미국 소비자 경제: 도전 과제와 향후 전망

미국 소비자는 비용 상승, 임금 정체, 압도적인 부채로 인해 어려운 미래에 직면해 있습니다.

### 미국 소비주의의 음울한 과학: 인플레이션, 부채, 그리고 경제 문제
* 💰 철학자 토머스 칼라일은 경제학을 '음울한 과학'이라고 불렀지만, 미국 경제는 **GDP의 거의 70%를 차지하는 소비자 지출**에 크게 의존하고 있습니다.
* 🛍 전통적인 지표는 미국인들이 여전히 소비를 하고 있음을 보여 주지만, 소비자들이 **비용 상승과 저축 감소**에 직면하면서 근본적인 문제는 더 복잡한 상황을 드러내고 있습니다.
* 📉 팬데믹으로 인해 처음에는 **은행 계좌가 늘어났지만, 제한이 완화**되면서 소비자들이 '복수 소비'에 나서면서 **팬데믹 저축이 고갈**되고 신용 문제가 증가했습니다.
* 📊 2022년 인플레이션이 무려 **9.1%에 달하면서 필수 상품과 서비스 전반의 가격이 크게 인상**되었고, 이로 인해 소비자들은 어려운 지출 선택을 해야만 했습니다.
* 💳 눈에 보이는 부채가 **17조 달러가 넘고 선구매 후상환 제도를 통한 '유령 부채'가 증가**하면서 많은 미국인이 재정적 의무를 감당하기 위해 고군분투하고 있습니다.
* 📉 임금 상승률이 정체되어 생활비를 따라가지 못하면서 **최대 25만 달러를 버는 가구도 월급쟁이로 생활**하는 상황이 발생하고 있습니다.
* 🔍 암울한 전망에도 불구하고 **연방준비제도의 최근 금리 인하**로 인해 경제의 '연착륙'에 대한 희망이 다소 완화될 수 있지만, 여전히 많은 어려움이 남아 있습니다.

Philosopher Thomas Carlyle called the study of economics the dismal science, but that was before they invented shopping sprees. In fact, a great deal of the entire global economy relies on Americans emptying their wallets. So you can't understand the American economy without understanding the consumer. I mean, it makes up close to 70% of GDP. It could be clothes, it could be food, groceries, restaurant meals, airplane tickets. It's really any kind of good or service that Americans buy. If you look at some of the traditional indicators, the American consumer is still holding up, right? People are still spending at a healthy pace, but if you look under the surface, things aren't looking as great anymore. I just honestly don't know how people are making it. This is ridiculous. It's the current economy we're living in. The prices of goods, the prices of food, they're never going down again.

Is the American consumer tapped out? It's really complicated. To understand where we are today, we need to go back to what feels like a hundred years ago. There was, you know, March 2020, the global economy sort of shut down. Governments responded. They pumped a bunch of money into the economy. Nobody was traveling. People were barely eating out. You know, at the same time, a lot of people who were able to work from home, you know, they didn't lose their jobs. Sort of they continued to earn money, but were just spending less. People's bank accounts really got bigger and bigger. And once COVID-19 restrictions started to ease, the world returned to normal, consumers, you know, went on a splurge. They started revenge spending. People wanted to travel. People were buying luxury goods. People were going out to eat expensive meals. But this too shall pass. And the All-American shopping spree is no exception.

The pandemic savings are largely gone. So that cushion that consumers had for a long time is no longer there. Credit challenges have intensified. Our borrower is struggling with high inflation. Why the concerns about inflation? Why did we have this inflation? Inflation has for sure been the biggest economic story of the past few years. By 2022, inflation hit 9.1%, a high not seen since 1981. If you have to go take a trip, that flight is more expensive. The hotel prices are up, the grocery bill is expensive, your car payments are expensive, your housing payments are expensive. So inflation has really taken its toll. And even though inflation has started receding recently, that doesn't mean prices are falling. That only means prices are rising less fast. So for consumers, that means that they're having to make choices. Businesses are now reacting to some of the tough choices consumers have to make. If McDonald's starts to see a sales slowdown,

that's an indicator that people are saying, You know what? I'm gonna make lunch at home today. As a way to draw back customers, they've started to offer value deals. Americans are stretched thin. And if they can eat out, they're looking for a cheaper option. McDonald's and Starbucks are talking about a more price-sensitive customer. That is the kind of thing that starts to become, maybe, a canary in the coal mine. Speaking of canaries in coal mines, let's talk about debt. Right now, all told, Americans are holding onto more than $17 trillion of debt, and we're finally starting to see Americans fall behind on mortgages, personal loans, auto loans, student debt, and credit card debt. And of course, with interest rates high, people are paying a lot on those credit card balances. So if you're sort of buried under credit card debt, that is gonna impact your ability to spend out in the economy.

But wait, there's more, more debt that is. You know how the universe has dark matter? Well, the American economy has kind of its own version of that called phantom debt. So there's $17.8 trillion of debt that we can see. What some experts are even more scared about is the debt that we can't see. This phantom debt lurking in the economy that could be hiding consumer distress. The concept of phantom debt is centered around the buy now, pay later services that have been popping up on all of our online purchases lately. Buy now, pay later, is sort of part of the FinTech world. It's sort of a new spin on an old idea, if you think about layaway, you can buy this product now. Instead of paying the a hundred dollars now, you can pay in four installments. Buy now, pay later services have become ubiquitous, and we've started seeing people use buy now, pay later options for groceries.

to get buy and put food on the table. One of the challenges with buy now, pay later is that there's a bit of an opaqueness to it. It's a total black box. They don't report to credit bureaus in the way that, you know, credit cards have to. It's an unknown, which, you know, obviously economists don't like. Actually, let me just check my notes really quick. I think I had some stats here. So just to pull together some numbers for you, some estimate that buy now, pay later services backstop about 75 billion in online purchases alone. Others project that the buy now, pay later market could reach 700 billion globally by 2028. Increasingly relying on credit and falling into debt is an indicator that Americans aren't making enough money, which makes sense, considering wage growth has been slowing down for most of the past two years, barely keeping up with inflation.

Longer-term wages just have not kept up with the cost of living. There's this new study from JP Morgan that shows that for lower-income consumers, it's becoming harder and harder to pay their bills. We know that these people, when they have a medical problem, can send them into bankruptcy. The pain is not reserved exclusively for Americans in the lowest rung of the economy either. While Americans who own homes or have invested in stocks have helped sustain consumer spending, reports have also shown that an alarming number of households with incomes of up to $250,000 a year are now living paycheck to paycheck. The idea in the US was always that if you worked hard, went to college, you were gonna do better than your parents, right? That was sort of the story of the post-World War II era with the baby boomers. And I think that the lifestyle that people think that they're entitled to has gotten more expensive. And I think that that does create

a lot of pessimism about the economy. Rising costs, lower wage growth, and unsustainable debt, both known and phantom, add up to quite the triple threat for American consumers of every class. Amid all that doom and gloom, you may be wondering if there's a silver lining. There is one. The Federal Reserve started cutting interest rates in September after leaving them at a two-decade high for more than a year. There is hope that lower interest rates will be good for regular people. So far, a lot of experts think that the Federal Reserve will be able to nail a soft landing, but there is still some pain, and there will be more pain to come.

Is the American Consumer Done Spending?

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소비자 지출이 미국 경제에 미치는 영향

미국 소비자는 GDP의 70%에 가까운 비중을 차지할 정도로 경제에서 중요한 역할을 담당하고 있습니다.

소비는 견조하게 유지되고 있지만, 근본적인 문제로 인해 경제 상황이 생각만큼 안정적이지 않다는 것을 알 수 있습니다.

정부의 경기 부양책과 지출 감소 등 팬데믹의 영향으로 제한 조치가 완화되자 소비자 지출이 급증했지만, 이러한 쇼핑 행렬이 지속되지는 않을 수 있습니다.

인플레이션과 부채 증가가 소비자에게 미치는 영향

팬데믹으로 인해 저축이 줄어들면서 높은 인플레이션으로 어려움을 겪고 있는 대출자들의 신용 문제가 증가하고 있습니다.

1%로 정점을 찍으며 항공, 호텔, 식료품, 주거와 같은 필수품에 대한 비용을 증가시켰습니다.

그 결과 소비자들은 어려운 선택을 하게 되었고, 맥도날드와 같은 기업은 가치 있는 거래를 제공하고 가격에 민감한 고객층에 대응하기 위해 노력하고 있습니다.

미국 경제에 미치는 유령 부채의 영향

총 17조 8,000억 달러에 달하는 유령 부채는 선구매 후결제 서비스로 인한 보이지 않는 소비자 고통을 대변하기 때문에 전문가들의 우려가 커지고 있습니다.

이러한 서비스는 식료품과 같은 필수 구매에도 사용되는 등 보편화되었지만, 불투명성과 신용 조사 기관에 대한 보고 부족으로 인해 불확실성이 커지고 있습니다.

신용에 대한 의존도가 높아지고 미국의 임금 성장이 정체되는 상황에서 '지금 구매, 나중에 지불' 시장은 2028년까지 전 세계적으로 7,000억 달러에 달할 것으로 예상됩니다.

비용 상승으로 인한 미국 소비자들의 어려움

장기적으로 임금이 생활비를 따라가지 못하면서 저소득층 소비자들은 공과금 납부를 더 어려워하고 있습니다.

연 소득이 최대 25만 달러인 가구 중 놀랍게도 많은 수가 월급쟁이로 생활하고 있습니다.

최근 연방준비제도의 금리 인하는 일반 국민에게 희망을 주었지만, 여전히 고통과 불확실성이 남아 있습니다.