I don’t understand what was so oppressive about the existing usury law, which has been in force for decades?
A couple of exploitive types dress up usury with a different name, and the government isn’t motivated or smart enough to act to stop it?
I for one want smarter government. And I liked the usury laws being effective. I don’t believe the mighty should be given free reign to exploit the weak (intellectually or monetarily!). Because they can, doesn’t give them the God given right to, in my opinion.
People have been renting things out for outrageous* amounts of money forever. Not sure you can craft a law that would eliminate these businesses but not negatively impact the entire rental industry. But give it your best shot!
Sure you can. Rentals are rentals. When you rent something, you pay a fixed fee to use that item for a period of time.
Purchases on credit are when you pay a fixed fee to own an item, but receive the item before it is fully paid off.
This is clearly a purchase on credit, even if you call it “rent-to-own” or “Aunt Martha” or “po folk bonanza”. It should be subject to the rules and protections of any other commercial credit transaction. Giving something a fancy name doesn’t mean you get to skip all the rules every other lender is playing by.
I assume, perhaps wrongly, that usury is clearly define in state laws? Say a certain percentage rate (X) is usury, but a slightly lower rate (X - 1/8 %) would NOT be usury?
IIRC, the usury laws that had existed in this country for decades largely got repealed ca. 1980 when the prime rate topped 20%, which meant that interest rates on everything else had to go a good bit higher.
The interest rates went down, but the usury laws mostly weren’t reinstated. IMHO, usury should be redefined in terms of the prime rate, the Fed overnight funds rate, or some such - e.g. the Fed overnight rate + 30%.
Something like that would allow plenty of room for non-exploitative interest rates (and maybe some rates that edge into exploitative territory). And if the only way a loan is profitable is to charge a higher interest rate, then maybe that loan shouldn’t be made.
Obviously, the couch was only an example, because it’s discussed in this thread and I happen to need one.
That said, I’m pretty spartan. I live in a very small flat, with less than the minimum of furnitures. The five things I need the most in general are a bed, a couple cupboards, a table, a desk and a couch.
So, the couch is quite up there, in term of (very relative) luxuries.
Truck? Weirdly again on point, because someone called me tonight to tell me someone else was giving away a nice, clean couch. Problem : I don’t have a truck, nor friends with a truck. Assuming that this woman has one is a strange assumption.
Micro-financing has been so successful and so much talked about that nowadays, “fake” micro-financing is becoming widespread. That is, micro-financing that isn’t intended to get people out of poverty, as was the original idea, but proposed by sharks who realized that they haven’t tried to milk the “very poor” cow yet and that could be an efficient way to do so. It has begun to wreak havoc and misery in the developping world for a while, and I understand that it’s appearing in western countries too (where they have been micro-financing too for some time).
Not the same thing as what this thread is about, but the same idea.
This is exactly the sort of good point that someone with good credit isn’t going to think of, and it’s why it’s pretty presumptuous to look over your pince-nez (sorry, not monocle) and wag your finger at poor people for their decisions.