I’ve noticed a shift in American culture over the last few years. Nobody actually tells us what anything costs anymore. I think it started with cars, but it’s stretched out to basically everything that costs more than a pizza.

“Get a car for just $399/month,” the TV tells us. But that’s for a 60 or even 72 month loan period. Hell, I’ve even seen 84 month loans advertised. That’s seven years. So what you’re looking at is $30,000 for a car but you’re just thinking of it as, “Eh, I’ve got four hundred bucks, no biggie.” We humans are terrible at projecting the future, so we don’t think that maybe in 32 months or so that four hundred dollars will be a huge expense.

It also makes it a lot easier to get people to spend money they don’t have. Moving from the ES to the EX model isn’t actually a $4,000 jump in price. It’s just 50 bucks a month. No biggie, right? And you get that sweet in-dash satnav system.[2] Oh, wait, oops. That 50 bucks a month is more like 70 or 80 because it increases sales tax and there’s still that finance charge. Silly me, forgetting all about that.

I see the appeal. If you’re going to spend a minimum of 10 hours a week in your car you might as well get a really nice car with leather seats and a bitchin’ stereo and one of those onboard computers that probably has a secret menu that launches nukes at Russia. Besides, cars are a status symbol. You want to make sure that guy in the next lane over in the clapped-out Toyota Tercel knows you’re a big shot.

I assume you’re also carrying your brand new Dyson Ball vacuum to work with you, too. Probably prominently displaying it in your office for everyone to see. That’s the only reason I can figure why it’s being advertised for only five easy payments of $79.99.

It takes only a tiny amount of math to realize that the people on the talking picture box are trying to get you to buy a $400 vacuum. They know they majority of people will never take that quick step. It actually uses two tricks. The first is that the brain short-circuits and doesn’t see $79.99 as $80. The second is that the brain sees, “Five easy payments of $79.99,” as, “Oh, hey, that’s cheap.”

The advertising itself is similar to, “Hey, you’ve got to be in a car all the time, might as well make it a nice one,” and feeds off of the same angst created by those 11-plus-hour days at the office. It’s so simple, it’s so revolutionary, it practically cleans your house itself and certainly does a better job than that horrible piece of garbage Dirt Devil your mom got you for $50 at last year’s Black Friday sales.[3]

It goes on. Are you a lard-ass who would be built like Charles Goddamn Atlas if you only had time to go to the gym? Get this Bowflex for the low cost of $119/month and you’ll look like the Crossfit addicts we hired to pretend they use it for the ads in no time!

Hell, we’re even at the point where we’re apparently willing to pay a premium to have someone on the internet deliver snack food to our homes. What is up with that?

Add to that the good, old-fashioned American jealousy to keep up with the Joneses and you’ve got a nation of poseurs who are mortgaged to the hilt and can’t figure out how to make ends meet on a six-figure salary. This is how we ended up with a spate of articles full of people making a quarter million dollars a year crying poverty because the rest of us just didn’t understand how hard it is to be rich a few years back.