Originally published at: States crack down on predatory 200% pet store loans | Boing Boing
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Next stop, cracking down on puppy mills altogether!
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Our town has a “puppy mill” law, no more than 3 canines per household. It’s working out quite well too.
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Christ, what financially predatory assholes.
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Start by not spending $5 grand on a puppy. It won’t love you anymore than a stray would.
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I’ve nothing particular to add except: Can we please make personal finance a required class in high school – I’m all for the calculus tracks/AP/etc – but for those who aren’t doing that (and even for those who are), a basic personal finance / tax class (with some basic spread sheet work) would really help in this regard.
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This reads like “We’re gonna finally crack down on predatory lending practices used in Bentley dealerships, because rich people have been taken advantage of for TOO LONG.”
Maybe choose to invest less money in something that won’t ever go to college or otherwise become a productive member of society? I’d have LOVED if someone had invested $5000 in ME as a child.
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Should I be sitting down? Sounds like someone’s got an idea that’s going to revolutionize the finance industry!
Also,
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I don’t want to be a dick about it but I am going to be a dick about it: these people have no business spending $5000 that they manifestly cannot afford on a dog. They can get a perfectly good animal for next to nothing at a shelter, they probably have friends or co-workers whose pets have had litters, or, if they absolutely have to have a purebred, there are lots of breeds they can get for under a thousand bucks. If they have to have a dog as a status symbol, and they have to take out a predatory loan to get it, well, fuck them. They aren’t deserving of anyone’s sympathy.
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Buying a $5000 puppy you cannot afford? Piling a predatory loan on top of it?
Sounds like a pitch for Bad Idea jeans …
Buying a $5000 puppy they cannot afford is probably least of their bad decisions. They deserve our sympathy.
Huh? A rich person doesn’t need a loan and would never be foolish enough to take one out at 200% per annum. This is just a continuation of the “pay-day loan” scam-businesses that are so common (and, somehow, legal!)
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I’ve always disliked that term. It reminds me of flour mill - where things are ground up to a fine dust.
Not all bad decisions deserve sympathy. This one (to spend $5k on a puppy, FFS) would be very borderline and in most cases would fail the ‘needs sympathy’ test in my book.
But being insufficiently educated or savvy to understand the impact of 200% loan rates is a bit more deserving, if not of sympathy, certainly of being protected by law from this chicanery.
Pet stores that sell dogs and cats still exist??
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Some countries have this. In Canada it’s called CALM (Career And Life Management). It covers finances, as well as other basic adulting. That said, education doesn’t prevent people from being scammed. That’s actually victim blaming. If people are more knowledgeable, the scams get more sophisticated. Predatory financing is a scam at the end of the day, and we need government regulation to protect people from this kind of thing. We can’t expect everyone to be experts on everything to protect themselves from all possible scams.
She’s not wrong. Death to puppy mills of course, but on this point she is not wrong. Predatory financing is everywhere. Seemingly every time you buy something online now there’s an EasyPay or similar button from some scam payday-lender-like operation. This needs to be regulated out of existence.
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