But has it been studied that this is actually how this plays out with a low-level consumer good like mustard?
It would be a pretty big difference to me.
Lending money today instead of giving money lets leaders and voters today to punt sacrifices to tomorrow’s taxpayers, and of course inflates college tuition prices so the borrowers have reduced purchasing power, as well as future users of the currency.
That is the whole reason lending for college tuition became a thing. Some genius figured out how to cut taxes today while still being able to say they are helping expand access to higher education to poor people and college students.
Across all goods/services, that means richer people would be able to consume less, and poorer people would be able to consume more. Whether or not people sacrifice eating Dijon mustard is up to them.
The goal is not to guarantee Dijon mustard for everyone, the goal is to mitigate how poor poorer people are.
The other way to bring down Dijon mustard prices is for the government to increase supply of Dijon mustard, or remove whatever is restricting supply of Dijon mustard.