I mean, like I said most people only have access to expensive (but readily given) credit, because they have nothing to secure a loan against. Low central interest rates make the risk/reward of handing out high interest credit cards to high risk customers slanted towards the reward, as we saw in 2008. Some of that got clamped down on, obviously, but the basic incentives haven't really changed.

I think the immediate issue for this question is the same as it's ever been, but made worse by the growth of asset value. For most of the 20th century, since "everyone should be able to buy a home" became a government meme, the way out of that trap was to leverage yourself into asset ownership with a mortgage.

Now that's becoming increasingly out of reach to people in an economy largely built on service jobs that pay poorly on one side, and an asset bubble that they can't pop without blowing up the economy on the other.

So imo it's some combination of "people have no idea how to use it" and "even if they do it may not be possible for them to pull it off unless the stars align now."

It's never really intended to work as advertised, that's just a narrative to push it politically. The real reason it's done this way is regulatory capture, ie corruption of the system.

Generally US banks require medium to high W-2 income and a secured asset (house) to get a reasonable interest rate loan, a lot of people in the US don't have one or both.