March 21, 2025 - 7:30pm
DoorDash, the popular gig economy food delivery service, has announced that it will be partnering with Klarna, the financing service, to offer consumers the option to buy delivery and then pay for it later. That’s right, you can now finance a pizza.
Buying now and paying later has long been a feature of American consumer life when it comes to pricey goods like cars or homes, and few Americans could ever afford to pay for those goods entirely in cash. But while it makes for funny memes to imagine being hit up by a debt collector for a Chipotle payment, the truth is that the American economy is increasingly resembling a dystopian film directed by Bong Joon Ho, the famed Korean filmmaker behind the Oscar-winning Parasite and the new Mickey 17.
Those movies showed us the lengths people would go to escape from debt, whether it was turning your family into conmen or signing up for a mission in outer space that guarantees you will live and die repeatedly until the end of your days.
For Americans, debt is now everywhere, even on the holidays. One survey released in November 2024 found that nearly half of Americans were still paying off debt from the previous year’s holiday spending. “Six in 10 people with credit card debt have had it for at least a year. That’s up 10 percentage points from three years ago,” Bankrate analyst Tedd Rossman explained at the time.
It would be easy to blame this all on people’s lack of individual responsibility. Indeed, financial literacy isn’t a strong suit for a lot of Americans. But as debt invades every aspect of our lives, is it really that Americans have just suddenly become much more irresponsible and unable to live within their means?
There’s an old Chinese proverb that says that our ancestors plant the trees so that we can sit in the shade. The seeds of the debt economy have been laid everywhere, from colleges and universities portraying their outrageous tuition and fees as an “investment” Americans should be willing to go deeply into debt for to the ubiquitous credit card commercials they’re greeted with any time you sit down to watch television.
Our society is telling us that living outside your means is no problem, and we’re listening. But over time we may also see a counterculture start to take root. Financial gurus like Dave Ramsey are building a fanbase based on preaching a philosophy of keeping people out of debt. One issue some Democrats and Republicans have found common ground on is capping credit card interest rates (although any such bill faces long odds in Congress). The absurdity of the DoorDash-Klarna venture is self-evident to many Americans.
Americans are increasingly living in a society that not only expects them to go deep into debt but encourages them to be trapped in their own personal debtor’s jail. A prison break still might be possible, but the recent DoorDash-Klarna agreement is a truly dystopian move.
Zaid Jilani is a journalist who has worked for UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, The Intercept, and the Center for American Progress.
ZaidJilani
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Subscribe“The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
Ancient wisdom, sadly neglected.
I prefer ” A fool and their money are soon parted”.
It’s the same the whole world over
Its the poor what gets the blame
Its the rich gets all the pleasure
Aint it a bl—din shame
If you owe the bank £1 million then you’ve got a problem. If you owe the bank £100 million it’s the bank that’s got a problem.
Your quote, and the Chinese proverb in the article plus the many wise teachings in the Bible are what successful people follow. Those who don’t are destined for the coming idiocracy. Financing a pizza may well be an indicator that we are already there.
Of course there might be some amount of reason to this. In the US if you are trying to raise a family on what a few years ago was at least a middle income. You may not be able to afford a pizza.
People have always been willing to finance a special occasion, but now things are so out of hand with inflation that for some people that delivery pizza is what passes for a special occasion.
I ordered a pizza a month or so back with a side of hot wings…it was over $50. Now how would someone making $20 an hour with a kid buy a pizza? You really can’t, and we know that financing it it not a good idea really, but I have a hard time criticizing them too much. A pizza every now and again is hardly profligate luxury or unreasonably self indulgent, and find the self righteous calls for the poor to suck it up evil natured.
The bankers have taken everything. The Venture Capitalist vampires are sucking the life blood out of everything from sports to hospitals.
Like or not it won;t be long before it is our turn to “suck it up” and do with less….MUCH less.
The answer isn’t to suck it up so the bankers can continue to rob us of all we have. the answer is to take out the bankers.
But surely the point is that this particular piece of ancient wisdom stopped being true about 150 years ago, with the miracle of living standards noticeably improving at a visible rate within a single human lifetime, and lately even within a single generation. That stopped and went backwards after the financial crisis in 2009, and now we’re at the ludicrous point where some people need credit to afford a pizza.
Now I know that some people have absurd expectations of what they deserve from life based on how little effort they put into it, but most people are not like that, yet most people have experienced a noticeable compression in their living standards while the prices of most basics and essentials – food, water, energy, transport, housing etc – seem to take up more of what they’re capable of earning.
Something has gone very wrong lately, and the ancient wisdom can’t explain it for the simple reason that the ancient wisdom had nothing to say about the miracle of modern existence in the first place. We need new wisdom and new insight to solve this conundrum.
“One issue some Democrats and Republicans have found common ground on is capping credit card interest rates ”
Such restrictions would make it unprofitable to lend to large numbers of people, because of the risk of default. Many would turn to loan sharks.
The answer is to address the problem at source. My least libertarian view is that all advertising should be banned.
I avoid adverts like the plague. AdBlock of course, and tend to watch terrestrial tv ‘on record’ so i can skip through the ads. If i see a billboard, i look away – not interested.
I find it incredible, the amount time. money and effort wasted on them, but there must be some numbskulls that take notice.
I have never, not once, purchased something because of an advertisement. The best that an ad can do is make me aware that a product exists. Aside from that, I’m baffled by many of them, which don’t even attempt to sell a product to me.
LOL….I doubt that you could possibly know that. Not insulting you, but advertising has become so efficient and effective that, like you say, many times you don’t really know what they are selling. You are affected if you see it. We all are.
Hitler proved in the early days of marketing just how effective it could be. He had people murdering millions and thinking themselves good citizens whilst they did. I’m sad to say that Marketing is an American Invention and it gotten so very much more effective since Hitler.
When Hitler used marketing to sell his insanity we call it propaganda, but when our scurrilous MBA bag men use it to fleece us for the elites, we call it advertising. It’s the same.
haha…self awareness………
Like a sheep saying;
‘I am stunning and brave and free thinking; I never follow the sound of the bellwether sheep – I go where I wish, I do as I will, I think as………
Oh; the bell is moving off… gotta go, by then’……
That was my first response too: naive and lacking self awareness. Though to be fair, some people are more influenced by ads than others. Usually I find its people in different market segments to myself 🙂
“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.
In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans
until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.”
― Adolf Hitler
””Americans are increasingly living in a society that not only expects them to go deep into debt but encourages them to be trapped in their own personal debtor’s jail.””
OK, truth there, so you admit it is the ‘society’ that actually works to make the citizens in debt….. so it is not a conspiracy theory then; That this is then Intentional, this is a goal of some great power working on us, haha, and thus, as you are a reporter – how about you do a bit of journalism and answer the 5:
”who, what, where, when, and why”
But I know you will not, because no one does, so I will tell why ‘Society’ keeps us in debt for nefarious reasons. ‘Thrift’ as the bible teaches us, as every ancestor did; why is that basic virtue being destroyed????
Well, as you may know my thinking already – Because they are out to destroy the West. See – Debt breaks families, and now prevents families from forming at all. This is the reason.
The greatest crime against Westerners ever done is ‘Student Loans’! In the old days, 1970s, 80s, 10% – 15% went to university. It was affordable, grants for the low income – BUT it took an IQ of 115, and 120 to do a real degree so just 10-15% had the ability. Then the system decreed All must go to university although few were capable – and thus standards lowered, and fake degrees invented – but why? Why do that?
Because they could then raise University prices through the roof (Check out $ inflation on Education!) And give student loans to all. Loans which were insane. Loans which meant the majority left University with a useless degree and huge debt and a very bad habit of accepting debt and not saving. See – the old system was Paid ‘On the job training’ or paid apprentice, NOT massive debt burden for worthless 3 – 4 years of study when you should be saving and learning skills so you could have a family.
Pow! End of the proper Family. Young people could not marry and buy a house and begin a family because they had been made feckless, spoiled, had a useless degree, and hugely in debt. Fertility crashed. They then made Debt so very easy – low interest, buy a car you cannot afford, live in an apartment you cannot afford, go on holiday, avocado toast, expensive coffee and drinks daily – be broke till mid 40s. As a fun bit push promiscuity, make men weak and feckless, make women intolerant of the weak men but despise strong men. haha – mass decline in fertility and family destruction…..
But why? You may ask… and as the reporter will not do his 5, I will tell you. So they ”Have To” open migration to masses of very different peoples of very different ability – see, if we do not breed, yet our whole health, education, and Pension is a Massive Ponzie, well as we do not replace ourselves, well we have to import bodies to be the ponzi base. haha…… but it will not work, but that is also part of the plan to destroy the West.
See – ‘They’, the Global Elites, have decided the West had its time, its 200 years of Enlightenment in the sun, and now it is time to return to Feudalism, and so they break us, as individuals, as families, communities, Nations, and as a culture.
Door-dash on credit, haha, just one more trick in their playbook. And remember to tip the guy, he likely has a family back home to support, and he needs the money so he can bring them here – as you, a 34 year old with debt up to your ears, and a cat with massive vet bills, and a degree in Media Studies, and no children, will need someone to fund your pension.
We should not discount the advantages that the elites have fashioned from degrees for all. You have a point about the debt, but the real reason for wanting everyone to have a college degree is that they can brainwashed pudding headed young people into Neo-Marxists and Progressive activists.
Most do not seem to notice that a majority of these degreed kids are pretty much idiots who could have reached reached the same same career level with a year of two of certifications or Community college. You don’t need a degree to fill out spreadsheets or schlep around a warehouse.
Read RIO, Reinventing the International Order, a report to the UN by The Club of Rome. It lays it all out. I read it decades ago and none of what has happened since has really surprised me much. I can see the how and why of it.
In the end it will be just as Klaus Schwab wrote” You will own nothing and be happy”. You can hardly even buy music anymore that isn’t held by an “owner” that isn’t you.Everything is a subscription, groceries, housing, software, television, movies etc.
we are under the thumb of the elites and they have removed all privacy and we can do little without either providing them with personal information or money. It isn’t however as bad as I think it will become.
I see us living in big apartment blocks and dressing in uniforms that are determined by out jobs. We will only go to those places where they allow us to go, watch the p[propaganda that they want us to watch. etc. They are well into moving people out of the country already. In the US it is difficult to keep a small or mid-sized farm going. They want the conglomerates to do that.
But I digress…
Unfortunately, the radio personality, Dave Ramsey, who preaches financial responsibility is aired on conservative radio stations (at least that is where I have heard him). NPR needs an equivalent liberal-sounding financial guru who can appeal to young people with liberal sensibilities (to catch their interest).
He has lots of material from his show on YouTube. Great stuff! Anyone who heeds him WILL become conservative.
Excellent point. It is so easy to get into debt as paying for things with cards reduces the friction of the transaction.
When I was younger, nearly all my families transactions were in cash or by check. My father was paid weekly. He would cash his check and hand most of the money over to my mom. She kept some for our weekly expenses and the rest went into the bank, mostly into the checking account. My mom would shop at the grocery store and pay in cash, as well as most shops. The few bills that came in the mail would be paid by check, which my mom duly recorded in the checking out. Special expenses, like holiday shopping were saved for. I remember that if I was going to get a nice toy, my dad would put it on layaway. My dad made a deposit at the store, the store took the item off the shelf and stored it for us until my dad paid for it in full and only then we could take it home. College was saved for (and a lot less expensive).
Today nearly all our purchases are with credit cards or on line. We don’t even pay for our tolls as they are automated. Some places tell you the toll others don’t and you find out only when you get your statement.
The most pernicious debt is for student loans. The colleges lard up on administration and facilities and charge high tuitions, which are too easily financed with student loans. You can get a degree (such as in ” – Studies”, race studies, gender studies, liberal arts, humanities) that leads to no or lower paying jobs that do not generate the income to pay off the loan quickly. Then the Left works its magic to get the loans forgiven (paid off by the rest of us).
I recommend “The Millionaire Next Door” for financial literacy. At least individuals can better manage their money if they take some of the advice.
The United States has a major reckoning coming as we now spend more on interest than on defense. At least President Trump is trying to cut spending on useless or unnecessary items. However we are going to have to make some tougher decisions as the entitlements seem to grow faster than our ability to pay for them.
The schooling is for brainwashing the kids to be Marxists and Democrats, of course they make us pay for it just like the litany of other things that Trump has found that use tax dollars to further the Democratic Party causes.
What it seems that everyone overlooks is that buying on credit is not a moral failure, it is simply the way the system has been designed to work. It is purposeful and few people among the common folk have the means to resist it. It’s not right. but it is nonetheless.
It is modern slavery. Most people pay a mortgage their entire lives and call themselves homeowners., but very few will actual see that deed.And if they do, they will be surprised to find out that the rights to the land is not your, they are in most cases the government’s.Find gold or oil on your property and see who ends up with the gold.
The elites want us selling burgers to each other while the elite that sits at the head of the Company takes all the money. We get by sort of but they get filthy rich, and when we die, most of us leave precious little of our own. It’s all a treadmill for the benefit of the globalist elites.
I pay for my UnHerd subscription with a credit card. Do I have a choice?
I have a Visa debit card which I use for all on-line purchases. I used to have a credit card, but it got out of control and once I paid if off I cancelled it.
“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth.
Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in.
But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.”
– Sir Josiah Stamp (1880-1941), President of the Bank of England in the 1920’s, the second richest man in Britain