> People abuse eating fast food, drinking too much, tobacco, all sorts of things.
This seems like the right way to think about this, and it leads me to believe that there should be caps on the profits made on payday loans.
For most of the borrowers, these loans are a bad habit. For other bad habits, we have sin taxes that discourage them without totally driving them into the black economy/violent underworld.
I think it's a reasonable policy goal to have fewer payday loan shops, so they're not a constant temptation for the poor. It can't be that crappy a business when most poor neighborhoods have more payday loan shops than grocery stores. If they weren't so profitable, there wouldn't be so many - capping interest and fees seems like a good way to reduce the numbers, while also keeping the borrowers from being ripped off quite as badly.
This seems like the right way to think about this, and it leads me to believe that there should be caps on the profits made on payday loans.
For most of the borrowers, these loans are a bad habit. For other bad habits, we have sin taxes that discourage them without totally driving them into the black economy/violent underworld.
I think it's a reasonable policy goal to have fewer payday loan shops, so they're not a constant temptation for the poor. It can't be that crappy a business when most poor neighborhoods have more payday loan shops than grocery stores. If they weren't so profitable, there wouldn't be so many - capping interest and fees seems like a good way to reduce the numbers, while also keeping the borrowers from being ripped off quite as badly.