News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
America has never had a larger population. More people, more credit cards, more credit card debt. Seeing a per capita breakdown, or defaults per 1000 people might be better indicator of economic turmoil.
and there are people like me who buy everything with a credit card but pay off the entire balance each month
even though I technically have a credit card balance it gets reset every month and I never pay interest or late fees so the numbers don't tell the whole story
but I'm sure there are an alarmingly large number of people who actually are buried in debt, especially with rent and other costs rising so it won't be pretty when things reach a tipping point (probably already have...)
Seriously. I get free first class international tickets and a few hotel room nights paid every year with points and miles I get from credit cards, every year. And I use my credit cards for business expenses and get even more as a result.
Why would I ever use a debit card? I like full reclining on the flight back from Europe.
I would like to see some more meaningful metrics than offered in this headline.
Stop trying to throw statistics into sensational headlines!
Or maybe interest paid. I sometimes have a higher balance for the month, but I always pay it off entirely. Nonetheless, my credit score fluctuates based on the balance at the time of reporting.
I've noticed that too. It should not count as a balance if you pay in full every month. I assume this is counted towards this trillion dollar amount too which it should not.
A single income used to afford a house, and family, a car or two, vacations, and retirement savings.
Then we needed families to have two incomes to have that lifestyle.
Then we held on to that system, but had that lifestyle, WITHOUT the building up of any savings, and without the vacations.
Then we needed two incomes just to be able to LEASE that watered-down lifestyle.
And then we needed two incomes and good credit to juggle that watered-down lifestyle, and deferring debt to some point down the road when we assumed we'd be high-income earners.
Now we are in stunningly dangerous territory. We've largely given up any luxuries, and we struggle to find the CREDIT to LEASE basic essentials like housing, food and medicine. Often we fail to do so.
Inflation has hit us incredibly hard, but when student loan payments start up in mere weeks from now, it's going to be CRIPPLING, not just to those with debt, but EVERY business that needs those people to buy their goods and services.
We've been robbed of our future by corporate greed and the psychopathic cruelty of the boomer-run government.
... And just in the past 6 months we've seen the invention of the first artificial general intelligence. Even if it never got any better than it is today, it would still decimate the workforce. But it is getting better. At a staggering rate. We are headed for a jobs crisis the likes of which has never been seen in all of human history.
Add to that the rise of fascism in a global scale.
Add to that the hundreds of millions of anticipated climate change refugees, and potentially catastrophic failures of the ecosystems which sustain various crops.
Add to that that all of human experience and evolution has left us WILDLY unprepared to understand let alone solve problems of this pace and magnitude.
It is difficult to see how we survive this.
Not that I support everything about her, but Elizabeth Warren literally wrote the book on our 2 income problem.
Society tracks "family income" and for a gigantic portion of history that was one income, then in the 60s-70s women started entering the workforce in larger numbers (in the US, not sure about globally) and we see family income "rising" so we think "great, we're growing! We're doing well!" Except that it only grew because of an additional income.
Now we're at the point you've mentioned where that isn't even enough anymore especially when the vast majority of jobs seem to offer around 50-60k unless you're a specific professional/tech bro.
I'm a perpetually single blue collar schmuck, I've completely given up on the idea of homeownership, and am very very quickly realizing my retirement plan has to be a shotgun to the head.
What a wonderful future we have to look forward to.
And I'll just add this so no one has to later: GlObAlLy We'Re BeTtEr ThAn EvEr! Because you know, that totally helps...
Very well written and accurate. I just want to add that the financial requirements to raise children have been out the window for some time as well. Not that they would want to exist in a world with climate change anyway.
That's the thing tho ... most humans won't survive this. The super rich are buying up remote properties/islands at an incredible rate and want Mars asap.
Most of the rest of us will die of starvation, fires, heat, dehydration/poisoned water or the massive storms.
Mars is a pipe dream. Unless Earth goes full Venus, it will be vastly better then Mars for at least the next thousand years. Terraforming Mars would be a centuries long endeavor, and terraforming Earth would be vastly easier.
Funny how the "You took a loan, pay it back" idiots never seem to care about dischargeable credit card and business debt.
I guess that kind of debt needs a safety net since they might have some of that kind, while new adults who committed the crime trying to better themselves, that pursue integral vocations that society desperately needs but don't pay well, like teaching and counseling, should just fry like piggies while their fellow Americans laugh at them out of sweet, sweet schadenfreude.
Our values are wrong.
No one has enough money to live anymore. This isn't a problem of people being reckless, they're using credit because there isn't enough money coming in to pay for everything.
I'm doing my part!
Would you like to know more?
Waiting for them to universally forgive missile loans. Man why would you spend so much money on missiles, of course you can't pay that back, even if it makes you a higher earner in the future
I guess it's time to dust off that credit card and join the fun
Man, you’d think after the Great Depression and the recession of the last naughties we’d have figured out that credit is a disease and we should stop participating in it so often.
Man, I knew that COVID-19 caused reductions in spending, but I hadn't realized that it had caused such a significant payoff of debt. Like, I could have believed it causing an increase rather than decrease in credit card debt.
I'm surprised by the increases before and after, though. You'd expect some increase over time just due to inflation and growth of the economy. And that chart isn't zero-valued.
Lets check how much is just inflation...
gets inflation calculator
Okay, so inflation is responsible for a 32% increase between 2013 and 2023.
There was a 49% increase in credit card debt over the same period.
So most of the increase in the chart is just inflation.
Population increased by 6.5%.
So that explains a 40% increase, together.
And there's a gradual increase in the size of the economy over time. I don't know how that'd best be measured in terms of what should translate into credit card debt.
But point is, while there's probably some increase there, it's not a huge one in real, per-capita terms, which is what you'd care about.
The credit card companies want you to be in debt. That's thier entire business model. In fact, it hurts your credit if you never have any debt on your cards.
Sorry guys I'm trying to hit my sign up bomus