[Deuteronomy 23:19] Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury:I always wondered why a person would willingly pay 300% interest, or more, on a loan? Even morgages make me sick, paying three-times what a home is worth over thirty years just seems self defeating.
The only reasons to charge compound interest on a loan are to balance risk or make profits. Why would you ever lend money to someone at such high risk that you needed that kind of gross interest rate to equal the exposure and justify the act? What kind of person would lend at such a huge and unfair rate just for an abusive profit? This is not good business.
It seems to me that any such business would have to have a profound disrespect for their customers to participate in the transactions. Perhaps, if we cut the poor a break, and only allowed interest upon loans to reach, say, 30%/year by law, then people would not become trapped in cycles of poverty, and they could eventually become middle class or even wealthy customers? Then our general profits as business people would increase across the scope of the economy, increasing the general welfare of our society.
Listen to Terry Gross interview Gary Rivlin and try to understand why parasitical business practices, busnesses that harm their customers, are unsustainable and harm the general good.
From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. How the Working Poor Became Big Business
- by Gary Rivlin
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