个人金融体系通过结构性复杂、费用隐蔽与行为偏差放大机制，将低收入与金融素养不足人群的错误转化为对高净值人群的补贴。典型代价包括信用卡利息与滞纳金、未及时再融资房贷、提前失效的寿险等，这些失误创造的收益被间接返还为“低费用”与高质量产品，却仅对懂得规避风险的人可得。体系性因素扩大差距：富人因更高储蓄回报、更低借贷利率与更强分散化能力，长期累积成显著财富差距。同时，产品捆绑、隐晦披露与“先买后付”等技术界面放大冲动行为，使消费者难以理解总成本。
Campbell 与 Ramadorai 指出，全球中产扩大、住房与教育成本上升、养老金保障弱化，使数十亿首次接触金融体系的人面临前所未有压力。系统性偏差也进一步削弱对资本主义的信任。作者强调个人金融的扭曲类似 20 世纪初未受监管的医疗行业，呼吁社会层面简化产品，以减少陷阱与逆向补贴。他们认为监管需强化“推力”，包括削弱金融机构市场力量、限制利益冲突、鼓励自动化优选产品，以降低消费者在高风险产品中的暴露。
建议方案包括创造政府设计但由市场经营的“金融入门包”，由标准化银行账户、保险与税收优惠退休产品组成，可通过强制或自动化方式提高参与度；利用税收激励、价格上限或资格限制修正市场行为。尽管此类改革将遭遇自由市场拥护者反对，作者自称“谨慎的技术官僚”，非主张国有化金融。他们预计改革更可能在美国以外地区率先推进，因美国 CFPB 在特朗普政府下被弱化。他们的目标是长期重塑讨论框架，以便在未来政策窗口出现时推动更公平的金融结构。
The personal-finance system converts mistakes by low-income and low-literacy consumers into cross-subsidies for the wealthy through structural complexity, hidden fees, and behavioral-bias exploitation. Costly errors—credit-card interest and late fees, failure to refinance mortgages, early lapses in life insurance—generate revenues that effectively reduce prices only for savvy users. Structural advantages compound inequality: the wealthy earn higher returns, face lower borrowing costs, save at higher rates, and diversify risks more effectively, widening wealth gaps over time. Product bundling, obscure disclosures, and interface-level nudges such as Buy-Now-Pay-Later further obscure true costs and promote impulsive decisions.
Campbell and Ramadorai argue that expanding global middle classes, soaring housing and education costs, longer retirements, and weakened pension systems place unprecedented pressure on households newly entering financial markets. These distortions erode trust not only in finance but in capitalism itself. The authors liken today’s environment to early-20th-century unregulated medicine and call for systemic simplification to reduce traps and reverse hidden subsidies. They propose stronger regulatory “shoves” to constrain market power, curb conflicts of interest, and promote default products that automate complex decisions.
Their reforms center on a government-designed but privately delivered “financial starter kit” containing standardized bank accounts, insurance, and tax-advantaged retirement plans, potentially mandated or automated. Additional tools include tax incentives, price caps, and eligibility restrictions to reshape firm and household behavior. Despite anticipated resistance from free-market purists, the authors describe themselves as cautious technocrats, not nationalizers. They expect adoption to occur sooner outside the US, where the CFPB has been weakened. Their long-term aim is to shift policy discourse so that, when regulatory windows reopen, a fairer financial architecture becomes feasible.