Clearly there is a need for something like payday loans, where people in dire straits can get small cash infusion to get them by. It also seems to be the general consensus that these same people are "high-risk", and so require higher interest rates.

So what's the solution to this problem? Clearly a lot of (maybe all) of the payday loan-type places are evil -- is there a way to service these customers without being evil? Would a not-for-profit (or perhaps even a not-for-an-exorbitant-profit) payday loan organization be possible? Or would the typical nasty collections process, the thousands of dollars of interest on a $500 loan still be required, even if the people at the top weren't becoming millionaires?

I guess what I'm asking is, in the story, we see someone paying something like $3900 on a $700 loan, made by one of these evil companies. What would their total bill be if the loan was made by a non-profit organization? Would it be more like $1000, or still closer to $3900?