John Edwards: Down with Payday Advances!

Historical archive, first published 2007 — payday-lending laws and rates have changed since. Preserved for the record.

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, on an eight-state swing to highlight poverty issues, on Tuesday called for a national law to crackdown on predatory cash advance payday loan lending.

But are people responsible for their own actions?

As an example, consider the newly-instituted “abusive driving” fines in Virginia.  Basically, if you’re caught driving in such a way that endangers other people on the road, you can get fined thousands of dollars.

Such a fine could put a lot of working class people in dire financial straits.  The same sort of dire financial straits people find themselves in when they choose to live beyond their means and facilitate that lifestyle via payday cash advance loans.

In the first instance most would say that the person receiving the fine is suffering the consequences of their actions in not following traffic laws.  Yet in the second instance, the people getting the payday loans are cast as victims.  As if the decision to get the loan in the first place weren’t theirs to make.

It’s something to ponder.