain student loans, tuition skyrocketed by the same token as banks have increased the maximum duration of auto loans up to 96 months has become common. The price of cars has also increased. And no, I'm not making that up. Dealerships are now offering 96 month auto loans, which is another way of saying eight year loans. But they don't want to say eight years because, you know, I guess that sounds too long to most people. I mean, I think 96 months sounds longer than eight years, but maybe I'm in the minority. And not only that, dealerships are bragging about these loans on social media. Here's one example from a dealership in Houston. This is uncovered by a YouTube channel run by Marissa van watch. It gets worse. This next clip, when I came across it, I almost thought it wasn't real, but unfortunately it is real. This is a real dealership and they are absolutely taking advantage of people every day. What's going on folks? It's your boy, Steve. I got me rolling today. I got the homegirl Nate approved on this 22 Dodge Challenger. Nate, how was your experience today? It was lovely. Chris got it done. How much did you put down? 4K. 4K done. How much was created? It's cool. We got it. I'm good. It's good. Been a market for a vehicle, hit me or him up and we're going to get you. Payments might be high, but he doesn't get that done. You might be a little bit, a little bit, but hey, 2023. So once you do the math on this, $820 times 96 months plus the 4K she put down is $82,720. The 2022 MSRP for the Dodge Challenger goes from about $30,000 from the basic trim level to about $90,000. dollars for the top level. The one in the video looks like a pretty basic model, so I'm going to assume it's one of the ones that is under 40,000. So she is going to be paying, again, almost double the price for the car because of interest. Now realistically, there's no way she's gonna hold on to this vehicle for 96 months. Even if she wanted to, it's not gonna happen. This car is gonna get repot and she is going to appear on a YouTube video in a few months chasing after the tow truck. And when that happens, her equity in the vehicle, including her $4,000 down payment and any payments she's made up until that point, is almost certainly wasted. That's because when your car gets repot and sold at an auction, it's usually sold on the cheap so that the bank can recover the money they lent you with a lot of fees tacked on. Her equity in the vehicle, assuming she has any by that point, is going to get wiped out. And this scenario plays out every day, thousands of times. That's not an exaggeration. By one estimate in 2025, more than three million vehicles were repossessed. That comes out to more than 8,000 vehicles a day. And those numbers by the way are similar to what we saw following the recession in 2009. Now, you've probably seen people like this buying a car of the last time you were in a dealership, just kind of by getting a sense of their vibe, you can tell that they're not going to be able to afford the monthly payments. The car they buy is going to go right back to the dealership. It's just a matter of time. But you can't simply ignore these people because they're indirectly making your own vehicle much more expensive in the process. The fact that you've saved up enough cash for a significant down payment and the fact that you've secured a reasonable interest rate with payments you can afford doesn't really matter. You're competing with people who have access to very large amounts of money that they have not earned in the form of credit. So if you want the car, whether you've saved for it or not, you're going to pay a lot more money. It's one of the reasons that a car MSRP's are now so high. In just the past decade, the typical MSRP for a new vehicle is increased by roughly 46%. The average MSRP is now over $50,000 compared with around $33,000 10 years ago. It's impossible today to find a new vehicle with a starting MSRP below $20,000. And after all, if you're a car manufacturer, why bother making a budget vehicle? Everybody's walking into the dealership with unlimited credit, basically. So you might as well take advantage and they do. But before we talk anymore about humiliating clips like these and what they reveal, we'd be honest about the broader economic numbers that we do have. The ones that tell a much more positive story about the economy. That's not because the numbers are necessarily accurate or illuminating, but because we need to establish some kind of baselines. Let's do that. Now, it's true that the total debt currently held by US households as of this year is more than $18.8 trillion. And in raw dollar terms without adjusting for inflation, wage growth, population size or anything else, that's more debt than we've ever had at any point in this country's history by a huge margin. Meanwhile, credit card debt also reached an all time high of around $1.28 trillion in the last quarter of 2025. The debt then declined slightly in next quarter to $1.25 trillion as many people paid off their Christmas shopping bills, but still over $1 trillion. These are staggering numbers truly. But in context, you can argue they're not as bad as they seem. If you go back to the early 2000s, household debt was around 70% of the American GDP towards the end of 2007 just before the financial crisis. Household debt was approaching 100% of GDP. By contrast, right now, household debt is about 68% of GDP, which is still a lot. So as a percentage of the total US gross domestic product, we're not in debt as much as we used to be, although we are still much more in debt than we should be. It'd be much worse if we were racking up bigger debt with a statement with a stagnant economy on top of that. So it's a good sign, although of course GDP is not necessarily the most important metric either. If Amazon or Microsoft have a very good quarter, the GDP will go up. That doesn't necessarily mean that Americans will get wealthier or have more money to pay their debts. So there's another metric that gets used, which is called the household debt service ratio ratio. And this looks at total household debt payments, including mortgage payments, car loans, credit card debts, and measures them as a percentage of your total after tax personal income, meaning money you can actually spend freely. And this ratio is much more important. And as you could see, it was much higher 20 years ago than it is today. It peaked around 16% in 2008 and now it's down to around 11%. And if you zoom out from 1980 to 2004, the average was roughly 11% as well. So we're spending less on debt payments than we were during the financial crisis. And we're spending about as much as we've been spending since 1980. Based on those numbers, there's no obvious crisis involving household debt. We're not suddenly borrowing a lot more money to pay for cars or houses that we can't afford. And we're not drowning in credit card debt, at least not to an unprecedented degree. But these figures don't account for every kind of debt. In particular, they ignore rent payments, which are obviously a very significant household obligation, although it's technically classified as an ongoing obligation, not a debt. For a while, the figure also effectively excluded some forms of student loan debt, although that has changed recently. And here's the interesting thing about student loan debt. It's ballooning out of control right now, particularly among women. It's yet another disastrous consequence of the feminist movement because women have been told to attend college at any cost, including art colleges and beauty colleges that are basically scams. Tens of millions of women are now graduating with useless degrees and a mountain of debt. And on top of that, they've driven up the cost of tuition for everybody else, which was already extremely high because of federally-backed student loans. So as you can see, more than 60% of student loan debt belongs to women at the moment. And the average student debt for women in this country now exceeds $30,000 with black women leading the pack at $40,000. Meanwhile, the median female graduate earns around $66,000 a year after graduation, meaning half of female graduates make less than that. And here's the kicker of the average student debt repayment among women every month is just $307. So they'll be in debt for at least a decade, assuming they make every payment on time, which is obviously a pretty big and not very safe assumption. A few recently found that 37% of female borrowers reported defaulting on their loans compared to just 30% of male borrowers. So the best case scenario for these women is that they'll be in debt for a decade. That's the best case. More realistic scenarios that they're never going to pay it off. And instead, they're going to demand that you pay the bill. Americans have been conditioned to believe that cell phone service is supposed to be expensive. You walk into a store, someone explains 17 different plans to you, starts talking about credits and upgrades and activation fees, and eventually you'll lose the will to live and just kind of hand them your credit card. It's apparently been our system for decades. Pure talk, thankfully, has a much simpler proposition. If you think you're paying too much for subpar service, you should really switch to pure talk. In a recent industry survey, pure talk was the only wireless company to receive five stars in every category. It's coverage, support, value, and data. Stop overpaying for subpar service, join pure talk. Just go to puretalk.com/walsh. You'll save 50% off your first month, make the switch today, and with unlimited high speed data for just 34, 99 a month, you're going to save a fortune. Take it from me or from over 120,000 wireless customers. Again, that's puretalk.com/walsh. To say 50% off your first month, puretalk.com/walsh, welcome to pure talk. There's an increasingly difficult question for men, which is what you're supposed to wear when you want to look like you made an effort, but you don't want to look like you're attending a wedding. Apparently our choices now are gym clothes or a suit. This is one reason I become a fan of Tacovas. I've talked about my Earl Boots and they're basically the perfect middle ground. Simple understated leather boots that look great with jeans, but you can easily dress them up when you need to, and they're genuinely comfortable. Tacovas makes their boots by hand in more than 200 steps, but somehow they've managed to do this without requiring the traditional initiation ceremony, where new leather boots destroy your feet for two weeks. In some of the cases, all they feel broken in right out of the box. Very comfortable. Tacovas also makes shoes, denim, shirts, belts, and I own a belt and a couple shirts and wallets. I also have a Tacovas wallet. Plenty of other things if you want to complete the look without dressing like you're headed to a rodeo. Right now, get 10% off at Tacovas.com/mat when you sign up for email and text. That's 10% off at t-e-c-o-v-a-s.com/mattocovas.com/mat. See some of your details. Tacovas, point your toes west. Now, if you look at mainstream coverage of this issue without exception, they'll portray women as the victims in this scenario. Here's Time Magazine, for example. "Sahara Artiga, 30 years old, originally took out $29,000 of student loans to go toward an education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She started paying off her loans in 2014 after she graduated. While she's been making monthly payments towards her loans, even during the payment pause, she still owes some $27,000. Women still face barriers to paying off their loans due to the gender wage gap, a lack of generational wealth, and gender norms placed on women. Black women are particularly affected by student loan debt. If you're coming from a space where you have fewer resources available, that means that you're going to take longer to pay your loans off. So there's the completely fake gender pay gap, making it appearance, along with the typical language that absolves women, especially black women, of all personal responsibility. What nobody wants to say is that if you're a woman who took out $29,000 to go to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, you're an idiot who really doesn't deserve our pity. The typical starting salary for a studio art graduate of this school is $35,000, which is right in line with what Applebees will pay you to serve reheated food from the back of a Cisco truck. It's much less than a decent bartender takes on. And the job at Applebees or the bar doesn't require a four-year degree that costs tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, not counting housing costs. The problem here is not that women are discriminated against. It's actually the opposite. They're getting hired at rates that are clearly unjustifiable. This is an article from CNBC this week. I saw this floating around social media and I couldn't even believe it was real at first, but indeed it is a legitimate. It says, quote, women accounted for almost all of job gains in August. Women accounted for 158,000 or around 98% of the 162,000 jobs added in the month according to a CNBC analysis of data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Men represented the remaining 4,000 net positions added meaning the contribution to overall payroll growth was nearly 40 times smaller. With Friday's report, the gap between the number of jobs held by women compared with men climbed to levels never before seen according to Laura Ulrich Director of Economic Research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, where in the midst of a shift, it's changing right before our eyes. These are truly astonishing numbers, which validate everything we've said in the past about the feminization of the workforce. This is cataclysmic, deserves itself a longer discussion, which I think we'll do soon. But the point is, you're not imagining it. White male workers are being pushed out, being discriminated against at a level that has never been seen before in favor of women who have flooded into the job market, who make up 100% of the net growth in the last month. And guess where these women are working? I mean, do you think they're getting hired by SpaceX or something like that to design new rockets that will add trillions of dollars in value to the economy? No, they're getting fake jobs, many of them, particularly jobs in the local government and education sector, which means they're drawing taxpayer money, your money to indoctrinate children. Women take more than 75% of those jobs, are also dominating the health care field, taking more than 80% of the jobs there, mostly in roles like medical support. Quote, compared with 12 months ago, the BLS found that the level of employed women has grown by more than 870,000 in a seasonally adjusted basis. The male gender has lost nearly 1.5 million employed workers over the same time frame. Part of the recent outperformance among women could stem from what sectors are driving labor force expansion. Health care, considered the engine of labor market growth for more than a year, continued adding positions in August. Upwards of four out of every five workers in the industry are women. The local government education sector roared back to life in August, accounting for 42,000 jobs. Women hold close to three-quarters positions related to education, training, and libraries. Now, it's impossible to overstate the significance of these numbers. We have become a country where instead of aspiring to raise families, women aspire to fake jobs that don't meaningfully contribute to a society or to the economy or anything else. Is there anyone alive who's looked at the state or of their local government or schools and decided that the solution is to artificially inflate the number of women who are hired even more? Is there anyone who believes that it's more fulfilling for a woman to take one of these jobs instead of raising a family or more useful to society and to the fate of civilization? And you might ask, what exactly are women doing with this money if they're not raising kids? Well, here's a window into what that world looks like, but fair warning, it's pretty grim stuff. Watch. Why are you so much kind of hard to? I get a lot of tattoos. And I've spent a lot of money on these tattoos. I've put about 10,000 on tattoos in the past year. In the past year? Yeah. Why? 10,000 hours and less on tattoos? I just kept getting them. No, why? Because they look cool. None of them even have color. This one has some color. The little blue. Just a little bit. We have a salt shaker, okay? It's one of my favorites. Now, the easy access to credit and student loans along with meaningless employment in the form of fake government jobs has led us directly to this point. 30 years ago, people like this weren't able to use Clarna or a firm or PayPal's by now pay later system. They couldn't obtain thousands of dollars in easy credit from 20 different credit card companies. In fact, until the mid 1970s, they couldn't get credit cards by themselves at all. Now they have near infinite access to credit, which they're using to drive up the cost for the rest of us. A precise at the moment that they're squeezing the job market. Apparently, sleep tourism is now a growing trend. People are spending thousands of bucks to travel to hotels and wellness retreats designed almost entirely around getting a good night's sleep. So instead of visiting historical landmarks, exploring a new city, or doing anything remotely memorable, you fly across the country and remain unconscious for most of the trip. This is now considered a vacation. Now, of course, you could also improve the bed you sleep in every night. And that's one reason I've been sleeping on a Helix mattress for the last few years. So, especially Helix, I sleep better, I wake up feeling more rested, I don't need to travel to hotel to do it. There's a noticeable difference between beginning your morning refreshed and spending the first few hours of the day trying to recover from the night before. Helix is quick, sleep quiz matches you with one of more than 20 mattress models based on your sleep position, firmness preferences, and support needs. Their cooling upgrades can also help you stay comfortable on hot nights. Your mattress comes directly to your door with a free US shipping, a 120 night sleep trial and the happy with Helix guarantee. Go to helixleap.com/walls for 27% off sitewide for the Labor Day best of web sale. You shouldn't have to take a vacation just to recover from sleeping at home. That's helixleap.com/walls for 27% off sitewide. Make sure you're into our show name after check out so they know we sent you helixleap.com/walls. Now, note, of course, that the problem is much bigger than the morons that appear on these kinds of shows. Some of the most powerful institutions of this country have spent years developing products that are designed to trap their customers in debt, which they can't possibly escape from. This is a quote from a lawsuit that was just filed against Robinhood in Georgia. This is from a few months ago, and here's the key quote. It says plaintiff had a brokerage account with Robinhood derivatives LLC and lost approximately $400,000, including fees and commissions, wagering on Robinhood's prediction markets hub in 2025 and 2026, including on sports event contracts. Robinhood enables customers to place gaming wagers against margin on their securities portfolios, exposing customers to the loss of their security portfolio through unregulated and potentially compulsive gaming activities. Robinhood insufficiently warns consumers that speculative trading against margin may expose core investment holdings and long-term stock portfolios to substantial accelerated losses and even significant debt. In its fiscal year ending December 31, 2025, Robinhood collected $302 million in other transaction based revenue, a 260% increase from the previous year, which was primarily driven by increased user activities in prediction markets and instant withdrawals. So in other words, Robinhood is a brokerage. It's mainly used for buying stocks, but they also allow you to use your equity to gamble on sports and politics and everything else. And on top of that, if you don't want to liquidate your stocks, they'll loan you money to gamble with your stock portfolio as collateral. So as a hypothetical, let's say you have $20,000 in a brokerage account, Robinhood might lend you, say, $10,000 to gamble on their prediction markets. And if you lose that $10,000, they have the right to foresee to sell your stocks at whatever price they're currently worth to settle the debt. That's how people are losing their life savings. We have gambling apps embedded within brokerages now. Now to be clear, I'm not actually entirely blaming Robinhood for this. As far as I can tell, this lawsuit has very little merit, the federal law, Trump state law, and federal law allows these kinds of markets right now for better or worse, and it is for worse. What happened here is that this guy made a series of disastrous bets, and now he's trying to cause money back. But the fact remains that 20 years ago, he would have had to book a plane ticket to Vegas to do anything like this. And now we can do it on his phone 24/7. And that is a temptation and an ease of access. says that for many people is proving very difficult to resist. And that's one of the reasons we stopped doing gambling ads on this show. It's destroying lives. I mean, that's just an objective fact, a lot of lives. But we can't talk about debt, whether it's margin debt, credit card debt, or any other kind of debt, without talking about some of the potential benefits. Obviously, not all personal debt is bad, not every margin loan ends in catastrophe, although it's generally a very bad idea. And yes, availability of cheap credit has become, has been excellent for economic growth. Having the world's reserve currency made the US a superpower, allowing us to spend whatever we want without massive inflation, to radically expand it our soft power. To the extent people use credit to purchase assets that appreciate or allow them to live, that can be a good thing. Mortgage is a particular, obviously a net positive, even if housing prices are way too high now. Except itself is a net positive in many different ways. And it's also good that if you ever need to make a large emergency expense, you can do so with a credit card instantly without having to liquidate any of your assets. And if you're responsible about all these things, then it'll be fine. But the extent to which credit is available today is unprecedented. I mean, this is from a recent article in Consumer Reports, for example, quote, "On a recent weekday, too tired to cook, my wife and I ordered take out from Chipotle. The food came fast, but the tab will be taking its time." Thanks to a small loan through FinTech Startup Zip, I don't have to pay for the two burritos plus sodas and sides for the next 42 days. By now, pay later lenders generally set a minimum amount. You must spend in order to receive financing to order Chipotle through Zip. For example, I had to spend at least 35 bucks. The company, like most lenders, requires users to pay 25% up front and then pay down the remaining balance over four equal by weekly installments. In the case of Zip, a $1 fee is assessed per installment, meaning my installment worked out to $9.75 each. At $10, Clarna, at least for now, appears to set the lowest loan threshold. I'm cleaning up after our Chipotle fees. My wife and I realized we were out of paper towels, so I signed up for Clarna, and within minutes had ordered $10 worth of paper towels from Target on a payment plan. My foreign installments worked out to about $2.60 each. Now, people are doing this all the time now. I mean, they're addicted to buying an expensive item now, or not so expensive, and paying for it over time, even when it's a burrito or a bottle of body wash. Works out very well for the lenders, since around 35% of customers who use these loans ultimately fall behind on their payments, and when they do that, fees hit interest comes due. Payments explode. Now this is totally indefensible for obvious reasons. You should be financing a burrito. It's true that if you're starving, you should, in that case, sure, go into debt for food. But in America, no one is starving. You know, there are massive programs and billions of dollars of charities, school lunch programs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that feed poor people. The vast majority of food stamp recipients are obese. So the people using Clarna to buy stuff like burritos or shampoo are without any doubt being irresponsible. It shouldn't need to be said at any other point in our history, it wouldn't need to be said. But if you spend any amount of time on social media, you'll find that indeed, people are actually doing this. Hey, friends, times are hard, but times don't have to be too hard when we have all of that pallet app. I used to be so stressed out, and so I was introduced to these by that pallet app. Some of y'all might look at them as debt. Some of y'all might say, "Oh, if I can't afford it, I'm not finna bad." Baby, me, give me an app and give me some personal power, and I'ma show you what to do with it. If I can't pay my card enough, if I feel like I can pay my insurance, if I don't use my credit card for the whole mint, and I don't know how I'm gonna pay it, baby, even if I need to buy some groceries for my house, I'ma go to Walmart with my Biden app pallet card and I'ma give me a month of order. And I feel like I love the Biden app pallet apps and loans because you don't have to worry about all the issues you got to pay me. So if I select to pay these loanbeckin' six months, I have six months to pay it off. If I pay it off early, I don't have to pay all the insurance. I don't know about child, but I will rent a bar from an app. I will rent a pay my life, be a gas, be a card no insurance, whatever, and some six payments or three. Then it'll be seen up here looking crazy, I don't like it, no card is right. If I deciphered that correctly, she's putting everything on buy now pay later plans from gas to groceries. And this is not an aberration, a subset of the population has become dependent on this kind of spending, which completely removes personal responsibility and planning from the equation. And that's a big problem, you know, for most of its history, the United States was built on notions of personal responsibility and work ethic and frugality. That's all gone now. And in losing that, we lost a fundamental feature of American life and American identity. We've also driven up costs for everyone else in ways that aren't even fully apparent right now and with just a few weeks to go until some very important elections in this country, that's important to keep in mind. The bill for all of this excessive wasteful spending is eventually going to come do. These people certainly don't think they're going to pay it, call it whatever you want, democratic socialism, racial equity, whatever. At some point, they're going to demand a bailout at gunpoint. And when that happens, it won't matter what the GDP is or the unemployment rate or anything else. At that point, which is rapidly approaching, all that will matter is whether we've kept these people, these kinds of people who only know how to consume everything in their site as far away from power as we possibly can. That'll do the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a great day, Godspeed. Are we paying attention? They've taken over the building, they're downstairs and they've blocked the doors. I seek forgiveness from Allah, the Almighty. We cannot run and hide. Muhammad is the messenger of God. There is no God but Allah. What do you say? We turn those vessel bees into a fond red mist. You need a course in safe weapons handling.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Despite strong economic indicators like low unemployment and high stock markets, many Americans struggle with rising living costs and financial insecurity due to widespread access to credit.
  2. Easy credit and student loans have distorted markets, leading to inflated prices for cars, education, and housing, as consumers rely on monthly payments rather than affordability.
  3. Videos showing car reposessions and debt-ridden individuals highlight a cultural normalization of financial ignorance and irresponsibility, especially among young people and women in higher education.
  4. Student loan debt is disproportionately borne by women, particularly Black women, with low post-graduation earnings and high repayment burdens, undermining economic mobility.
  5. Women dominate new job growth in sectors like education and healthcare, which are seen as "fake" or low-value, contributing to a perception of economic misalignment and stagnation.
  6. Financial services like "buy now, pay later" apps enable unchecked spending, eroding personal responsibility and increasing debt burdens, especially among non-poverty populations.
  7. Institutions such as Robinhood have enabled speculative trading and margin debt, exposing users to significant financial loss, reflecting systemic risks in modern credit systems.
  8. The U.S. economy, while technically strong, is built on unsustainable debt and consumerism, with real costs rising for all due to distorted demand and lack of financial literacy.

Summary:

Despite strong macroeconomic indicators—low unemployment, high stock markets, and robust GDP—the lived experience of many Americans reveals deep financial struggles. This paradox stems from the widespread availability of credit, especially through student loans and "buy now, pay later" apps, which normalize debt and obscure real affordability. People often misunderstand debt, treating credit limits as free money, leading to reckless spending.

This behavior distorts markets, driving up prices for cars, education, and housing. Women, particularly Black women, bear a disproportionate student loan burden with low earning potential and high repayment rates. Meanwhile, job growth is concentrated in low-wage, government-dominated sectors like education and healthcare, which offer little economic value.

These trends are reinforced by viral YouTube content showing financial failure, reflecting a society where personal responsibility has eroded. Though GDP and debt levels may appear stable, the underlying structure of credit access and financial illiteracy is creating systemic costs. Without accountability, this financial model risks destabilizing the economy, especially as rising debt burdens and speculative practices—like margin trading—expose vulnerable individuals to sudden loss.

The solution lies not just in economic data, but in restoring financial literacy, responsibility, and equitable access to opportunity.

FAQs

Many Americans face high food and living costs despite strong macroeconomic data. This is due to widespread access to credit, which increases demand and drives up prices across sectors like housing, cars, and education.

When large numbers of people borrow money without understanding debt, demand surges. This distorts markets, causing prices to rise. For example, 96-month auto loans have increased car prices significantly, with some buyers paying nearly double the MSRP.

It measures total debt payments as a percentage of after-tax income. A lower ratio indicates better financial health. It has declined from 16% in 2008 to around 11% today, suggesting households are spending less on debt than during the financial crisis.

More than 60% of student loan debt is held by women, with the average debt exceeding $30,000. Many graduate with low salaries—around $66,000 annually—making repayment difficult, especially when combined with the gender wage gap and limited generational wealth.

Women now account for nearly 98% of job growth, especially in education and healthcare sectors. While this reflects labor market shifts, critics argue these 'fake jobs' offer little economic value and contribute to a system where personal responsibility is eroded.

These apps allow consumers to purchase items like groceries or gas without immediate payment, encouraging impulsive spending. Around 35% of users eventually fall behind, leading to fees and interest that can spiral, especially when used for non-essential items.

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