Yeeessss . . . I suppose, strictly speaking, that’s an alternative. A terrible one that nobody is directly or indirectly suggesting, but technically you’re correct.
Yes, that’s the solution, right there.
Yes, actually, it is.
How did Jesus feel about usury?
As I posted upthread, perfectly decent sofas can be had cheaply at thrift stores, or even FREE via freecyle or craigslist.
Stores like Buddy’s cater to people who can’t afford luxury items like fancy sofa-love-seat sets or big screen TV, but feel entitled to get them anyway.
I agree with this in principle, but what do you tell people who need their new sofa and smartphone RIGHT NOW and cannot wait until after their job training and/or raise goes through?
Did you hurt yourself when you jumped to that conclusion? :dubious:
Someone buying only ramen noodles and hot dog buns on a Wal-Mart trip is not “eating so much extra food.” The sad fact is that the cheapest food is often also the least healthy: a lot of poor people are overweight because they can’t afford to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, etc. Combine that with a disease that could make physical activity painful, and frankly I’m surprised she’s not more overweight.
It wasn’t a cross he was willing to die on.
Very nice, very nice indeed.
From the article:
"Abbott headed to Wal-Mart looking to spend as little as possible on groceries. She grabbed a 12-pack of ramen (SUGAR), some hot-dog buns (MORE SUGAR) and bumped into a friend, Rachel Bryant, in the Halloween aisle.
“You look tired,” Bryant said.
“My sugar levels are out of whack,” Abbott said."
Bolding mine.
:smack:
I agree completely. It should be made abundantly clear what the total cost will be.
If the customer still wants to pay for it, then they should be allowed to do so. It’s almost always going to be a poor choice for them to do so, but that’s a freedom that people should have.
Bullshit. I went to three local garage sales last week because I hate paying full price for kids clothing my daughters outgrow in two months. I saw at least five sofas in reasonably good condition for under a hundred at all of them. FYI, I also walked away with about fifteen new items of clothing for my eldest in excellent condition and a down comforter all for twenty bucks at one sale.
If you can’t buy new, buy thrift store, Craigslist and yard sale. There’s nothing shameful in that kind of intelligent frugality. I can afford to pay new and I still happily shop that way. It’s good for the environment and your budget. It’s also very easy to find such sales online or with a cheap copy of Friday’s local paper.
Speaking of assholes, I am baffled as to why you feel it is so important to present yourself as one on these boards.
That’s addressed (sort of) in the article. The woman in question said she tried to save up, but “daily expenses” consumed her stash.
The question “what are you going to do when ‘daily expenses’ mean you can’t make the payments to the rent-to-own store” doesn’t seem to have occurred to her, more’s the pity.
You don’t think the fact that she is spending three times as much as she should on things she doesn’t need is contributing to her poverty?
Regards,
Shodan
And this is why this sort of usurious credit should be banned. You can get a used couch for cheap at Goodwill for less than the cost of one payment from a rent-to-own scammer.
I understand why someone on a limited income who has poor impulse control would rather have a new couch and pay a low monthly payment for the next ten years than a used couch. So what? The fact that they agree to this scam is proof that they’re too stupid to be allowed to agree to this scam. Businesses should not have the freedom to offer deals that a customer would have to be objectively an idiot to take. Just because your mom is so stupid that she doesn’t realize she shouldn’t give her banking information to that nice man from Nigeria doesn’t mean we should legalize ripping her off.
We can’t protect stupid people from the consequences of every stupid decision they make. But we don’t have to make things harder on them deliberately, on the theory that if only they had worse consequences for making stupid decisions they’d stop being stupid. Believe me they experience those consequences every day. You think being an idiot is a box of chocolates?
We can’t stop every predator who wants to rip off stupid people. Just because it’s against the law to steal doesn’t mean people never get stolen from. That doesn’t mean we repeal laws against stealing.
I was responding to this:
There will be those that are willing to purchase from these types of business (either payday loans, or rent to own furniture, or other examples) that will be able to make the payments. Are you okay foreclosing their options to do so to protect others from their own poor choices?
I wouldn’t support such an invasive nanny-state action. I’m against the store that deceives it’s customers, but I don’t see evidence of that.
Yes. Yes it is. So why is it legal to charge her 4 times more in interest than it would be to buy the item outright?
Yes, she’s a very high risk to lend to, because she’s an idiot. Therefore, you’d have to charge her much higher interest rates because her chance of defaulting is extremely high, because she’s an idiot. But to lend her money at the appropriate risk level means you’d have to charge her more than she can afford, lots more, because she’s an idiot. Therefore there’s no way you can lend this woman money ethically. You shouldn’t be allowed to lend her money because she doesn’t understand money, because she’s an idiot.
Well, I thought we had all agreed in this thread that a new sofa and a smartphone aren’t actually necessities. So I’d tell her: “sorry, you have to pay cash”. Because, as us smart folks have all determined, buying these goods on credit is, in general, stupid. And folks that convince other people to enter into obviously bad financial arrangements are generally called scammers (or worse).
For a genuine need of a cell phone, which I agree is legitimate, I’d use the federal program for phone purchases (the oft-derided Obamaphones).
Poor people depend a lot on family and friends to get by usually, AND poor people are always casting around to family and friends for financial help. So you get a kind of feedback loop where everyone you know is always begging for money, but you also value them and feel bad refusing them if you have money in the bank(and if they knew you had a bunch of money in the bank and refused their request for help last week they would shun you).
My wife had to go through a convoluted series of stuff to get her bank to stop sending statements, because she absolutely doesn’t want her family members to accidentally see one.
So even if you save up for something, the money will be used on something “more important”. What is funny is how things that are “vital” fall away, is medical care a necessity? Sure, but at a certain level of poverty maaaaaybe going to the doctor for the runs isn’t so necessary before trying a OTC diarrhea med first.
I suppose we can argue endlessly about the tone of the article, but why the hell would anyone object to its mere existence? If we assume that educating people about how the rent-to-own business works is a useful objective, then having such an article, regardless of tone, is a good thing, right?
I’ll happily agree that the family in the article made a choice I wouldn’t have made, but I draw the line at sneering at them for it. I say this even though I’m at an income level where I can buy pretty much any sort of new furniture if I want, and yet many of the items in my house are either giveaways or bought for next to nothing at auction, and they work just fine.
Nevertheless, I can at least understand that when one is surrounded by what seems like unending crappiness in their lives, it’s possible to see why they might want to grasp onto something that is at least marginally not crap, even if it turns out to to be a bad choice in the long run. The woman interviewed says as much.
Anyway, here’s a simple (probably too simple) solution to the predatory lender situation: simply require that they list, right next to each other and in the same size type, the cash and rent-to-own totals for the goods for sale. If someone looks at the sign, says “Cash $1500, weekly payments $5000” and still wants to go ahead, then good luck to them.
Something that always bugs me in these arguments is the scorn heaped upon the dumb.
Some people are dumb. What should they do? Just get smarter? Pray to the intelligence fairy? Stop existing? Being slow is not a moral failing. It’s just a reality, and surely we can do something better for people who apparently can’t multiply than gleefully fleece them out of their last dollar.
I think what is being missed here is the symbolic value of a sofa. When you know your poverty is temporary, and that you have the resources to eventually get out of said poverty, doing without a sofa seems prudent-- you know it will lead to improvement down the road. The sofa doesn’t mean much to you. Indeed, it may even feel like motivation. Let’s rally the troops and get to the point that we can go to Ikea.
But when you feel that your poverty is permanent, that the life you have now is the best that it’s going to be, it’s a completely different trade off. You don’t see it as “no sofa now leads to more stuff later.” You see it as “I can have my kids on lawn chairs, or I can have a sofa like a normal family for a while and maybe even hold on to it.”
Nm