The New Credit Card Laws

Dear Readers,

I just watched the video at the other end of this link:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/A-New-Era-for-Credit-Cards

Say that reminds me, did you hear about the new credit card laws? I heard that starting this year, 2010, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty-year-olds can no longer get credit cards. There are some other new credit card laws, about interest rates and fees and stuff, designed, supposedly, to protect consumers.

Well…

I think these new laws are dumb. 18 to 20 year olds are adults, you know? They ought to be able to get a credit card if they want to get a credit card. Now, before they get or use a credit card, they ought to educate themselves. 18 to 20 year olds, and everyone, really, needs to educate themselves about the conveniences and dangers of credit card use, just like everyone ought to educate themselves sufficiently before buying any product or service from any company.

Yes, I think people need to be more careful about singing contracts. They ought to read the fine print and understand it. But too many of us sign contracts without really understanding them. I do it, too, you know- whenever I sign up for some website just to make a comment on a news article, or to get free access to lesson plans, and it tells me to read a whole bunch of terms and conditions, I totally never do. I just click the box that says, “I have read and agree to follow the terms and conditions” even though I really haven’t.

Ha ha ha. You do it, too, don’t you?

Let me be self-referential for a moment:

http://telemoonfa.blogspot.com/2009/03/taking-contracts-seriously-anecdote.html

iTunes makes people sign a lot of contracty stuff a lot too- everyone once in a while when I open my iTunes thing-a-ma-jig it says: (and I am absolutey quoting this verbatim) “Hello Telemoonfa, this is iTunes. You have to agree to the NEW terms and conditions right now or else you get kicked out of iLand forever and all your music goes away.” And then I start to read the new terms and conditions, because it seems all official and important and stuff, but within seconds my eyes glaze over because it’s all a bunch of snoring snoring algorithms and riddles mixed with mysteriousness.

So I just scroll down and click on the “Yes I understand and agree” button just so I can listen to my Bob Dylan music faster.

Maybe when I click on the “agree” box I’m agreeing to let Steve Jobs take my daughter when she’s 12. I have no idea. All I know is Bob Dylan is really cool and iTunes are cooler than regularTunes because iTunes have those attractive silhouettes dancing with their iPods and the faster I have iTunes playing in my ears, the cooler I am.

But these new credit card laws, see…

It just goes to show you that people have become too complacent about the seriousness of signing contracts- people need to read and understand them before they agree to do whatever…

Now I know there are plenty of sob stories out there about people getting in over their heads in credit card debt (Maxed Out is a good documentary for those sob stories). But the people who sign up for these contracts, they can read the fine print, and if they cared enough they would read the fine print, or make sure that somebody explained it to them thoroughly. In short, people should know what they’re signing up for and they should know what they’re money situation is every time they swipe their credit card.

These new credit card laws may be part of a trend toward a nanny-ish federal government. They think we little civillians are the kids and the government employees are the grown-ups. They think they know how all we little people ought to think, live, consume, raise children etc. It’s like the federal government feels the need to protect us poor unsuspecting consumers from the meany-pants credit card companies.

Um, federal government, thanks for trying to protect me from my own ignorance and irresponsibility, that's really thoughtful, but I’d rather you focus on protecting me from terrorists- the ones who put bombs in their undies, for example.

Essentially what these new credit card laws are doing, in my estimation, are preventing people from growing up. Which, now that I think about it, doesn’t sound so bad. Ha ha ha. Not growing up… the Peter Pan Syndrome… That’s what my “Heading Back to Egypt” blog post was about- not growing up, accepting handouts galore, wanting to live in the Big Rock Candy Mountain, forever remaining a blissful Teletubby.

Now, I can see the other side of the argument. I can see how some laws like these could be helpful and good. I do think that some of the interest rates that credit cards charge are disgraceful. And I do think that the way credit card peddlers lurk around college campuses and malls is icky. Some of the practices of credit card companies are like highway robbery, I’ll tell you what.

But actually, credit card company policies aren’t like highway robbery in one crucial way: in the case of highway robbery, people are involuntarily robbed, but in the case of credit card interest rates, people are voluntarily robbed. These new laws are taking away choice, don’t you see? And taking away choice is THE DEVIL’S PLAN!

Disclaimer: I didn’t read the new credit card laws in their entirety… um… or any of them really… and I’m not an economist or anything like that… and I spent much more time opining about the new credit card laws than I did researching the new credit card laws.

OK, readers, there’s something that I’ve been wanting to get off my chest for a while. I often blog about the greatness of fiscal responsibility, self-reliance, conservative economic policies, small government, rugged individualism and nineteenth-century American frontier-like idealism and stuff like that.

But, as a professed follower of Jesus Christ, I try, every once in a while, to first cast out the beam in my own eye, you know what I’m saying?

Quoth Bob Dylan, from Brownsville Girl, “People don’t do what they believe in, they just do what’s most convenient, then they repent”

OK, enough stalling. My wife is 1/32 Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, which is a small wealthy Native American tribe (I didn’t marry her because of this, I swear) and this small wealthy Native American tribe gives money to its tribal members. And we accept the money.

Now, I think the money comes from casinos, and not from taxes, so that makes the whole thing a little bit better in my mind. And we do have to front the money and then mail in a bunch of receipts and then we get reimbursed. And we only get reimbursed for responsible things like medical bills and utilities up to a certain amount- we can’t go buy video games on the Tribe’s dime, you see… but still, we’re accepting the money, and sometimes I think that goes against my conservative principles.

Also, we accepted the $8,000 tax credit for buying a new home last year.

Also, we recently got on WIC (Women and Infant Children) which is a government program to help us with buying baby formula and stuff- our daughter has a sensitive stomach and needs a really expensive kind of formula, and we qualified for WIC, so… yeah.

Also, my Dad gives me money sometimes.

I’ll be 27 in a few days.

So yes, I do feel a little bit hypocritical.

Not that any of this is any of your business, you understand, but… well, there it is anyway.

I do think that overall I’m a contributing member of society, and I think that I’m a good guy, and I know I’m not entitled to any of that money, but it’s nice to have and I’ll accept it and try to use it responsibly.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa

P.S. I think Barack Obama is the first U.S. President to give a "shout-out"! If you watched the video linked in this blog post you know what I’m talking about.