Are you kidding?  Tons of people fall into that debt spiral you described, OP.  That's been the case for many years, and I'd be willing to bet it's been much worse in the past decade when interest rates were at or near 0%.  Many people (at least in the US) live well beyond their means and use credit cards with high interest rates to buy shit like smartphones, TVs, and all sorts of luxury goods--not the types of things you should only buy if you have enough cash to do so.

So true.  They're all over the place where I live, and they're as bad or worse than pawn brokers.  Usury at its worst--and frankly, a lot of credit card companies charge interest rates nearly as high as those places.