Economics: PayDay Loans- Bastards or Black Sheep?

[Speaker to Animals]

Nope.


https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print ... e-on-usury

YES

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15235c.htm

A lot of shitty Catholics who make money through theft like to muddy the water, but it's pretty clearly wrong.

Um....

You didn't actually read that did you?

The Holy See admits practically the lawfulness of interest on loans

Thank you for providing another source that confirms that any level of interest on a load in not the definition usury.

Yep. I wonder if you did or if you just cherry picked from it.

Nevertheless, the 12th canon of the First Council of Carthage (345) and the 36th canon of the Council of Aix (789) have declared it to be reprehensible even for laymen to make money by lending at interest. The canonical laws of the Middle Ages absolutely forbade the practice. This prohibition is contained in the Decree of Gratian, q. 3, C. IV, at the beginning, and c. 4, q. 4, C. IV; and in 1. 5, t. 19 of the Decretals, for example in chapters 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, and 13. These chapters order the profit so obtained to be restored; and Alexander III (c. 4, "Super eo", eodem) declares that he has no power to dispense from the obligation. Chapters 1, 2, and 6, eodem, condemns the strategems to which even clerics resorted to evade the law of the general councils, and the Third of the Lateran (1179) and the Second of Lyons (1274) condemn usurers. In the Council of Vienne (1311) it was declared that if any person obstinately maintained that there was no sin in the practice of demanding interest, he should be punished as a heretic (see c. "Ex gravi", unic. Clem., "De usuris", V, 5).

It's a moral evil that the Church essentially gave up trying to stamp out. That doesn't make it somehow good. Get real. It's morally wrong to steal.

[Speaker to Animals]

Seriously come at me with the assertion that Jesus Christ would be cool with charging poor people interest for the product of his carpentry.

[Speaker to Animals]

And when it comes to consumer credit, especially for the poor, devout Catholics (as well as Muslims) have been getting along just fine with microfinancing models as well as flat use fees.

Don't come crying to me that you are forced to charge interest (you are not).

[Speaker to Animals]

Also, what you described above isn't really even usury. You are just charging people a small fee to maintain the books and account and calling it a "1% interest". A use fee could potentially come out to more than what you would get from 1% interest over the course of a few years. Just charge them a flat use fee and a penalty if they don't pay on time. It's same thing when you are talking about 1%,

[nmoore63]

Charging interest on loans is not against Catholic Canon Law. Fact.

Having had this argument before I can never decide which it is.

Is StA

Ignorant?
Deceitful?
Or
Dillusional?

[SuburbanFarmer]

Without interest allowed on any loans.. there wouldn't be any loans. There also wouldn't be any inflation, and we'd be on the Gold standard forever.

WWI would have ended a hell of a lot sooner, probably with a truce, when both sides ran out of money... Hard to imagine how different things would be by now. We might be a hell of a lot happier in general. No reason we couldn't produce all of the tech that we have, just not the mass industrial stuff...

The number of inventions, discoveries, business ventures that were created through direct loan, or otherwise they supported themselves through such over the centuries is incredibly vast.

The number of customers I have everyday that only have working refrigeration because I float the money is large a well.
(3 months interest free, 1.5% after that) The idea that I am taking advantage of them is truly go fuck-yourself laughable.

That’s not my stance, but it is a small profit center for your business, is it not?

Imagine if our entire society was built differently though. No interest on loans ever, things working as they did 100 years ago.

The quick answer, of course, is that we wouldn’t have progressed at all, but that’s not consistent with human nature. We’d certainly be on a much more sustainable path.

[Fife]

https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/fract.htm

[DBTrek]

Without interest allowed on any loans.. there wouldn't be any loans.

I believe you have the gist of it.

If I have a million dollars, and you want to borrow $200k for five years, you need to entice me. I might well be able to turn that $200k into $205k in five years, so why would I give it to you for nothing but a promise of later repayment?

Interest compensates me both for the risk of losing my money, and for five years of lost opportunities and alternative uses of that money. Let’s not forget inflation and cost of living. The $200k you pay back five years down the road may well be worth less than the $200k I hold today. Future money isn’t as valuable as the same sum of money being available to me today.

Now, if you say you’ll give me back my $200k in five years with 4% interest - that might compensate me for the cost of living increases in the interim, the loss of access to that money right now, and a small profit to justify the loan.

[clubgop]

Without interest allowed on any loans.. there wouldn't be any loans. There also wouldn't be any inflation, and we'd be on the Gold standard forever.

WWI would have ended a hell of a lot sooner, probably with a truce, when both sides ran out of money... Hard to imagine how different things would be by now. We might be a hell of a lot happier in general. No reason we couldn't produce all of the tech that we have, just not the mass industrial stuff...

The number of inventions, discoveries, business ventures that were created through direct loan, or otherwise they supported themselves through such over the centuries is incredibly vast.

The number of customers I have everyday that only have working refrigeration because I float the money is large a well.
(3 months interest free, 1.5% after that) The idea that I am taking advantage of them is truly go fuck-yourself laughable.

That’s not my stance, but it is a small profit center for your business, is it not?

Imagine if our entire society was built differently though. No interest on loans ever, things working as they did 100 years ago.

The quick answer, of course, is that we wouldn’t have progressed at all, but that’s not consistent with human nature. We’d certainly be on a much more sustainable path.

Hardly, he could charge much more he is competing with those rent a centers which are glorified pawn shops.

[GloryofGreece]

Just from a moral perspective, you can sort of see that it's a moral evil in the way that it creates a coercive effect (like most moral evils) in which we all eventually get pulled into participating with it when it is tolerated by a society. Usury just grows and grows until it collapses an economy and a society along with it. A small group of people can only keep stealing from future production for so long before there is nothing left to steal and the house of cards collapses on itself.

BTW StA is correct, originally Christians used the term "usury" to mean "interest" of any kind. It should be fairly obvious why it is considered immoral generally speaking. Alas, our values have changed. And their is no "our" anymore anyway.