IN DEFENSE OF PAYDAY LENDING

[BrentWil]

Run time: 05:04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTIJ5Xmb8w   Posted on YouTube: November 10, 2010 By YouTube Member: ReasonTV Views on YouTube: 3609   Posted on DU: November 11, 2010 By DU Member: BrentWil Views on DU: 1034

 
Found this interesting. While there is some shortcomings in the argument and they are not fully showing both sides, I still found it an interesting video.

[BlueJazz]

1. The bottom line (to me) is...: If wages in this "Greatest Country in the World) were not..

...so lousy and we had Health care, like other sane countries, maybe we wouldn't need to have Payday outfits.
(the USA ranks 17th in minimum wage, of major countries...and no health care)

[axollot]

3. Agree with you there. Lived in Australia - Payday Loans like this did not exist.

We paid higher taxes but also paid a living wage way above the USA's static min wage. ( In the US we've only seen a $303 increase for every family making around 31grnd a year since the early mid 80's to now. $303 dollars more a year - wage repression is what it's called.)

It's crazy.

Cheers
Sandy

[FBaggins]

4. Payday lending exists in Australia. n/t

[axollot]

8. I've been gone for 10yrs. So I am not surprised - Howard loved to be up Bush's bum

-Australia is doing much better since he was voted out. They also did better dealing with the recession than the US has done so far.
lived and worked in Australia as a single Mum as well as in the US - guess where it was the easiest, allowed more time with the family and better working conditions over all?

Cheers
Sandy
What are the rules interest rate wise in OZ? Do you remember or have info on it? Really curious as they sound new dont remember any even when I would have needed one - odds are it's new but many things have changed in the past 10 years.

[FBaggins]

9. I found a link for one state's Office of Consumer/Business Affairs

http://www.ocba.sa.gov.au/consumeradvice/matters/paydaylending/what_is_payday.html

[BlueJazz]

13. I just got back from Australia. Rented a "Crib" (small caravan) and drove from..

..Sydney to Batesman's bay to Bairnsdale to Melbourne to ...ack!!..(some small town north of Melbourne)...then back to Sydney.
I was born in Sydney...left when I was 5...Dad was a Captain in US service. Met my relatives for the first time.
I LOVE the people and the Country.
(Tony Bennett would say: I left my heart in Australia)

[axollot]

2. I don't take issue with "Payday loans" either EXCEPT...

I do take issue with theamount of interest considered legal. I also note when a bunch of them open up in my community, any community. 400% annually in interest! These guys are just as bad, and life defining as dealing with the Mob. Bullying - legal loan-sharks at that interest rate! (you float a check, if it bounces and you cant come up with the amount of the loan, fees, court fees if arrested etc. It would be easier to get your leg broken once they are done with your credit too.)

Cheers
Sandy
edit: accidental del and repost.

[axollot]

6. And as a single Mom here in the US I have been stuck in a Payday Loan cycle

it was impossible at times to get from -under. (you kept paying the fee, re-borrow the money because you just borrowed your pay check EARLY). My almost 21yr old son who moved to another state and proving he can 'be a man' took out a loan rather than ask to borrow any from me - he learned how hard those are to get out from under just recently even tho I warned him when he was small going through it with me.

I think there needs to be a fair way to borrow money *and* not be subjected to near loan shark conditions. If wages were better in the 1st place we wouldnt have so many on the brink that a 100 dollar repair in 2010 puts them on a 'bread-line'. That's BELOW poverty. America, if ever there was a time to say 'man up' (as the right is fond of saying) protecting the worker/teacher/middle-lower class is the place to start. It will only get worse if we do not take a stand together.

Cheers
/rant off?
Sandy

[Rozlee]

10. And they don't care who they give their loans to...

Back in 2005, I was temporarily declared mentally incompetent due to brain swelling and mini-strokes, a little souvenir of the Gulf War. I was waiting outside of the Disabled American Veterans office at a strip mall when a couple approached me and told me they needed money to get back to Oklahoma because they were stranded. To make a long story short, we wound up at a payday loan company. I had documentation from the VA and Social Security for income as I'd been getting stuff taken care of at the DAV. The payday loan company used those documents as proof of income and gave me a $1,000 loan even though my VA award letter said in bold print: DESIGNATE PAYEE. VETERAN UNABLE TO HANDLE OWN FINANCES. I gave the poor "stranded" couple the $1,000 and when my daughter picked me up and found out what had happened, all hell broke loose. My family refused to budge an inch and the DAV put us in contact with a consumer protection lawyer that helped us pro bono. But, even now, those bastards turned the case over to several collection agencies and we still get calls constantly. I feel awful that I put my family through this. But, those vultures don't care who they screw over or how.

[DeSwiss]

5. When the wrong questions are being asked.....

...the wrong answers will always be given.

We shouldn't ask why isn't 400% loan interest is illegal. We should be asking why wages haven't kept pace with the cost of living since the 1960s so that payday loans aren't necessary.

We shouldn't be asking why are people using payday loans to pay for food. We should ask why we're paying subsidies to multinational food corporations with our tax dollars not to grow food in order to keep prices artificially high.

We shouldn't be asking why are people using payday loans to pay for repairs to their cars. We should ask why do we allow planned obsolescence to be incorporated into the structure of society in order to force people to have to keep coming back to replace their shoddy consumer products.

We shouldn't be asking why are people using payday loans to pay for utilities. We should ask why are we subsidizing the oil and gas industry when the energy from wind, wave, solar and geothermal sources cost nothing.

- The reason that these questions aren't being asked, is because the answer is always: CAPITALISM IS CANCER.

K&R

[axollot]

7. +1000; wrote the same thing on here then saw your post. That is the answer to the question fix wages

[FBaggins]

11. Are the outrageous fees being paid?

If so, then income isn't really the problem in many of these cases.

Increasing wages could help many of these people, but I'm well into my third decade in the financial services industry and I can tell you that there are people at all income levels who fail to properly manage their finances.

[DeSwiss]

14. Yep. It's the answers to the "unasked" questions....

...that require hearing.

However, in the few instances where they are asked, 9 times out of 10 they're ignored. If they're not ignored it's because they're being referred to as ridiculous, unreasonable -- or pie-in-the-sky-undoable-wishful-thinking. Which is (no doubt), the same thing that was once thought about capitalism.

However, there is one thing that I do know: "Capitalism is not sustainable."

Its very nature is to take all and leave nothing -- if possible (which is also another definition for cancer). So it fails the test of natural-symbiosis - a set of laws which all things in Nature must adhere to. When things don't adhere to Nature's laws, there are always consequences to pay for the violation. And it is also why frequent "market crashes" are necessary for capitalism to seem to work at all. One must re-rig the rigged game in order to keep it rigged in the right direction ("like when a bank is declared: "too big to fail").

Of course it's helpful to remember that when we look at history, we always find that it is rare when we humans quickly learn from our mistakes. We seldom seem to understand en mass in a timely fashion. At least not until the mistakes of not learning have been repeated many, many times -- at an extremely high price which has been paid by our for-bearers. So far there's no evidence that we've figured this one out - yet. Otherwise there'd be guillotines up and down Wall Street as we speak.

Of course it is so much easier for the "powers that be" to retain their positions over us, as well as maintaining this ridiculously unbalanced monetary system -- through our own ignorance. Particularly when we can be so easily manipulated and set upon one another, fighting for the scraps they dole-out and the low-paid jobs offered.

- When Nature only knows abundance and the world has or produces more than enough for everyone. And then some......

"Capitalism did not arise because capitalists stole the land and the workmen's tools, but because it was more efficient than
feudalism. It will perish because it is not merely less efficient than socialism, but actually self-destructive." ~ http://www.stephenjaygould.org/people/john_haldane.html">J.B.S. Haldane

[Atypical Liberal]

12. I'm against them.

The argument for them seemed to be that when Georgia got rid of them, bankruptcies and bounced checks went up.

Well, of course.

All payday loans are doing is squeezing the last drops of blood out of people who are very nearly on the edge anyway.

Sure, you take this last lifejacket away from such people and they are going to go off the financial cliff. But at least they won't be screwed delaying the inevitable.

[herbm]

15. Payday loans exploit the poor. That they try to wrap themselves in a cloak of

supposedly being the only resource to poor in times of need is dirty dirty dirty. They are not a safety net, they are legalized loan sharks.