re: Gross: Hawley teaming up with Bernie sanders to put a cap on credit card interest rates

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Basically, no one gets a card without +700 credit score.

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I mean I wouldn’t personally loan money to anyone with below a 700 either.

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I mean I wouldn’t personally loan money to anyone with below a 700 either.

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That all depends on the interest rates (or juice, to use the parlance of our times) and legalities regulating collection efforts.

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Kind of disagree. Credit card companies would make more money with lower interest rates. Charging 25% interest just encourages people to get bank loans at a much lower rate, thus reducing the earning potential from that credit card company.

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These massive interest rates are predatory usury too. I hate playing the victim game but the victims are usually 18 year old high school seniors or college freshmen and they just don't have the lived experience of personal finances yet. Then they get themselves in trouble. Some have the family wherewithal to get bailed out by dad but most don't and get stuck in a downward debt spiral.

It seems like before the 1980s you actually had to have good credit and a good reputation to get a credit card. Now they seem predatory. IDK what the threshold is between non predatory moral usury and predatory usury is but it is worth investigating.

ETA: this is not a new issue. It's an ancient issue that societies have grappled with in what seems like forever.

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Pure economic illiteracy

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So we should just be absolutely pro-usury?

I'd rather a cap on rates/amount of interest charged then to have people living on the dole and sticking their hand out for gov aid/disincentivized from working in the licit economy.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Accept that the state is here to stay for our life time (noone is getting rid of state or fed safety nets anytime soon). I'd rather my gov step in to limit the destructiveness of credit card debt than to continually be on the hook to provide more and more reasons for people to not find meaningful work or to develop good spending/saving habits.

Put another way, if interest rates were capped at say 12 percent we would likely see a corresponding tightening of who is offered credit. Those who seek credit would then be motivated to improve their behavior to then access credit. The improvement of behavior would likely then lead to them building good personal finance habits and finding meaningful work (both of which are good for the soul and family).

Ask yourself why you would want to shill for credit card card companies that absolutely serve as a vacuum of resources away from local economies and broad economic growth at the family and community level.

The same can be said for student loans and sports betting. Save your anarcho-capatalist/libertarian dribble about personal responsibility. As a taxpayer I am concerned about my taxes offsetting bad behavior through social programs. In a game of choosing lesser evils I will choose to protect my wallet and the children of debtors over the bottom lines of large out of state concerns every time.

Ask yourself which approach (pro usury/anti usury) is better for localism and the institution of the family (the actual building block of society).

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So we should just be absolutely pro-usury?

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It's more about being pro-freedom and anti-bureaucrat.



This is a perfect example of the "SFP hasn't change, but the board has" meme.

There was a time on here where a basic measure of economic literacy was whether or not a poster supported the emotional argument of banning pay day loans. It wasn't perfect, but it was a good guide as to who promoted leftist economics.

Now you have posters not only supporting these regulations, but fricking capping interest rates on credit cards. And they pretend like this is the common, normal view of "conservatives" or "the right" while pretending to align the majority of their political beliefs solely along the "anti-Left" spectrum.

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Put another way, if interest rates were capped at say 12 percent we would likely see a corresponding tightening of who is offered credit. Those who seek credit would then be motivated to improve their behavior to then access credit. The improvement of behavior would likely then lead to them building good personal finance habits and finding meaningful work (both of which are good for the soul and family).

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I agree with this but there is another side of the coin: black markets will emerge.

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Charging 25% interest just encourages people to get bank loans at a much lower rate,

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Are you serious with this? You think banks are just going to hand out unsecured loans to all these people that might not be able to pay?

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Isn’t this a better solution than letting people dig financial holes they will never dig themselves out of?

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Only if you pretend that they won't get credit eventually through other means.

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Maybe, just maybe if the Leftist dont have a multi billion slush fund called USAID then the taxes on US citizens will be less and thereby eliminate the need for poor people to buy on credit.

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People have been YOLOing since COVID and have ran up massive debts. They are still trying to live the same life pre inflation and the train is about to crash. They can cap it at whatever they want but people can't even afford what they are putting on credit cards with low interest rates.

IDK what the answer is here but Josh and Bernie talking it out, putting ideas out on the public sphere and debating the ideas is healthy, IMO.