Egregoros

@feld i'm well aware of what a mortgage is. no one has a mortgage nowadays. literally, most people under 50 years of age cannot own a house, we do not have the money, we cannot afford it.

@feld maybe you missed this, i don't know. where i live, in the UK, there is a "crisis" of people only being able to rent homes, not own them, because we literally cannot afford to take out a mortgage to "buy" a home. so saying that "anyone who owns a house" can do X is frankly laughable.

@feld i don't understand your point. you just said anyone can buy a house, then you said the housing market is really bad and you can't buy a house right now?

@feld like i'm sorry, if you seriously think any normal person can just go to their bank and get a $6k loan (guaranteed on their house or anything else) that just... isn't the case. normal people cannot do that.

@feld normal people don't own a car. and if they're getting a loan for a $40k car, that's sub-prime and probably abusively sold by the dealer.

@feld and i'm fairly sure if you have a $40k car loan backed by your car, you can't then take out *another* $6k loan also backed by your car. isn't that literally illegal?

@feld i did not misunderstand, i know how abusive US car loans work.

@feld this is tl;dr. normal people cannot afford to just take out a $6k loan. the fact they have car loans doesn't change that. and again, where i live, most people do not have car loans, or cars.

@feld i don't even know where to start with this... many people who are poor have previous experience with debt and are not going to take out a loan, even if they could, for some abstract benefit, because they're used to being punished for doing that (credit cards, overdraft, etc.).

@feld you are obviously not a poor person, which is fine, not everyone experiences every possible way of living, but... can you just believe me when i say that "just take out a $6k loan for a battery" is not going to fly for most people?

@feld like, i don't know how else to say this, it's not about interest rates or loan guarantees or cars... people simply *won't do that* because they are terrified of this kind of debt.

@feld i appreciate this may be different in the US or where you live, but.