Rent, house prices, healthcare have skyrocketed way above inflation last few decades, people can't not buy these things. College prices too, if you're middle class you can't not buy this either.
American economy has been putting the squeeze on these things for decades. Now we're going even lower on Maslow's hierarchy to food. Americans will keep paying though, there is no political energy or power in the population anymore.
Its because politician's have allowed the methods for receiving signals from the people they're supposed to be representating to be jammed.
Look at social media, if there's a narrative that's unflattering someone will create a large number of bots and shout it down in a way that distorts reflected appraisal signals. You see the same on here with anything that mentions certain keywords like China, central planning, socialism, etc.
Representatives already spend most of their time beholden to their donors after passing through the money filter, they may have sworn an oath but the most common form of incompetency is doing nothing, and worse if they're hopelessly corrupt.
Not at all. Credit availability is a function of creditworthiness of borrowers, which is largely a function of available collateral. All the Fed does is change the price.
If I get charged more interest, I simply charge more in wages/profit to cover it. Which I can do because there is a tight labour market/product market.
Some things, people just have to buy. Can't stop buying food, paying rent, paying for your car, etc.