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.

Pretty much any time you hear "city" or "urban" it's either a direct or indirect reference to US census data (or follow on research by other academics that uses their definitions) which play fast and loose with the word urban in a way that results in the population of even the most far out municipalities within a city's economic area being countable as urban in some capacity depending on what data set you want to use (some of the data sets draw economic distinctions rather than lifestyle ones, so a rural farmer who exists in the eoncomic gravity well of a major urban area will be counted as urban).

This is all magnified by substantially less than honest people omitting the potentially misleading nature of the term when it suits them and the people who they've informed going on to parrot it without actually understanding it.

INB4 nitpickers, it's been a decade since I've done any work with this data, if my knowledge is out of date and it's no longer misleading to the layman then good.

I said city, not urban, trying to portray a high density, well populated area. I fully recognize that the US considers a community as small as 2,000 people to be urban. And, similarly, you need as few as 1,000 people in an area in my country to fall into what is considered urban. This is all well known and understood.

That said, the 3,000 people strong town I live in has everything you need in walking distance, so the point still stands even for small urban too. But it remains that average American lives in larger, more dense communities than that, so the idea of needing transportation is quite strange and defeats the purpose of the density.

Generally, American suburbs (where most Americans live) are neither dense nor particularly walkable. Driving is the only option (since they also generally lack public transit).

> That said, the 3,000 people strong town I live in has everything you need in walking distance, so the point still stands even for small urban too. But it remains that average American lives in larger, more dense communities than that, so the idea of needing transportation is quite strange and defeats the purpose of the density.

If you live in a pre-car American town (like the kind that Strong Towns champions), it is likely far more dense than the typical American suburb, and built for walking access - since that was the default at the time they came into existence.

Technically it was established before the automobile, but its tenth of a mile downtown commercial strip is the only remaining remnant of that. For all intents and purposes, it was built to "modern" standards, which is to say that its density is on par with the average American suburb. – To be fair, the streets and sidewalks are sensibly laid out. Some of those winding maze suburbs would take days of walking just to get out of the maze. That certainly helps.

By definition, urban requires at least 1,000 people per square mile at minimum. Any less than that and a place is well and truly rural by every account. Even at that minimum density, unless the town is literally a straight line, most everything should still be reasonably walkable.

The difference is really only that people in towns of 3,000 people want all the jobs, services, and amenities as possible. Whereas suburban folk fight tooth and nail to keep it all out. But the question is: Why? Why wouldn't you want those things nearby, most especially when you are complaining you can't afford transportation to those amenities where there are found elsewhere? What's the appeal of being shoved up tight against your annoying neighbour and to have nothing else?

Because the amenities usually require low income service employees, who then might want to live in that suburb, or just stay past their quitting time, which might then compromise some of the reasons you liked the suburb in the first place.

> when you are complaining you can't afford transportation to those amenities where there are found elsewhere

I don't think suburbanites complain about the cost of transportation. They complain about the time spent in traffic.

What might be those reasons?

This 3,000 person town has some very well paid people and low paid workers living side-by-side seemingly in harmony. Seriously, I really cannot imagine any quality that would be different in a suburb. I did even live in a suburb of a large city a number of years ago for a while when I was young and dumb and I can really find no noticeable difference in the way of life other than everything I do outside of the home is a lot easier to access now.

Granted, in this part of the world the small town/rural areas are predominantly – almost exclusively, even — white. Is that what you're trying to subtly hint at? That the people in those suburbs are afraid of reverting their "white flight" efforts? Apparently that's a thing, astonishingly.

> I don't think suburbanites complain about the cost of transportation.

That's exactly how we got here, though: Comments were complaining about how transportation is of high cost/unaffordable. When we dug into why transportation was even needed, the answer was that many people live in suburbs that are void of any nearby jobs, other amenities, or anything at all, requiring access to transportation to live out life.

The people who don't need transportation because they have those things nearby have no need to be worried about the cost of transportation. So who is worried about the cost of the transportation? Are you suggesting nobody — that the original comments were making shit up?

Yes, small walkable towns are nice. I personally prefer them to unwalkable suburbs by a long shot. But plenty of people reasonably find the balance of their preferences is better met by suburbs. And as suburbs densify into towns themselves, people might reasonably want to upgrade the transportation options available.

> Is that what you're trying to subtly hint at? That the people in those suburbs are afraid of reverting their "white flight" efforts? Apparently that's a thing, astonishingly

Not sure if you meant that sarcastically, but what's astonishing? Historically zoning has been used this way: to exclude non-white people, but it works against poor white people also.

> So who is worried about the cost of the transportation? Are you suggesting nobody — that the original comments were making shit up?

Yeah. For the average middle class suburbanite who can afford a car, transportation is pretty affordable (caveat high oil prices). It's only expensive if you are poor.

Obviously. They wouldn't be there otherwise. But the question was: Why? (Or maybe better asked, given your phrasing, as what or how?) The discussion seeks to understand what that balance is.

In the suburbs people generally seek more space, privacy, and security, while still having relatively easy access to opportunities.

It sounds like you (like me) have found our personal balance elsewhere.

Trouble is that this discussion stems from comments about how those in the suburbs can't afford the cost of transportation. Is there really opportunity if you can't afford it? Other thread branches seem to agree that those comments were made up bullshit, so that adds complexity, but we aren't really serving the intent of the discussion if we deviate from the idea (even if fake).

> It sounds like you (like me) have found our personal balance elsewhere.

Now, if only I could convince the rest of my family! I have no qualms in admitting that I am where I am because I have chosen to prioritize certain people in my life. I don't much care for the civil side of things.

I have asked a lot of people the same question and not a single other one has said that they didn't actually want to be there on the basis of what the community type offers. I find it quite interesting that I stand alone. Makes one wonder if I actually stand alone, or if others are just putting on a pretty face? Post-purchase rationalization is a hell of a drug.