Confusion With Payday Loans and Abortions. Help!

[brandondrury]

Part of my day job is developing various internet sites. Right now, I'm working on a site that specializes in payday loan information.

Isn't ironic that the left wing fights hard for the right to choose when it comes to abortion, but is totally against the right to choose the financing that is right for you when you in a financial time. Many democrats are fighting to ban payday lending because they claim that they hurt the poor. Well I hate to break it to them, but anything that costs money is going to cause the most damage to the person with the least money.

This post is not meant to make fun of liberal ideas (not this time). I'm just trying to find what I'm missing here.

Payday loans are very expensive and if you are not responsible can bang you up pretty bad. However, they are often cheaper than getting hit with NSF fees from your bank or late fees from your credit card. I had a mistake in my checkbook 3 or 4 years ago and ended up writing 4 checks averaging $6. It cost me over $150 total. A payday loan for $30 would have been the much cheaper alternative. My point is that payday loans are certainly not ideal, but serve a purpose.

Abortions are expensive and can bang you up pretty bad. However, if you are not ready to assume the responsibility and consequences of bearing children right away, they have their purpose. I'm not exactly pro abortion, I'm just think that a mother not wanting her kids is a very sad situatation that usually leads to things that bring society down, like stealing stereos and other small time crimes. My point is that abortios are certainly not idea, but serve a purpose.

What am I missing?

[TAlderson]

Amen, brother.

Why don't the Democrats focus on bigger issues, like, um, let's see... WINNING.

I guess they have nothing better to do than sit around and worry about the effect of payday loans on poor people.

-Tyler

[lumpy]

A payday loan takes the government out of the equation. It's an individual decision that threatens the "nanny state" theory that socialists thrive under. In the socialist's mind that money dividied out by the local loan shark could've been better served circulating around in the federal budget and distributed according to government regulations. After all individuals are too stupid to know how to spend their own money, among other things, and need protection from all evil, including capitalists.

The government does'nt give a tin shit about the "poor" being exploited by loan sharks, like John Lennon (one of the biggest hypocrite liberals to ever walk the planet) said, "it's not gonna kill you to feel your own pain".

Abortions: if you are against abortion, don't get one. Be frank with your kids about birth control, buy your daughter the pill if necessary. I got three daughters and I would never bullshit them about something so important. Being a 6'4" 280 lb gun totin' beer swilling dad should help keep those horn dogs outta the woodshed too.

Lump

[Geisler]

Originally Posted by lumpy

After all individuals are too stupid to know how to spend their own money, among other things, and need protection from all evil, including capitalists.

Yes, I would agree that most people aren't smart (or disciplined) enough to handle their finances in a responsible manner. While not all capitalists are evil, predatory lenders sure are. We are all vulnerable at some point in our lives. Shouldn't we protect the vunerable from being taken advantage of?

[brandondrury]

After all individuals are too stupid to know how to spend their own money, among other things, and need protection from all evil, including capitalists.

Knowing lump, I think that was sacarsm. I think he was taking the liberal side and essentially saying that they think they are better than other people and feel the need to protect these 2nd class citizens from the evils of capitalism.

We are all vulnerable at some point in our lives. Shouldn't we protect the vunerable from being taken advantage of?

Now we are getting down to business. This is what I like to see. Great question, by the way.

Well, it comes down to this. We really have two options. Oversimplified, we can reward the winners or we can help out the losers. I always love using sports as an analogy for this because sports are extremely popular and are a 100% competition where liberals seam to check their agendas at the door.

I'm not up on new sports at all, so lets take the Chicago Bulls in the 90s when they won 6 championships. I say we give the MVP to the guy who was the most valuable player on the team. I'm a capitalist and I believe that competition is a great thing. Obviously, the NBA does too and that's why Micheal Jordan got a shit ton of MVP awards. There will be winners and there will be people who don't win. It's a said part of life. Too bad!

Now, let's take the liberal argument. .... It's not fair that one evil team gets to dominate. We should make it more fair. What about the Dallas Mavericks (who, at the time, were the most team in basketball)? We should take away Scotty Pippen and put him on the Mavericks to even things out. Oh yeah, and while we are at it, let's go ahead and make the standard 2 point basket worth something like 1.6 points now, but just for the Bulls because they are better than everyone else right now. It's not fair that people are losing. Let's take it a step further and only let the 2nd best teams go to the playoffs. If a team is too good, it wouldn't be fair to let them to go the playoffs (where we know they'll win). Let's instead just cut out the top guy right now.

Hell, let's take a step further. It's not fair that the guy that was good in high school wasn't good enough for college or pros. Let's put him in the game too. He probably feels really upset now that he makes $80,000 ripping people off with insurance. There is a part of him that is unhappy. Let's put that dude in the game!

Back to reality.
Of course this doesn't make a damn bit of sense in sports. The entire point of the game (competition) would be ruined if we started dicking with it.

I don't see life as being all that different from a basketball game. If you want to "win" (and that word means different things to different people) then you bust your ass and work harder, longer, and smarter than your competition and you will win. I honestly believe that. I think anyone can "win" if they have the ambition, some brains, and use a lot of elbow grease.

The socialists don't think it's fair that one person works harder than another person and therefor want to even things out. There is a point where the hard worker realizes that he is wasting his time and quits working. Then you have....nothing. Nothing gets done. No doctors go to work. No one fixes the roads. You have an econonomic shutdown. You certainly don't have any NBA games.

Brandon

[Geisler]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

Well, it comes down to this.? We really have two options.? Oversimplified, we can reward the winners or we can help out the losers.? I always love using sports as an analogy for this because sports are extremely popular and are a 100% competition where liberals seam to check their agendas at the door.?

I love your idea of a sports analogy, though your examples don't make any sense. I'm just talking about leveling the playing field, not changing the rules of the game. Why is the NFL so damn awesome? Because they have profit sharing and a salary cap. Professional baseball sucks because it doesn't. Republicans must be baseball fans. They must think it's totally OK for the Yankees to buy the World Series every year. (Booring!) Democrats, like the NFL, would rather give all teams an equal opportunity to compete. That means redistributing some of the profit from TV contracts to help out teams in less lucrative markets and structuring player contracts to provide a healthy pool of talent for all teams.

In professional baseball, financially underperforming teams get relocation or contraction threats. As a result, billionaires try to force hard working tax payers to foot the bill for new stadiums against their will. In professional football, one of the leagues most honored and storied franchises is in northern Wisconsin, in a town of only 100,000 residents. The team has such a good relationship with the people it serves, that citizens of the county overwhelmingly VOTED in favor of increasing the sales tax to renovate the stadium.

Originally Posted by brandondrury

If you want to "win" (and that word means different things to different people) then you bust your ass and work harder, longer, and smarter than your competition and you will win. I honestly believe that. I think anyone can "win" if they have the ambition, some brains, and use a lot of elbow grease.

I don't believe anyone can win. Sure, a select few beat the odds, but that doesn't mean everyone can do it. Further, most of us would be in much different places now if we had been born into situations less priveledged than the ones we were lucky enough to get. So, what do we say to kids born into the worst of situations, "fuck you?" "Pick yourself up by your bootstraps even if you don't have boots?" "It's not my problem?" "You just need some more elbow grease?" (Then we piss and moan when the people society rejects go against societal norms...)

I'm not saying we should make everyone the same. However, until we, as a society, can make sure everyone starts out life with a complete set of survival tools, I think we do need to step in and protect some people from themselves some times. It's the least we can do.

[brandondrury]

Your are looking at the sports analogy from a different angle than I was. I think that both your view and my view both make sense with a little context. You were thinking in terms of the various teams. I'm thinking from the standpoint of say an excellent high school ball player and the MVP of the NBA. I wasn't speaking in terms of $ necessarily. I was speaking in terms of talent level. I say you can not punish Micheal Jordan because I was born with terrible basketball skills. That's all.

I don't believe anyone can win.

This is where we TOTALLY disagree. I think everyone can win. What would you define "winning" as for you?

My idea of winning is to have enough money in assets so that I don't have to worry about cash ever again. I want to build a huge studio and run it just for fun. I want to be able to take nice vacations in the summer. I don't want to worry about my boss firing me (because I don't/won't have one). I want to be a good dad eventually. That's winning to me. It's so obtainable that it's ridiculous if you ask me.


Democrats that have told me "I don't think people can win" usually haven't even thought of what winning is to them.

One quick story.
My band buddies doing real recording this weekend were heading down south. From the interstate you can see the barn (seriously) that my Grandpa grew up in. It's barely standing now, but it wasn't much better 40 years ago. My grandpa Drury's brothers are worth about $1 Billion. (No, I didn't get a dime of that. My grandpa died way too early). I still hear stories of them taping egg foam over the cracks in the walls to block out the winter wind. This weekend I slept on the floor of one of their hotels (there was no way I was going to pay for a hotel).

I asked my great uncle Jim once the secret. He said "work hard and work fast". I hear stories all the time how they would work 16 hours a day and didn't walk...then ran.

I know of no one who is so poor that they have to glue trash to the wall to stay ****. Any healthy person can work 80 hours a week. I think it's as simple as that. Of course, I haven't gotten the opportunity to watch more than 3 NFL games in the past 10 years.

Brandon

[Geisler]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

What would you define "winning" as for you?

How about being financially stable and savvy enough to never even consider a payday loan?

Originally Posted by brandondrury

One quick story.

Your story kinda proves my point. Your relatives beat the odds. If all it took was 16 hour days to become a billionaire, a lot more people would be billionaires. How about a million quick stories? Millions of people are born into poverty, and millions never make it out of poverty.

Further, I bet your uncles had strong family support and grew up surrounded by examples of other hard-working people. I bet they were relatively healthy. I bet they weren't surround by crime and gangs. I bet they weren't discriminated against on the basis of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. (Just being male and white in this country gives you a huge leg up on everyone who isn't.)

[brandondrury]

Again, your points are well noted.

However, how many people do you know that really work 16 hours per day? In my circle, I know 2. Myself and my business partner. That's it. Everyone I know has so much more free time for watching DVDs, keeping their women happy, watching football on Sundays, living a normal life, etc.

The environment I've grown up in sounds like a John Melloncamp song so I really don't know much about the inner city. I've seen my share of "bad shit" growing up but I was never one to let it get to me. The only way to get out of "bad shit" in my experience is working mega mega hard.

Sure, my great uncles were healthy. They were blessed in a million ways. They just started with no money. I'm not sure of the statistics, but I'm not sure how many people are so sick that they can not work. It's horrible to think that there are people out there who weren't fortunate to be born healthy. We have programs for those that are sick in this country, and I'm all for those programs. I try to be thankful for what I have every day even if it's considerably less than many and considerably less than I where I want to be.

I can't speak for the extreme cases. I don't know what it's like living in Compton or the rough part of Detroit. I can speak for the masses. We all make decisions and with extreme perseverance, we can achieve almost any of those things. No, I could never be in the NBA. However, I can be successful and happy. In my experience, however, people always go for the comfort first.

I have to give my girlfriend credit. We heat our living room with candles and our bedroom with a space heater. I only use the furnace when bands are here. I could pay to make my house comfortable right now, but it's a MUCH better investment to put $300 into some Christmas present that really got this forum started. I'm not giving myself a medal here, so don't get the wrong idea. How many people would just not heat their kitchen in the middle of January (I could see my breath in the kitchen right now if I was to walk in there)? To me, my situation is "normal". It's what every person not born with money has to do to get ahead. What's funny is I'm called "crazy" all the time. While that's fun, there is an obvious trend in the lower middle class that thinks they should be living better than they are. I'm crazy for driving a 1997 Civic (which is perfectly fine). I'm crazy for living in a terribly shitty house that is too expensive to eat. I'm crazy for dropping $300 on a Christmas present to a random forum member (my girlfriend loved that one). I'm crazy for eating 20 packs of Ramon noodles per week. No, I'm not crazy. I'm doing what I have to do to get ahead. It means taking it in the ass now in a lot of ways. (In a lot of ways, life couldn't be better, though).

I just haven't seen that many people willing to do what it takes to make it. While there are those who are in some terrible situations (and I really do hate hearing that) I've never met one. I do know there are inner city people who have rised out of the ghetto to go on to be Astronauts (the elite of people, in my opinion). So the possibility is there. I think people living in the ghetto let themselves get talked into their rut. Most of these people could go to a big college totally for free. With a little drive, a person can get out of nearly any situation. That's my opinion.

A buddy of mine summed it up best. (He was raised on a bust ass farm and is one of the most respectible, hard working people I know). "People have forgotten what it was like to starve in this country". In fact, I think the middle class is in just as good of position to help out the ultra poor as the the rich are. All of us could give some, but we don't. We get all excited about our $2,000 Les Pauls, our Blu-Ray / DVDHD players, our LCD TVs or whatever, our $2,500 microphones, etc. We don't need any of this shit, but I know all kinds of people in the lower middle class who have plenty of these things.

So to me the liberal argument is a crock. The liberals want to talk about all the suffering and how people are starving and babies are dieing, but most aren't doing a damn thing about it, either. It's easier to blame those who are "rich" and expect them to fix everything (because they usually are the people that have to fix everything). Well, in my opinion, I've never met a person who wasn't rich. We live in a country where many of us pay money to work off the excessive food we eat. God damn it! Now that's sad! I'd guess that middle class (especially lower middle class) is fattest of all the financial classes. A few hundred years ago, in Europe, only the richest of rich people were fat.

Maybe my persistence and my drive was a gift (and sometimes a curse) that I was born with. Maybe I should be thankful for that. I guarantee you that I could rise out of the ghetto (if I wasn't killed first).

Brandon

[TAlderson]

First off, I don't think taxes are wrong. Just think we could use them a lot more efficiently, like NOT putting too much into the military. And NOT spying on our own citizens.

Second,

I'm sorry to be so cynical, but I have something I desperately want to say:

Someone is always going to get screwed.

There is no society in which everyone, or even close to everyone, gets what they need to live "successfully". In America, we are doing pretty damn good. Sure, not everyone is able to live in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife (to quote the Talking Heads), but many are able to get by, even if they do have to drive a large automobile to make ends meet.

But at least we in America don't have to worry about getting our heads chopped off with machetes by disgruntled gangs who are intent upon ethnic cleansing.

Or, we could be shot for believing what we believe, or saying something against our government.

Or, we could be dying of famine, or Ebola.

And that's just in one continent.

What I'm saying is, while there are poor people in America, there will always be poor people, and those poor people are doing a lot better than other poor people.

In fact, there has to be poor people. If we took all the people who do stuff we don't want to and educate them more, so they can get better jobs, who's gonna clean the subway toilets?

I'm not saying we shouldn't help them, just that we need to realize that there will always be people who are screwed. We should minimize that number of people, but, unfortunately, we can never completely do away with it.

That's where I think people differ. The people who wish to do away with poverty are the people who are for more taxes, or, more extremely, communism or socialism. The ones who only wish to minimize it are the capitalists, libertarians, and tax evaders.

And the ones who pine for world domination under one Glorious Leader are Facists.

-Tyler