FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

However, instead of using it to buy or construct a machine to triple what you can produce in an hour, the average person is using it to delay having to work that hour at all, in exchange for having to work an hour and six minutes sometime later.

At some point, you run out of hours available and the house of cards collapses.

i.e., credit can buy time in the nearly literal sense, you can do an hour's work in half an hour because the money facilitates it, meaning you can now make more money. If instead of investing in work you're spending on play, then you end up with a time deficit.

or, e.g. you can buy 3 franchises in 3 months instead of 3 years (i.e. income from the 1 franchise), trading credit for time to make more money, instead of burning it. It'd have been nice had they taught me this in school.

The "average person" is told from birth to consume as many things and experiences as possible as it if was the only thing that could give their life a meaning. The entire system is based on growth and consumption, I have a hard time blaming "the average person"

Credit, in this sense, is also used to solve a cash flow problem. It’s a bad sign when that credit (or Klarna Pay-in-3 style setups) is applied to basic day to day expenses like buying groceries or other necessities.

Basically the market’s answer to increasing poverty: you’re not getting paid more, so how about we give you a payment plan to spread things out?

Why does it feel different? 1: the amount of stuff we buy has increased a lot. Anybody who owns what would be considered solidly middle class in the early 1970s will feel quite poor today. 2: financial security is way down.

In the early seventies a middle class family of 6 would own a 1200 square foot house, a single car, a single TV and a single radio would be the sum total of the entertainment electronics they owned, they'd have less than a dozen outfits apiece, they'd eat out about once a month, a vacation to a neighboring state would feel like a splurge, et cetera.

But they were relatively content. 1: they were much better off than their parents and grandparents, who experienced the depression & WW2. 2: they were "keeping up with the Joneses". 3: they had a feeling of financial security due to job security and the fact that serious health events were unlikely to financially devastating.

Maybe some of that problem is about spending too much money, but it cannot be denied that housing are unaffordable and that transportation is inefficient and is a mess.

Huh? Doesn't the average American live in a city? The whole reason for accepting being squeezed in tightly with other people is so that you don't have to worry about transportation; enabling everything you could ever want and need to be found in short walking distance.

Transportation is for people in rural areas. Yes, it is expensive, but that's exactly why most people left rural areas for the city long ago.

That's the thing, a lot of Americans really don't like this idea of being squeezed in tightly. People really don't like having a shared wall. And it's not that people like these tightly squeezed lot lines, they'd prefer 1 acre lots. These tiny lots are all they can afford while still being somewhat acceptable to them about commutes. Which Americans seem to really just not care about commute times when comparing to tradeoffs on house size and not having shared walls.

And in the end, you can only buy what the cities and towns allow to have built. Which is chosen by those who live there at the time. The cities then make single family structures a requirement, have minimum setbacks and lot sizes, have rigid separations between residential and commercial spaces, etc. So even those people who would want to own an apartment over a commercial suite in what you'd consider an urban area can't make that choice because that choice is illegal.

But people act like these zoning laws just come about on their own. The thing is, these zoning laws are popular. They get put into place because that's what the people who actually vote in local elections push for. I've seen proposal after proposal in cities around me to change zoning to allow density even in limited areas get fought tooth and nail by residents. I remember a project nearby where there was a proposal to build a mixture of 2-3 unit townhouses, some single-family narrow lots, and a tiny spot of commercial for like a coffee shop on land that was currently zoned industrial. All of this connected to the bike network, a large city park and a nature preserve nearby, and good transit connection at the end of the neighborhood. The neighborhoods around fought it tooth and nail and eventually the builder walked away after trying to negotiate for a few years. Well, the land was already zoned industrial, construction broke ground months later to build warehouses. Now instead of a nice neighborhood on my bike path there's warehouses with semi-trucks rolling through all day long. Good job, NIMBYs!

Sure, it isn't coincidence that the "American Dream" has always been portrayed the sizeable house on a large acreage out in the country surrounded by white picket fences. But we're talking about the people who are choosing to cram in beside one another, but aren't bringing the services and joy that such density normally offers to go along with it.

> These tiny lots are all they can afford while still being somewhat acceptable to them about commutes.

I've lived in cities and on farms and the commute times end up being about the same if you ever have to leave your immediate community that is within walking distance. You have to drive further from the farm, sure, but the highway is surprisingly efficient. Is there some reason people are more concerned about distance than time?

The city offers a clear advantage when you are travelling short enough distances that you can walk. But, that brings us right back to wondering what you need costly transportation for? The two dangly things beneath you are right there! (Yes, I know, some people hazve disabilities, but the discussion isn't about them)

> But people act like these zoning laws just come about on their own.

Not at all. That's why we question why people are doing it. It is clearly their own choice. But why when we then hear them crying that the transportation costs are too high?

People routinely leave their community for their job all the time here. Go take a look at that map I shared earlier. Most of the people in that neighborhood probably don't work in Princeton. They probably don't even work in McKinney or Fairview. Good chance they work in North Plano, Frisco, Addison, Dallas, maybe Garland. Most people living here are probably driving about an hour to their job, each way, every day. With a lot of those people with those kinds of commutes having that take place on a tollway.

They do that because they can buy that 4-bedroom 3-bath 3-car garage ~2,400sqft with a gameroom house on its own lot for $375k. Meanwhile, a similar house within a few miles of their work (say, Frisco) is probably anywhere from $590k to $2M. Property taxes can be pretty steep here, so that $590k house gets like $14k/yr in property taxes in Frisco while that $375k house in Princeton is only $9k/yr, over $400/mo in additional taxes. They could potentially accept a smaller and thus cheaper house, but to them it's not worth the tradeoff. They need that 3-car garage, they need that gameroom.

My wife has coworkers who live in Forney and commute to jobs in Plano and Frisco. They do that commute 3-5 times a week and see nothing wrong with it. They value having a large home with tons of space, and with the kind of income they make there's little chance they could afford it anywhere near where those jobs are. Think a security guard and a building engineer (like an on-site maintenance tech for a commercial property) are going to own a $1M+ house? No. But they still want a 3 bedroom home with a pool and a spa and an outdoor kitchen, and they can get that for $300k in Forney.

Just trying to share the follow on mindset. If you're having to leave your home by car every day for work, then you're absolutely going to have a car. If you already have the car, why go to the little grocery store at the edge of the neighborhood when you just spend a little more transit time and go to the big store that has everything else you'd want to buy?

Sure, where the compensation is sufficient to cover your travel costs you would reasonably consider it. But then transportation costs aren't an issue, making the unaffordability idea that started this moot. But, if we want to move beyond the topic of cost, that just brings us right back to the point that travel time ends up being the same living in the city and living in the country, so what have you gained by living in the city?

What one normally thinks you would gain is having other amenities, like bars, restaurants, healthcare, shopping, and just an all round vibrant community right there to enjoy when you get home from work. But the particular city homes we are talking about don't even have that. They are just houses upon houses upon houses all jammed up against each other with nothing in-between.

And it is that way because people want it to be that way. They don't want the restaurants, shopping, healthcare, etc. to be anywhere nearby. Even though they cry that they afford to the transportation to get to them, funnily enough. But why? What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them?

Children, among other things. Let's make this concrete.

I live ~40 minutes from Washington DC and ~30 minutes from Baltimore. I have three children.

I'd need, at minimum, a four-bedroom, two-bathroom property in the city. It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons.

The 30y mortgage on my six-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home in the suburbs is ~$3,500/month.

Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less?

(For reference: my property value at the time of purchase was $575,000.)

Check out a settler home sometime. They were tiny, one room houses that housed themselves and their eight+ children just fine. You don't need this in any way, shape, or form. I do understand why you find it desirable, though.

> It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons.

I don't live in crazy orange man land. What are the (unfortunately, not so) obvious reasons? It befuddles me that different school zones would be different in any way beyond their geographic positioning, which isn't usually a concern when it comes to schooling. I've never heard of such a thing before.

> Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less?

What's wrong with where you already are? If you found the lack of jobs, restaurants, entertainment, healthcare, etc. in walking to be a problem, you'd have changed it already. Like we established, the only reason those things aren't found where you are is because you and your neighbours have decided you don't want it.

I just don't understand your logic as to why you don't want it, but also don't want to live in the country. What's the benefit of living where you have all the downsides of the city and all the downsides of the country all wrapped up in one?

There are feedback mechanisms at play here: the people who want a good education for their kids want to be around the types of people who want a good education for their kids, and they will pay a premium to be around the kinds of people who will pay a premium to do so, reinforcing the class effect. It can't hurt to have bright, engaged kids when trying to recruit and retain good teachers either. The net result is that in some areas the schools have literally 0% of students meeting standards while others have most of the students completing the first year or two of university during high school.

Somewhere like DC where GP lives, schools struggle to get the kids to show up[0]. Meanwhile I live a 10 minute walk from a school where over half the students are in AP classes and 80% of those pass the AP exams.

[0] https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/about-4-in-10-d...

Is that in some way unique to the US? I would say the same is true here. Certainly when talking to people out on the street, there are clearly some who value schooling to the utmost degree while others dismiss it entirely. I expect this is the case anywhere a sizeable population is found.

> the people who want a good education for their kids want to be around the types of people who want a good education for their kids

…But I have never heard of this happening. Looking at the data, I don't see any significant variation between schools found within a general area where you might conceivably choose a different school by moving a few miles in another direction. A couple of schools in extremely remote areas show up with struggles, in the worst case seeing only ~40% of the students meeting the standard, but I think it is fair to say that the goings on in remote places is something else entirely.

> It can't hurt to have bright, engaged kids when trying to recruit and retain good teachers either.

So would it be reasonable to think that it is ultimately an issue of lacking teacher standards in the US? Different people are going to be different, sure, but around here you aren't allowed to be a teacher within the school system unless you at least are able to live up to a minimum standard that carries a sufficiently high bar such that there really aren't any qualms about what teacher a student gets.

I take from this that in the US, the schools that don't have sufficiently bright, sufficiently engaged kids are apt to get teachers who aren't capable of doing the job. Here, if a school lacking sufficiently bright, sufficiently engaged kids scared off good teachers, the school simply wouldn't have any teachers.