I don’t disagree with your assessment of the terms, but again, it goes back to financial literacy. Most people are not budgeting their expenditures, and they think, “I can afford $20 a month,” and then “I can afford $40 a month,” over and over until they end up with hundreds of dollars in loan payments, even at favorable interest terms. When those payments are built up because people can’t pay their grocery bill, that’s all the worse. Relying on July’s income to pay for May’s groceries, and you’re not even living paycheck to paycheck. You’re living on a paycheck two months away.

Should people be more financially literate? Yes. Should they exercise more personal responsibility in budgeting and approach to debt? Of course. But in reality, most people just don’t have the knowledge base to evaluate financial decisions the way that you and I probably do.

There’s also a psychological factor. Taking out a personal loan at the bank is an entire process, with agreement documents and trips down to the branch. There is more time to evaluate and second-guess your decision. But now you can take on debt with one click of a button on a check-out page. Lowering that barrier makes it all the easier for people who already struggle with financial literacy to act on impulse and incur more debt.

It’s something that everyone should be cautious about, including people who better evaluate their financial decisions, because eventually it can affect us too. Car repo rates are at their highest levels in 15 years. Delinquency on consumer loans has been steadily increasing since 2021. When inability to pay debts reaches a critical level, you get a financial collapse like we had in '08. So I think it is worth considering, even if the terms of an individual loan are favorable, whether making it so easy for people to take on debt is healthy or sustainable in the context of the broader economy.