>" implies a level of financial literacy that simply does not exist in this country.

Yeah I get it, looking down your nose at the "median american" is popular in certain filter bubbles.

Everyone getting a short term loan product knows it's a bad idea. They either fall into the category of "I can afford to finance a taxi for my burrito even if it's stupid" or "I know this is unsustainable but if I don't pay for X then Y then Z will happen and that is a guaranteed bad outcome whereas this at least gives me a chance of a good outcome".

Maybe you were lucky to be raised into financial literacy and only circulate around other people who have, and so can only imagine -- with charity -- what other people must be thinking when they take loans.

But others here have been truly naive themselves or have journeyed with intimacy and openness beside a parent, partner, or friend who really just doesn't get it.

The reality is that there are a lot and lots and lots of real people in the real world who sincerelt just don't understand the terms they're agreeing to, how their own finances work, what's plausible in their own financial future (near or long term), etc -- and the companies the design and promote convenience loans know this and they target these people like sharks hunting prey.

They use any and every trick they can get away with to lure these naive people into agreements for which all outcomes (payment or default) favor the shark.

Without regulation of both loan design and presentation, lending naturally become a vehicle usury, vaccuuming assets and opportunity from the many earnet people who will always be too credulous, too trusting, too naive, or too desperate to resist.

Be careful of who is looking down their nose at whom because my words come from having personally bailed out people who genuinely did not have the capacity to make sound financial judgements.

I'm not making judgments of the people you're speaking down about, I'm making judgements of a nation utterly failing to prepare its citizens for the financial realities of our world. It's not a personal failing for hundreds of millions of people to be financially illiterate, it's a failure of society and those elites who like to gaze down at the dirty peasants for not knowing better.

There is an element of truth to what you say, but I also think you're being dismissive. It _doesn't_ exist today. For one simple example: how many times have you heard people talk about payraises etc., "bumping me into a higher tax bracket so I actually lose money"? I've probably explained it dozens of times to people I consider entirely intelligent - many of them believe there's this little window at the border of each taxation tier that makes no sense to be in.