Ministers must do more to tackle cheap credit offers
OK.
Yesterday’s Times reported that several high street stores are offering eye-watering interest rates with a holly sprig on top. JD Sports, Next, H&M, even good old M&S are now selling expensive and instant credit. “Get it today. More time to pay,” purrs Argos. Cut to the scene of the bailiff at the door and the children sobbing.
Is it cheap credit or expensive credit we’re supposed to be worrying about?
I think there’s something to be said for protecting people from the left edge of the intelligence distribution from their own ignorance. For us smart-arses it can be difficult to get our heads around the fact that some people just don’t have the wherewithal to join up the dots between the multiple different monthly payments they accumulate.
So it’s OK for the government to take advantage of cheap credit, but not for us plebs?
Ben S said:
”I think there’s something to be said for protecting people from the left edge of the intelligence distribution from their own ignorance.”
What I don’t understand is the Left’s insistence that there’s a large group of people who can’t be trusted to make a decision about a sofa, but must have the vote.
Surely it’s both or neither?
Personally I’d rather trust people to make their own decisions than trust the government to make them for them. I can understand (but disagree with) a paternalistic who thinks they shouldn’t be allowed to make either decision. But to stop them choosing how to pay for a sofa but still let them vote? That’s insanity.
@RichardT
My thoughts exactly when I hear some Leftard saying that Brexit was such a complicated subject that there shouldn’t have been a referendum.
‘Cause managing a complex economy with 60 million citizens is so piss-easy 16 year olds can understand the concepts well enough to vote.
Like you said, both or neither.
(incidentally, if we did do neither, I was reading about some interesting research which showed that the performance of a country’s economy had very little to do with whether it was a democracy or a dictatorship. What mattered was whether it was run along socialist or free-market lines. Bring back the benevolent dictator).
Andrew C – I have only three words:
Lee Kwan Yew
RichardT
You get to vote so someone else can decide whether you are fit to make a decision about a sofa.
@Ben S
The people in question don’t care what the interest rate is – all that matters is they can have “bling” today and afford weekly/monthly payments