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He's not talking about you, then. <quote>Economists who expect people to be rational won’t believe in usury. Surely, people borrow money to be better off. Yet
by billybob 15y ago
He's not talking about you, then.
<quote>Economists who expect people to be rational won’t believe in usury. Surely, people borrow money to be better off. Yet the average credit card debt per household is over $15,000 in the USA (and it grows all the time, of course). Does anyone believe that these $15,000 are invested in highly profitable ventures? (They would need to be highly profitable since credit cards often charge over 15% for loans.)</quote>
- hugh3 15y agoI take issue with that $15,000 number. According to: http://www.indexcreditcards.com/creditcarddebt/ http://www.indexcreditcards.com/creditcarddebt/ revolving consumer debt (of which credit card debt is a large but strict subset) was only $7400 per household in November 2010 and I doubt it's doubled since then. Indeed, http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/Current/ http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/Current/ suggests it has gone down somewhat since then. Still crazy high, of course. I can imagine how an emergency situation might cause someone to have to spend more money on a credit card than they have in their savings account. I can't imagine how the average person manages to get into that situation, though.
- jmaygarden 15y agoI worked at a credit counseling service in high school (circa 1995), and numbers in that range would not surprise me at all. This is a navy town, and I couldn't count the number of young enlisted sailors that would come in with wife, kids and over $50k in unsecured credit card debt. Also, it mostly wasn't on normal credit cards. They would typically have a card for a dozen or more different retailers (e.g. Sears, Express, Limited, Target, etc.) all maxed out.