Reply #20: Maybe those credit card companies shouldn't have changed the rules

[Warpy]

Back when they started, it was a straightforward arrangement, you got a card with a fixed limit, paid a fixed rate on anything you didn't pay off that month, 18 3/4% usually, and the interest rate itself was motivation enough to get the sucker paid off ASAP if you'd charged something like your dream vacation or starting a small business on a shoestring.

Then they brought in the idea of monthly minimums, limits that were automatically raised when the holder exceeded them, teaser interest, and junk fees, oh, the junk fees.

What those monthly minimums did was cause a cardholder to pay off a debt many times before it was finally discharged. Those neverending limit raises encouraged him to stay in debt, and those fees provided the card companies with a little something extra.

It was a setup, in other words, and a lot of people in this country fell for it, hook line and sinker.

Now they're changing the rules again, raising the interest rates far above the original high rates on any pretext, changing due dates without notification to trigger junk fees and more interest hikes, and generally behaving the way some of us always knew they would.

What Congress needs to do is focus on that stuff, not heaping blame on the folks who got fooled by it. Put the rules back the way they were, encouraging people to pay those puppies off by lowering the limits far below what the big debtors owe and lowering the interest rate to something that can reasonably be discharged.

It goes without saying that a big help will be raising wages where people can afford to buy what they need without using that damned plastic debt.