Stephen Moore: Will Congress take away your credit card? – IOTW Report

Stephen Moore: Will Congress take away your credit card?

BPR: How would you feel about Congress snatching away your credit card or preventing you from participating in credit card reward programs?

Don’t laugh. Left-wing groups in Washington are declaring that the plastic card in your wallet is the financial villain that needs to get reined in.

A new study from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston finds that credit card reward programs are unfair because they create “an implicit money transfer” to wealthy cardholders from lower-income people who buy things with cash or debit cards.

The study infers that consumers who pay with plastic and rack up reward points receive a $756 “subsidy” per year, while the poorer people who pay with cash pay $23 more. Egads. That’s the price of a movie ticket.

Left-wing agitators have asked the Federal Reserve Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to do something about these inequities. Don’t be surprised if congressional members who hate credit card companies, including Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, call for regulations or cancellations of reward programs.

These groups have invented a clever new term for this supposed injustice: the “reverse Robin Hood” effect. read more

29 Comments on Stephen Moore: Will Congress take away your credit card?

  1. Over the last 8 years I have traveled the globe. Just a typical US x-pat.
    My wise.com debit card and $ transfer service is the best Iv found.
    Saves me money, has multiple currency accounts.
    I havnt used by BoA card in years ……….

    and NO, I do not make 100,000$$ a minute sitting on my ass eating BON-BONS

    3
  2. I am careful to limit my spending to stay within my income.
    I balance my “needs” vs my “wants”.
    And I pay my bills and pay off my monthly plastic balance EVERY SINGLE FUCKIN* MONTH! UNLIKE THE KONGRESSIONAL KLOWN KREW!

    Repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments!

    13
  3. Time to pull our heads out of our butts and confront the reality that the communists have taken almost complete control over the country formerly known as the United States of America.

    We act promptly to take back our country or all will be irretrievable.

    Just sayin’.

    9
  4. Every time they try to ‘protect’ the poor they end up ruining their lives even more by limiting their choices and prices them out of the market. And ultimately they are working on eliminating cash so this just seems to be a way to push everyone onto whatever electronic coin they create to track, surveil and control everyone eventually implementing a taxation on transactions real time.

    4
  5. A few years ago I got a business credit card. I had two choices; on at a couple percent interest with no rewards program or one with about 20% interest and a rewards program.

    People need to realize that these rewards programs are paid for somehow. I remember how Green Stamps disappeared after the first gas crunch.

    7
  6. It’s not about equity.
    It’s all about GREED!

    These Socialist bastards want our money and lay awake nights thinking up new ways to cheat, steal and take it away from us! The old fashioned way of EARNING it is beyond their comprehension.

    8
  7. ” who pay with cash pay $23 more.”

    I don’t have a credit card. I do have a debit card but still pay cash for a lot of stuff. Whenever possible, I try to deal with small independently owned businesses. A discount of 10% for cash is pretty common and I have received as much as 1/3 off on a $2500 transaction.

    6
  8. Besides all of the above, a credit card is a mutually agreed contract between myself and the bank/credit union/other issuer. If I didn’t like the terms, I wouldn’t accept the plastic. If the plastic issuer didn’t like my income and credit score, they wouldn’t offer me the plastic.
    Notice that nowhere in there did I say that the Kongressional Klown Krew was involved in the issuance/acceptance of the credit card plastic. So what makes Kongress think that they have the authority to butt into this private transaction?

    11
  9. How about they address the injustice of people not paying their rent and not being able to evict them? I know a guy who hasn’t got rent from some free loaders in over two years. His retirement money is dwindling paying the mortgage.

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  10. These “left-wing agitators” clamoring for this sh*t never mind that my income tax dollars are used via a “Robin Hood effect” to subsidize poor people who receive a tax refund in excess of their tax withheld via the misnamed Earned Income Tax credit.

    5
  11. In point of fact, credit card users are charged an amount which includes the merchants surcharge for the credit card company. That is usually more than 3%. So a program that gives back a small percentage to the card user/member is less than the card company’s surcharge.

    The net effect is that people who pay cash actually pay less than the credit card user pays. So where is the inequality?

    Ignorance and the left are interchangeable concepts.

    Just sayin’.

  12. Those lefty lib-lobe groups are individuals who are likely failed applicants who were denied even the smallest amount of credit and refused any business enterprise’s card. Add that they’re mostly people who have filed for bankruptcy due to their irresponsible spending and refusing to pay their credit bills. Jealousy abounds. laughable stuff.

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