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When I was a kid in the 80’s renting home furnishings, driving a taxi on the side, and renting out spare rooms in your house were all very common activities too.

They were generally things people did because they didn’t have stable well paying jobs.

That’s still the reason. All this disruptive new economy rebranding notwithstanding.

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I'm waiting for rentacenter to rebrand itself as "appliances and furniture as a service."

If they don't, you can be sure that Techcrunch will profile a scrappy startup doing exactly this, closing multi-million funding rounds on the promise of being "WeWork for furnishings".

This is exactly what I thought of when I read this article. Rent-A-Center has been doing this for longer than I've been alive.

I see monthly payment plans for $25 shirts.

I didn't realize it had gotten this bad until that moment, but we've been creeping toward installment plans and subscription services over ownership for a few years now and it's absolutely wild that it's not a warning sign that no one can actually afford to own anything upfront anymore.

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