15% Cap on Credit Card Interest Rates

[One Brow]

I generally agreed with the early points.

So the police and military only protect the rich now? Ask a cop where they spend most of their time in the field. It's not in rich neighborhoods.

Ask the poor how protected they feel by this police presence.

Also, how is high interest rates taking advantage of the poor if (as you pointed out) those in debt can resolve their issues through bankruptcy? You even said opening a line of credit that you can't pay back is "a fairly safe choice". Who exactly is being taken advantage of in this situation?

Still the poor. Bankruptcy is onerous, has limited frequency, and carries social stigma, so while getting into credit card debt is not dangerous, it is highly unpleasant to get out of.

Meanwhile, high-interest debt results in the poor paying a very high percentage of their income in interest, as opposed to things of benefit for them.

 

[AlaskanAssassin]

I generally agreed with the early points.

I agree with most of your points as well. I don't want anyone, especially the poor, to be drowning in interest payments. I'm all for ideas on how to solve the root(s) of the issue. I don't think high interest rates are the root, rather a symptom of a variety of other things.

 

[jimmy eat jazz]

"While we're at it, why not declare the right to free speech, assembly, bearing arms, religious worship fallacies, as they have no more basis in anything tangible as the right to a livable wage? Wasn't too long ago that the consensus was that asserting such "rights" was also a fallacy."

Because the right to free speech, assembly, bearing arms, religious worship, etc....are you know, actual rights.

Says who? They certainly weren't rights prior to, say, late 18th century, and weren't rights throughout the whole of human history before hand. They still aren't recognized as rights in most of the world today.

Enlightenment thinkers and our Founding Fathers asserted such rights, pretty much out of whole cloth, based on some concept of natural law. But it's very easy to imagine people like you making the same types of arguments against the assertion of such rights back in the day. Such rights have since gained currency in Western Society, so we take them for granted and give them a legitimacy, something which was nearly unprecedented in human history. Why would we assume, however, that the list of 'natural rights' are necessarily limited to these? Certainly, in other Western liberal democracies, the list of rights in expanding, as they are here in the US as well (e.g., rights asserted with regards to the second amendment go far, far beyond what even the most radical Founding Father would have assumed).

Those "rights" do not guarantee that someone give you a podem and a crowd to speak to. You dont have the right to force people to assemble with you. You dont have the right to make someone give you a gun to protect yourself. You dont have the right to your own church you didnt build.

Yeah, so? Did I claim they did?

You see the difference between these "rights" and the right to a livable wage? You dont have the right to make someone work for you, and give you the life you want. You do have the right to try and earn that through voluntary agreements between you and other people.

How does a livable wage make anyone work for anyone else? Equating livable wage to "the life you want' is a laughably stupid comparison. Right, so making $15 /hour will make all my dreams come true?

@fishonjazz @One Brow @LogGrad98

Like this post, ya bishes.

Jesus Christ. What is so hard to understand about you not having the right other people's labor unless they agree to it? ****ing slave masters. You all must be reborn southern slave owners.

This is such a stupid argument, that I'm not quite sure how to address it.

Might I try upgrading from "Conservatism for Dummies" as your basis for thinking?