Re:Visa and Mastercard agree to lower average credit card in...
by e63f67dd-065b on Friday May 19, 2023 @01:51AM
(#35998262)
Yes, of course there's more nuance than "fuck the poor". I almost never attribute malice to any actor -- the structural effects of systems are mostly organically evolved over time, nobody woke up one morning and designed the system to fuck over anybody in particular, just to make money.
I'm basing my view on the classic Boston Fed paper https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/public-policy-discuss... . I don't keep up much with the literature, so you can probably find rebuttals and more complex models in the last 13 years of economic research, but I think the big picture largely stands -- all prices are increased by 200bps, and super-prime customers get most of it back as a rebate on their credit cards.
Re:Visa and Mastercard agree to lower average credit card in...
by BenjiWiebe on Friday May 19, 2023 @10:05AM
(#36002101)
In my experience credit score isn't based on how much money you transact/owe, but how well you manage whatever debt you have.
I.e. I have two 2% cashback credit cards even though I make <$30k/yr.
You know who banks love? That person who has 5 overdraft fees on their checking account per month while maintaining a healthy balance in their savings account. Know who banks hate? Poor people defaulting on their loans that won't get collected. Know who banks love the most? People who park large amounts of money in them. That money makes banks bank. Banks and credit card companies aren't just leeching off the poor. They have various sources of income.
There's more nuance to the system than just "fuck the poor" and framing it that way just muddies the waters.