There’s a correlation between the proliferation of these kinds of ads, and the skyrocketing amount of personal credit-card debt. I can remember a time when it was difficult to get a personal credit card, let alone a personal loan from a bank. One had to go to a “finance company” to get unsecured credit, and the interest rates reflected both the considerable risks taken by the lender and the desperation/gullibility of the borrower. Flash-forward to today, where flakey and unsustainable loans are packaged and re-formed into new marketable securities. Global financial crisis, anyone?
The internet simply makes it easier to both reach the gullible (or stupid), and extract money from them. Easy credit may have fueled an economic boom, but it contained the seeds of the economic crash within.
My 22-year-old son is a full-time college student with NO outside income - none. He is bombarded weekly with offers of credit cards, some with limits as high as $5,000 or $10,000. He has NO credit rating at all. This makes absolutely no sense, unless the lenders have no intention of holding on to the balance for any reasonable length of time.
You can add to this mix the tendency of people to look for “easy” ways to get fit, or get slim, or get rich, or get happy. Poor people (a lot of Americans) have very poor diets, and they end up consuming cheap but plentiful empty calories as a result. They don’t have the education to see through the scams, the energy to do the hard work, or the financial caution to avoid silly purchases. This is a disasterous combination, and I don’t see any sign of it changing soon. We will remain up to our ears in CieAuras and LifeWaves and 5 Tricks to a Slimmer Belly for a long time to come.
