How is that on the other hand? I'm a little confused, as if anything it supports exactly what the person you are replying to was saying as they only mention that they are more likely to use BNPL, it doesn't take the extra step of saying perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to, or should be protected when doing so.

I'm not sure if I understand exactly what you're asking me, but I said "on the other hand" because the person I was responding to was concerned about sounding patronizing by pointing out that laws protect uneducated people, while the article outright states that this targets uneducated people. It wasn't intended to introduce a criticism of what the person I was responding to was saying.

Just to clairfy I'm not assuming you are criticing the commentor, nor am I intending to critisice you, merely that I don't agree the viewpoints are actually that similar at all between the commentor and the article.

The article doesn't state they target uneducated people, it states that they use it more which are subtle but key differences. Furthermore "poor people who don’t understand credit" is not the same category as "lower incomes, lower education, and worse credit (redundancies here)". Even if we assume they are the same group of people (by making an equivalence between understanding of credit and general education/income/credit which we know is not a great assumption) the statements are different anyway.

The article is talking about an observed statistic, BNPL seems to be more prevalent in lower income, lower education and worse credit populations (we actually have really poor data on private credit so this should be taken with a grain of salt). The commenter however is making the claim that this is because they have a bad understanding of credit, and also implicitily that BNPL is bad and a bad use of credit.

These are therefore different as we can easily see for instance that a probable cause could for example be that people with no savings are more likely to borrow to cover spending in-between paychecks for example, or when emergency expenses change their cash-flow. This would not however fit with the commenters viewpoint, and is actually a good use of credit.

We actually don’t. Just make discharging in bankruptcy easier and the problem will solve itself.

If you imagine a continuum from no bankruptcy possible at all, to infinite bankruptcy available at the click of a button - you end up with the realization that the only loans and credit extended would be backed by assets.

If you could declare bankruptcy (Hey. I just wanted you to know that you can't just say the word "bankruptcy" and expect anything to happen.) the moment your credit card bill arrived, no bank would extend you credit beyond what you specifically had on deposit with them to secure it (just like home mortgages are secured by the home).

Plus being poor is essentially an IQ debuff. I remember I had a week where I had my identity stolen, had a large unexpected medical bill that I spent 20 hours on the phone with my insurance trying to figure out why I was getting said bill*, my grandma was sick, and I was having a tough time at work. If I were slightly less well off or didn't have a job where I could take a day off on short notice to sort all of this out( or as is often the case, both at the same time), that week could have started a cascade effect that would have outright ruined my life. I was so stressed out that week I was forgetting really basic things and doing things wrong, I wasn't sleeping, and all I wanted to eat was junk fast food because it was fast and easy and I didn't have to think about it.

The thing is, a lot of poor people live like that every day. I have some friends who are a single car problem away from being financially destitute because of the death spiral that can come from being poor- your car that you drive to work breaks down and you don't have the money to fix it. You lose your job because you can't get to work, and you can't get another job because you don't have transportation. Public transit is non existent in most of the US. You can get another car, but it's a junker at an insane interest rate and that's another expense you don't need. So yeah in that headspace I can understand feeling like financing a burrito could make sense. If you're already not thinking straight and you're tempted by a simple pleasure that feels like the one thing you can control in life and you know you're going to have the bank balance tomorrow, I can see it.

People wanting stuff like this doesn't mean it's rational to use or moral to offer. It's a symptom of a society that is fundamentally broken, that is designed to keep people on the razor's edge of their current economic status and in constant fear of losing what little they have.

*If you're curious how this happens, I take an expensive medication for a chronic illness and my insurance randomly changed how they pay for it without informing me before I got hit with a $2000 bill