This sounds like a great commercial for communism....
"People live in work camps and are happy."
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Not really. My mortgage was nearly at a rate of 12%. That taught me not to get into debt like that again, and I haven't.
Should I prefer that Nanny G take more from the rich to give to me, the poor person who [was stupid enough, like everyone else at the time] signed up for that mortgage? Do I really need someone to protect me from myself?
Whatever happened to usury laws? I say we bring them back.
why do you think they don't exist? That's regulated on a state level. To me it's a flip of a coin why one rate is ok but another is not.
Why do you (the generic you) know what loan rate is best for me? What if I really NEED some money and my ability to payback is high risk, yet someone is willing to lend it to me at a higher-than-you-think-acceptable rate? Why do YOU get to decide my terms of business?
It is a middle class value, to borrow money at an acceptable rate. That "acceptable rate" varies and is regulated by politicians voted in and maintained by middle class culture. In street culture rates are higher. So, who are you to look down on users in the street for using unregulated lenders?
think about how the aristocracy looks down on us little people with credit card debt and car loans. We are smug in our comfort zone of "reasonable" rates, no usury excess for us! We are intelligent consumers. Yet the uber rich think we are idiots to pay ANY interest AT ALL, or at minimum you borrow from the family trust at a nominal rate.
It's all relative, valuing the cost of money. It's about values, usually class driven, sometimes intellectually analyzed, but likely emotional.
i intend this to address UL's question as well.
The bankruptcy bill a few years ago did away with them. Or at least did away with the ones that interfered with banks profit. Like the ability to use bankruptcy on student loans. Perhaps if Trump becomes president he'll teach the students how to work bankruptcy the way he has. Or better yet, if only the little guy could do like the mega banks and not just declare bankruptcy, but get bailed out when things go wrong...
So we're all OK that the current system has, over time, evolved so that every advantage goes to the very rich, with more and more stumbling blocks (FICO scores, student loans, insurance- dominated health care) to keep the rest of us in our place. I'm convinced that greed is the dominant value in what passes for culture here. Other countries seem to regard a well-educated population (for example) as an investment in their future; we think of our students as a herd of cash cows.