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FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

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Re: FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

#471

Post by drdec »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #440
kiba wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average American household budgets are dominated by housing, transportation and taxes. Maybe some of that problem is about spending too much money, but it cannot be denied that housing are unaffordable and that transportation is inefficient and is a mess.

Taxes? That can't possibly be right. Average American household pays a small fraction of their income in taxes. Unless they somehow got a huge, expensive house and have the mortgage paid off, I don't see how their income could possibly be dominated by taxes over, say, healthcare, or food.

Income tax is not the only tax.

First off there is payroll tax.

Then there are sales taxes.

And don't forget property tax.

I am probably forgetting something.

Re: FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

#472

Post by acuozzo »

9rx wrote: post #419
acuozzo wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I grew up in Brooklyn, NY. I know about both urban and suburban living. I now live in Columbia, MD: a suburb from the late '60s planned with high ideals. My three children each have their own room. They can ride their bicycles on our sleepy street without having to constantly worry about reckless drivers. They can explore the walking trails and wooded areas our community maintains. They can play baseball in one…

The benefits of living in the country are obvious. And since the land provides income itself, the extra cost of transportation one has to assume to live in the country is well offset anyway. Its the weird middle ground that has all of the downsides of the country and all of the downsides of the city all packed into one that we're talking about.

> And since the land provides income itself

Hardly. Agriculture is hard work and not at all profitable unless the operation is at scale.

Re: FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

#473

Post by danans »

9rx wrote: post #373
potato3732842 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been mislead by an overloaded term. Urban in an academic context is a much lower bar than urban in a "any reasonably layman's meaning of the word" context. Pretty much any time you hear "city" or "urban" it's either a direct or indirect reference to US census data (or follow on research by other academics that uses their definitions) which play fast and loose with the word urban in a way that results in the po…

> Urban in an academic context is a much lower bar than urban I said city , not urban, trying to portray a high density, well populated area. I fully recognize that the US considers a community as small as 2,000 people to be urban. And, similarly, you need as few as 1,000 people in an area in my country to fall into what is considered urban. This is all well known and understood. That said, the 3,000 people strong to…

> But it remains that average American lives in larger, more dense communities than that, so the idea of needing transportation is quite strange and defeats the purpose of the density.

Generally, American suburbs (where most Americans live) are neither dense nor particularly walkable. Driving is the only option (since they also generally lack public transit).

> That said, the 3,000 people strong town I live in has everything you need in walking distance, so the point still stands even for small urban too. But it remains that average American lives in larger, more dense communities than that, so the idea of needing transportation is quite strange and defeats the purpose of the density.

If you live in a pre-car American town (like the kind that Strong Towns champions), it is likely far more dense than the typical American suburb, and built for walking access - since that was the default at the time they came into existence.

Re: FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

#474

Post by 9rx »

danans wrote: post #466
9rx wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but why would anyone want to live on what is effectively a farm, but without the benefit of separation from other people or land (read: income) that a farm offers? That completely defies the whole reason for the density. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I question why people are doing it.

> Yes, but why would anyone want to live on what is effectively a farm, but without the benefit of separation from other people or land (read: income) that a farm offers? They don't want complete separation from other people. They want conveniences of the city/metropolis (access to jobs, entertainment, and education) while having a lot of space around their home for recreation & privacy. They don't want farm work (re…

> They want conveniences of the city/metropolis (access to jobs, entertainment, and education)

But not without having to travel. And once travel is in the picture, you can be to the same places just as fast from a farm as you can from another point in the city. It might be hard to appreciate if you have never lived on a farm, but once you do you'll realize that the highway is unbelievably efficient.

Your point only holds for when that stuff is available within walking distance of one's home. But now we're back to not needing costly transportation, so...

> They don't want farm work (required for that income) either

Where do you get the idea that farm work is a necessary condition to realize an income from farm land? Most farmers (in the legal sense) don't farm their own land, they have other farmers work it through sharecropping/rental agreements.

Re: FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

#475

Post by darth_avocado »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #469
darth_avocado wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "average person" is told from birth to consume as many things and experiences as possible as it if was the only thing that could give their life a meaning. The “average person” doesn’t make enough money to pay rent or afford groceries. You’re blaming the poor based on your idea of what an “average person” looks like, which is a representation of middle and upper middle class. The average person doesn’t have the…

Doesn't "average" = "middle class" by definition? US median individual income in 2022 was $48k https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... > The “average person” doesn’t make enough money to pay rent or afford groceries <1% of the US population is homeless, and ~10% receive food stamps. The average person makes enough money to pay rent and buy groceries.

Just because people aren’t homeless and don’t qualify for food stamps doesn’t mean they can afford things.

You need to make less than $33k for a family of 3 to even qualify for food stamps and then get disqualified if your total assets are above $4.5K. If you’re an adult without children, your food stamps eligibility is capped at 3 months every 3 years. A lot of people who need food stamps, do not qualify for them.

Credit card debt is $1.2T, out of which 10% is delinquent for more than 90 days. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/may/broad-con...

Student loan debt is at $1.7T.

People are going into debt to buy groceries. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/20/americans-are-going-into...

The average American life is way worse than what people generally make it out to be.

Re: FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

#476

Post by 9rx »

acuozzo wrote: post #472
9rx wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefits of living in the country are obvious. And since the land provides income itself, the extra cost of transportation one has to assume to live in the country is well offset anyway. Its the weird middle ground that has all of the downsides of the country and all of the downsides of the city all packed into one that we're talking about.

> And since the land provides income itself Hardly. Agriculture is hard work and not at all profitable unless the operation is at scale.

> Agriculture is hard work and not at all profitable unless the operation is at scale.

You seem a bit confused. While that is more or less true for the farmer, it is that way because the landlord usually takes most of the profit. As is to be expected. They hold all the cards. You can't farm without land. But given that in this scenario you are the landlord, not the one doing the work...

The key to farm profitability is to own your own land free and clear. But, of course, unless you have a high paying job doing something else instead of farming that's really hard to pull off, so most farmers end up renting (either to a landlord directly, or renting money from a lender). That's when you need scale to make up for the vast majority of the profit going to someone else.

Re: FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

#478

Post by Analemma_ »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #459
RankingMember wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's very easy to Monday morning quarterback administrative decisions about COVID-19 mitigation now that we're past it, when, at the time, we had very little information which led to a ton of hysteria. I'm not going to relitigate the COVID-19 pandemic response, but I will say I don't think it was inconsistent or ill-advised at all to err on the side of following national health guidance in an emergent situati…

> at the time, we had very little information which led to a ton of hysteria If anything, this simply underscores GP's point. Getting hysterical when you lack information is a total failure of critical thinking, so to the extent that liberal arts educators did so, we should be skeptical of their ability to think critically.

No, that's not a correct conclusion in full generality. The first days of Covid where a case of decision-making under uncertainty: what if R had been 10 and the fatality rate had been 25%? We did not know at first, and these are not absurd numbers: they have existed in past pandemics and if they had held again, fatalities could have been in the tens of millions. Locking down until you can gather more data to rule out this possibility is a rational decision under that uncertainty, because there's asymmetric downside risk of "tens of millions die" versus "chattering internet commenters are annoyed they can't go to the beach".

There's more of an argument here regarding lockdowns going on longer than they needed to, but as much as people want to blame "the experts", most of that was bottom-up from voters. To cite one example, despite how many times I've heard to the contrary, the CDC never, at any point, recommended school closures: that was pure grassroots demand from parents.

Re: FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

#479

Post by etblg »

rayiner wrote: post #179
lm28469 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the average person is using The "average person" is told from birth to consume as many things and experiences as possible as it if was the only thing that could give their life a meaning. The entire system is based on growth and consumption, I have a hard time blaming "the average person"

There is no “system.” It’s all just people making choices. My wife puts straws in the dishwasher to reuse them. She grew up in America the same as everyone else.

How does she prevent them from falling through the holes and hitting the heating element at the bottom? Does she throw them in the cutlery basket? Wouldn't it be light enough to fly around inside the dishwasher and land somewhere undesired?

Re: FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

#480

Post by acuozzo »

9rx wrote: post #468
vel0city wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the commute times end up being about the same if you ever have to leave your immediate community People routinely leave their community for their job all the time here. Go take a look at that map I shared earlier. Most of the people in that neighborhood probably don't work in Princeton. They probably don't even work in McKinney or Fairview. Good chance they work in North Plano, Frisco, Addison, Dallas, maybe Garlan…

> People routinely leave their community for their job all the time here. Sure, where the compensation is sufficient to cover your travel costs you would reasonably consider it. But then transportation costs aren't an issue, making the unaffordability idea that started this moot. But, if we want to move beyond the topic of cost, that just brings us right back to the point that travel time ends up being the same livin…

> What compels one to be tripping over their neighbour, but at the same time not wanting to engage in a community with them?

Children, among other things. Let's make this concrete.

I live ~40 minutes from Washington DC and ~30 minutes from Baltimore. I have three children.

I'd need, at minimum, a four-bedroom, two-bathroom property in the city. It will need to be zoned for a good school for obvious reasons.

The 30y mortgage on my six-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home in the suburbs is ~$3,500/month.

Can you find a condominium in either city for this price or less?

(For reference: my property value at the time of purchase was $575,000.)

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