3 ms·

> credit cards offer credit. Essentially quick loans upto a limit with zero collateral You say this like it is an unequivocal good, but I don't think it necess

> credit cards offer credit. Essentially quick loans upto a limit with zero collateral You say this like it is an unequivocal good, but I don't think it necessarily is. The world functioned before it was common to have instance frictionless access to a no-collateral high-rate loan. Also, may I remind you these are for-profit loans, and the very article we're commenting under is about how they are disproportionately used to shake down poorer people. I'm sure you can twist numbers in either way to say credit cards are net good or net bad for poor people, but it's not unquestionably good at the very least. > Remember, nobody forces you to use credit cards. Except two factors realistically do encourage you to. Merchants generally charge fixed prices regardless of whether you pay with credit/debit/cash. That price includes their expected credit card fee overhead, so because everyone else pays with a credit card, the price is higher. You pay that higher price whether you use a card or not, and only get the points/miles/cash back/whatever if you also use a credit card. Secondly, credit scores force me to use a credit card. For some reason, private companies control my credit score, and my salary, savings, etc have no bearing on it. Originally, I refused to use credit cards since I find them an unethical tool to transfer money from the poor to the rich, and so I had no credit score. When I went to rent an apartment, the landlord checked my credit score, and then could legally turn me away for not having one. Jobs I applied for checked my credit score, and could legally reject me. I feel like the private credit agencies, and how widely credit scores are used, has in fact forced me to use a credit card, or else run the risk of each landlord running a credit check and then turning me away.

fragmede 3y ago
> You say this like it is an unequivocal good, but I don't think it necessarily is. The world functioned before it was common to have instance frictionless access to a no-collateral high-rate loan. The world also functioned before we had fractional reserve banking, but somewhere along the way we realized it's better to have it than not. It doesn't have to be an unequivocal good for it to be preferable, on balance, to living without. It's hard to do an apples to apples comparison, but there are countries where there aren't credit cards like in the US, and they are poorer for it. Giving that a proper examination would require a far larger comment box than is here. You can choose to opt out of the system. It requires a lot of work (and poverty) but the underground economy doesn't run credit checks.

fragmede 3y ago

> You say this like it is an unequivocal good, but I don't think it necessarily is. The world functioned before it was common to have instance frictionless access to a no-collateral high-rate loan. The world also functioned before we had fractional reserve banking, but somewhere along the way we realized it's better to have it than not. It doesn't have to be an unequivocal good for it to be preferable, on balance, to living without. It's hard to do an apples to apples comparison, but there are countries where there aren't credit cards like in the US, and they are poorer for it. Giving that a proper examination would require a far larger comment box than is here. You can choose to opt out of the system. It requires a lot of work (and poverty) but the underground economy doesn't run credit checks.