It's interesting how even as formal christianity is in decline, the moral constructs that it popularized (distaste for usury, protestant emphasis on liberty over well-being) morph into new forms.

There, you've just committed the sin of collecting 14,000% APR.

You can't compare payday loans to things like mortgage rates or bond returns. It's a market, but it's a very different niche. It's like comparing the cost of mineral water at the grocery star to the cost per gallon of your tap water.

the rate always maxes out the legislated cap. so it's not really dependent.

The best thing is:

a) UBI, just hand out a tiny bit of money to make poor people more liquid, because liquidity kills, not insolvency

b) postal banking, because even shittier than a payday loan is high fee check cashing without a pretense of debt!

Poor people hopefully at the point can save up a paychecks worth of buffer in their bank account, and don't need postal bank loans to replay payday loans.