Debt Slavery
Excerpt, editing by Carolyn Bennett
“Ten reasons” Nader prefers “cash or checks over
plastic”
PAY LATER slavery
1. Plastic
lays the groundwork for massive, daily invasions of privacy.
Personal purchasing data now
floats around the world without controls. The data mining industry is
everywhere and both government and hackers can get into peoples’ files.
As Facebook and Google
demonstrate, it is almost impossible to keep up with the sharing of your
personal information.
2. Once
you enter the credit economy you fall under the controls of arbitrary credit
rating and credit scoring merchants.
Thus, if you complain strenuously to an auto dealer or insurance company,
if you are a victim of false information in your credit file, or even if you
have too many credit cards, your credit can suffer so that you pay more or are
denied loans.
3. The
credit card economy, with its anti-competitive no-surcharge rules, etc. is
inflationary and affects negatively consumer purchasing power as well as lower
savings rates.
4. Credit
card issuers often approve consumers for credit cards with maximum spending
limits that are too high considering their salary or lack thereof.
5. Credit
cards encourage impulse buying. The industry knows this very well.
Swiping
a plastic card – rather than opening a wallet and directly taking out cash – creates,
in the consumer, a disconnecting of purchase from loss of money.
6. Credit
card ‘terms’—what Senator Elizabeth Warren calls ‘mice print’—are mostly
inscrutable and non-negotiable.
You sign on the dotted line, shut up, and shop.
Companies rarely compete over fine-print ‘terms’ that favor the consumer.
Compare, with a suitable microscope, the standard form contracts of Visa,
MasterCard or Discover or GM, Ford and Toyota, or Bank of America, Citigroup or
Wells Fargo.
Consumers have been driven into a choice-less contract of peonage or
contract servitude.
PAY NOW freedom
7. Using
cash/check encourages consumers to live within their means and not get caught
in an ever deeper cycle of debt.
For instance, if you are out shopping with cash and set a budget for
yourself, it is impossible to overspend – if you simply do not bring more than
has been allocated for your purchases.
8. Paying
by cash/check avoids the gouging of fees, penalties, termination charges, and
of course, sky-high interest rates for consumers.
Corporations,
on the other hand, enjoy low-interest rates across the board. (Remember,
however, checks have a fee if they bounce.)
9. Paying
by cash/check—say in a restaurant—saves time and follow-up monitoring for
errors.
Furthermore,
it prevents the addition of any fraudulent charges to the bill.
10. Paying
by cash/check avoids having to give away your personal property to the likes of
internet companies that turn around and very profitably sell this free
information to advertisers with such specificity that the latter knows what
ailment or craving you have.
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bserving the
growing trend if limiting “what legal tender can actually buy in America because
of exclusionary fine print contracts (see faircontracts.org),” Ralph Nader declares
that “there should be no discrimination against consumers based on their choice
of legal tender” and “vendors should have to accept all methods of payment.”
Despite current obstacles, Nader says he does not use either
“a credit card or a signature-based debit card.”
Sources and notes
“Ten Reasons Why I Don’t Have a Credit Card,” Ralph Nader, December
5, 2014, https://blog.nader.org/2014/12/05/ten-reasons-why-i-dont-have-a-credit-card/
Long time social critic and political activist as well as an
author, lecturer, and attorney, Ralph Nader is a five-time candidate for the US
presidency, having run as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008, Green
Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and a write-in candidate in the 1992 New
Hampshire Democratic primary. Nader rose to prominence in 1965 with the
publication of his book Unsafe at Any
Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers
in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, a New York
University panel of journalists ranked Unsafe
at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th
century. Nader’s areas of particular concern include consumer protection,
humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government. Born February 27,
1934, Nader is an American of Lebanese origin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader
See also The Essential Nader, https://blog.nader.org/2009/05/06/the-essential-nader/
A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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