Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt

nytimes.com

12 points·crocus··9 comments

It's OK. The shovel I bought was a deal. I got no money down and no payments for 12 months.

And now these articles are starting to come thick and fast.

Is the lady portrayed in this article supposed to be the average American or an extreme case of cluelessness? I don't know anybody who is in such a hole (or at least admits to).

I have.

They are the same people who read The Secret (power of wishful thinking) (http://www.thesecret.tv/), believe in astrology and faith healing, but don't believe in the moon landing. They are out there, and there are more of them than you think.

According to their debt calculator widget beside the article, if you have no debt, that's the same as 24% of families. So while "the average American" may have a lot of debt, a quarter of us have none at all. (However, I'm not sure if that number includes all debt, or just credit-card debt.)

Go to 7-11. You'll find plenty of them waiting in line for "powerball" tickets.

27.7% interest rates. Holy shit :-)

But that's america I guess. The richer get richer by exploiting the poor. There should be laws on the maximal interest rate!

Not true at all; wealth is not zero sum.

Additionally, there should never be caps on interest rate as long as the lenders are _forward_ about their effective rates. High risk people should always have to pay higher rates, otherwise no one would lend to them in the long-term.

There should be laws on the maximal interest rate!

There are; here's a google result that may be helpful:

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/ban02.htm

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