When I was poor, I never used credit cards because I didn’t like paying the interest rates. I managed to do without little luxuries until I could afford them. Perhaps the poor people you speak of shouldn’t use them either.
Mmm .. but not everybody in the world has access to govt. money, or family help.
..and even in the UK these days, with the advent of 'universal credit', people often have to wait several
months before they get paid !
So let me see if I’ve got this straight, in your religion it is immoral to charge interest on money you lend someone?
Correct.
What about if I borrowed a huge sum of money, then gave that money to a broker, or financial institution, and used the dividend and growth created by that money to pay him back while I keep the principle that he loaned me? Is that moral?
Yes .. but you are not 'guaranteed' (and not underwritten by the system) to be successful.
You might end up with a massive debt.
That would be like me borrowing my friends car, then returning the car a few days later with no gas in the tank and calling that moral.
Absolutely not.
IMO moral would be for me to return the car with as much gas (if not more) in the tank as when I borrowed the car.
Naturally .. and if you damage it, make it right.
..but the lender is not thinking of gaining anything when he lends you it .. it's a favor.
Interest on a loan is like putting gas in the tank of the car you borrowed, money loses value on a daily basis..
For everyone .. not just you.
You insist that you want to keep the value of your money, whilst ignoring the rest of us.
IOW if I borrowed say…. $100,000 from you, then pay you back that same $100,000 5 years later, that $100,000 that I returned to you has lost a lot of value and is not worth what it was when I borrowed it from you.
Mmm .. I know.. Look below..
This is for £ sterling, of course, but a similar picture for the dollar.
Since OPEC held the West to ransom over oil prices, the West (G7) decided to abandon
the gold-standard, and manipulate their currencies through monetary policy.
This shows up in the graph .. inflation has become a persistent problem.
..but the wealthy don't care .. they manipulate interest rates to keep it at a certain level,
thereby keeping their wealth at the expense of everybody else..
..and that's not immoral??
If you loan me money of a certain value, I should repay that loan to the same value; this requires me to pay interest on that loan.
Nope .. if you want to convert the money into gold or silver, maybe .. but the price of those
go down as well as up .. so the lender might get back less than they loaned.
Fiat money, as we can see from the graph, is a
cause of inflation.
..when they see that we are heading for a recession, they say 'print money', and when we
are heading for a boom (and associated inflation), 'raise interest rates'.
It's despicable .. and it is the cause of so much terrorism and war.
Capitalism does NOT mean that there is always a 'trickle down to the poor' .. it means that when the G7
raise interest rates, those poorer countries erupt into civil war.
Is that a reasonable way of the richer nations to conduct their "business"?
I think not.