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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

What good would it do to compare rates to what they used to be?

Your mom: Why don't you have a credit card? It helped me so much when I was in your situation.

You, a young adult who doesn't check: I'll get one! runs up debt with an interest rate 4x what your mom had to deal with thirty years ago HELP I'M SUPER BROKE AND BANKRUPTCY IS A LOT HARDER THAN IT WAS THIRTY YEARS AGO TOO

You, a young adult who checks: The interest rates are 4x what they were when I was in your situation. This looks like a much shittier deal than it was for you.

There needs to be a name for the way people think the world hasn't changed since they were a young adult. I'm not convinced it's just boomers; it's just that they had it so good the contrast is higher. Gen Xers do the same thing, I'm sure, for example assuming that kids ride their bikes to school and have textbooks and the leading cause of death isn't GSWs.

Seems like an appropriate term would be the opposite of recency bias; primacy bias. I definitely see it in older Gen Xers who basically coasted their whole lives while ironically idolizing boomers, didn't think about the future at all, and seem to hate trying hard at anything.

Obviously not all GenX, just like not all boomers, but those people in both generations anecdotally seem to be fairly characterized as accumulating as much material garbage as possible. The Gen Xers in my life went to school for no reason and then held it up as a bastion of prosperity despite their degree having very little to do with the jobs they had

If you've had credit cards in the past, your minimum payments and debt servicing will be a lot more expensive than before.

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