Yes, they are. The largest of those three figures involves the purchase of a hard asset that provides utility to the purchaser over time. If you buy a $30,000 van, you’re not out $30,000, because you’ve received the van in exchange.

I note that you didn’t provide equivalent figures for the EU, however, so I imagine you’re less interested in making an actual argument than you are in looking clever.

Do you know why it's hard to get national student debt figures for Europe?

Credit cards and car loans are also not that popular.

PS: if you buy 30k van you are down more than that as you need to get an insurance, gas, parking lot, pay tax, etc.

> Do you know why it's hard to get national student debt figures for Europe

If you’re implying that student debt doesn’t exist in Europe because schooling is “free” for everyone you are wrong. Plenty of European countries don’t provide free schooling and even the ones that do such as Germany often have a parallel private system for those who fail to get into the more exclusive public schools. Europeans who do graduate are then faced with substantially higher tax rates - education, like healthcare, doesn’t just fall out of the sky for free.

Europeans also own credit cards; they probably have lower levels of debt than Americans (who have a fairly unique culture of credit-financed consumer spending), but they also aren’t capable of servicing the debt that an American can service, for the simple reason that they earn less than Americans.

> PS: if you buy 30k van you are down more than that as you need to get an insurance, gas, parking lot, pay tax, etc.

This is a red herring. When you eat dinner you not only have to pay for the food but also spend time purchasing, preparing, and eating it. This doesn’t prevent people from eating because they derive utility from eating which exceeds the opportunity costs associated with purchasing, preparing, and eating it.