Story in NYTimes on "payday" loans.
Ripping people off? Or valuabe market service for the truly desperate?
And, there's more in the story...What about THIS transaction, also described in the editorial?
Avery describes the way that cabdrivers would purchase SNAP food stamp cards — at half their face value — from homeless men desperate for cash to buy liquor or drugs.
Other homeless men, who qualify for a meager supplemental-security stipend, took advantage of people with even less money, using their S.S.I. income to buy cartons of cigarettes that they then sold to their fellow homeless men for 50 cents a cigarette.
As Avery dove deeper into his research, he came to see the organization of society as a whole “like layers on a cake, with those at the highest level of each layer exploiting those below.”
Would it really benefit the guys who are buying the cigarettes if those transactions were prevented?
Ripping people off? Or valuabe market service for the truly desperate?
And, there's more in the story...What about THIS transaction, also described in the editorial?
Avery describes the way that cabdrivers would purchase SNAP food stamp cards — at half their face value — from homeless men desperate for cash to buy liquor or drugs.
Other homeless men, who qualify for a meager supplemental-security stipend, took advantage of people with even less money, using their S.S.I. income to buy cartons of cigarettes that they then sold to their fellow homeless men for 50 cents a cigarette.
As Avery dove deeper into his research, he came to see the organization of society as a whole “like layers on a cake, with those at the highest level of each layer exploiting those below.”
Would it really benefit the guys who are buying the cigarettes if those transactions were prevented?
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Do you have suggestions on where we could find more examples of this phenomenon?