Delayed pleasure is greater pleasure.
We as people think we need things now instead of saving for what we want and then purchasing it. So we borrow to buy. Doesn’t make sense to me. I will never do anything on credit again.
I don’t blame the government on my behavior nor should anyone else. Personal finance is 80% behavior.
Sometimes delayed action is opportunity lost. There is now pleasure in a delayed college education. It is bad enough the first time around, and the only saving grace is that you are young when you go through it.
Second, what you call "saving" is a fiction in an inflational world where after tax risk free rates of return are below the rate of inflation. Of course one can "invest" but as we are starting to learn, investment is not unrisky, depite 30 years of the illusion that it is so.