alt Hacker NewsSure, because status matters more than finances. Getting rich may be extremely unlikely if not outright impossible. Looking rich to your peers (and "feeling rich") on the other hand may just be a few years worth of small affordable installments away - even if it's completely superficial and short-lived. And entire industries will literally spend your every waking second trying to convince you that buying their product will make you feel rich.
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It has nothing to do with credit. The whole buy-now-pay-later, 0% rates or pay-day loans industry came much later here. The same goes for predatory marketing industry.
When I went to elementary school everyone was poor as it was a year after communism collapsed. People were still spending their last money on shiny things back then even if those shiny things weren't as shiny as they are today.
>>Getting rich may be extremely unlikely if not outright impossible
Again, in communist and then post communist countries no one thought we could be rich. The things we thought about back then was being able to buy enough food and trying to educate ourselves as education was valued in itself in some families. Even back then a lot of people spent their last money on pointless shiny things.
I feel Americans and some Western Europeans look for ways to justify dumb behavior and come up with all those theories that have nothing to do with human nature. If you grow up in a country where everyone is the same race, everyone is poor (at least for a few years), the police is not out there to get you and healthcare is free even if terrible and you still witness people making the same stupid decisions you realize it has nothing to do with those theories and everything to do with education, values and ability to make sensible decisions.
You don’t even need an industry to convince you. Eg former Soviet countries were/are notorious for being obsessed with material luxury.