A lot of them will even give you your first loan free just to get you hooked. All usury is despicable, but this is a particularly despicable form.
What’s your bar for your definition of ‘usury’? Could you throw out a dividing line on interest rates, or fees, that you think is the Go/NoGo boundary for usury?
Thanks in advance.
And so we pave the way for the return of the truck system and the tommy store.
You’ll have to educate me on that one. I’ve never heard the terms ‘truck system’ and ‘tommy store’ before.
Tell me about it. Because of a few careless idiots, I’ll never be able to introduce my three-year-old nephew to the wonderful world of Lawn Darts!
Paying people in company script that can only be used at the inflated price company store. Common place in England, for a while, until it was banned as part of labour reform.
Of course, no one forced the “employees” to take the jobs, so everything was hunky dorey.
I think they involve digging 16 tons or something.
What’s your bar for the definition of sexual harassment? Where’s the dividing line between sexual harassment and agressive courtship? Follow this line of reasoning far enough, and you reach a point where you refuse to make a distinction between a gully and a canyon because there is no universally agreed upon dividing line between the two. The boundary for usury will always be at least somewhat arbitrary. That doesn’t make the concept meaningless.
I don’t like it when lefties try to derail a thread by drawing others into endless, nitpicking debates about definitions, and I don’t like it any better when conservatives and libertarians do it either.
I always assumed these paycheck cashing places serviced a semi-underground market - those people who need to do basic banking but don’t have a normal bank account for some reason. Read illegal workers. That would be my guess for the real reason Virginia wants to shut them down. Not to say they are doing anything illegal, just that there are some people who can’t even cash a paycheck because they don’t have an account anywhere. These places will do that for a fee. They take the risk that a tradictional bank won’t - that the check is bad - and they charge accordingly.
Those places are predatory in their rates but no more so than your average credit card.
My credit card lender, evil as they may be (and they are), at least refrains from broadcasting endlessly repeated no-budget commercials featuring ecstatic “people of color” (literally) dancing around with fists full of cash. Somewhere P.T. Barnum is saying “hey now… let’s not take things too far!”
Well, it depends partly on what the voluntary transactions are. If you recall, over the past several years there was a huge wave of voluntary transactions between financial institutions and other companies selling each other various kinds of collateralized debt obligations, bundled subprime mortgages, and the like, in a completely non-transparent and poorly regulated manner.
Very nice for them, while they were raking in lots of money from their voluntary transactions. Not so great for the vast majority of us in the long run.
Libertarian outrage about mean old nanny government interfering with the brave patriots of untrammelled commercial freedom isn’t selling so well as it used to.
I think you intended to say that someone would be “complaining” or “lamenting” rather than “crowing”. “Crowing” implies gleeful rejoicing, which I don’t think is what you mean here.
Nigerian scams are voluntary transactions between consenting adults. Bernie Madoff didn’t hold anyone up at gunpoint, they all voluntarily gave over there money. What’s the problem?
What are the strict limits exactly? I mean they haven’t directly outlawed the loans have they?
Fraud is never voluntary. Where does fraud come into play for a payday loan?
I use a check loan service a couple of times a year. I’m a state worker, I live paycheck to paycheck. If my car breaks down or some other emergency comes up, I can wait two weeks for my next paycheck and hope there’s enough to get repairs - spending money that whole time on the (terrible) bus system or even missing work because I can’t get there - or I can get a small loan and pay it back over the course of a month. The fees are doable for me - if I borrow $400, I might wind up paying back $450 - $470. That’s worth it to keep me on the road.
I am not stupid, I do not have holes in my head, I am not buying smokes (in fact, I do not smoke). I am not partying it up, I do not have kids, I understand that it is not “free money”. In fact, most of the people who use the service, if those I see when I go there are any example, are like me. Underpaid and in some small emergency (health, cars, buying school books, etc).
I would be mighty angry if my state government took this option from me.
If you’re rich enough to be able to afford these services, then you’re rich enough that you don’t need them. You say that paying back the extra $50 - $70 interest is doable for you… If that’s the case, then why not put that $50-$70 in a bank account every month and let it accumulate? Then, six months from now when your car breaks down, you have $300-$420 that you can spend on it without having to pay any interest, or even have to pay off the principle.
Are you serious?
I mean, I could point out that fraud vitiates consent, as MOIDALIZE did, but I’m sure you knew that already. So I’m not sure I understand what the point of your post is.
I didn’t say there wasn’t fraud. I just said they were voluntary transactions. Just like drug dealing. They are preying on the weakness of one party - be it ignorance, greed, or addiction.
Spare me your Libertarian fantasies.
Because I don’t have it every month. I can, by lowering my standard of living, selling a few things, taking odd jobs on the weekend, or some other hook and crook method, come up with about $50 - 70 extra a few times a year. I’m in that position right now, and I’ve eaten red beans and rice for dinner the past 5 nights in a row, for example. (Made it in a crock pot that I got for Xmas last year. Sure would like some veggies. Or meat.) As an isolated incident, it’s not that bad. As a way to live my life? Not worth it.
Let’s say I did have a year in which I had no emergency costs, and I willing gave myself, say, three tight months - no going out at all, gas only for home to work and back, no rental movies, only the most basic of food - and was able to put that money away. That’s maybe $200 - $300 a year. And odds are good that’s not going to cover the kind of expenses I’m talking about. Or I could drop the one nonessential bill I pay regularly, cell phone/internet, which is about $100 a month, and put that into savings. You know what? That’s not worth it to me, either.
I have one credit card, a department store card I got when my sister got married and I needed a new pair of pants. It’s paid off and I don’t use it. I bet I pay less in interest and credit fees than 90% of the people on this board. But because I choose to take the option that hits me with a small lump sum rather than spread it away between a half dozen credit cards and so on, I’ve got holes in my head? Different ways for different folks.
No, they’re not. It’s not a matter of “libertarian fantasy,” but a matter of law that fraud vitiates consent. In other words, your example of the Nigerian scams and the Bernie Madoffs of the world is distinguishable, legally, from the example of payday lenders.
And you knew that. Yet you posted the question anyway. Why?