LastWeekTonight
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2014–2022
16:32 · 14M views · Aug 11, 2014
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on payday loans and predatory lending, covering how they trap borrowers and target the elderly and military. It features Sarah Silverman.
HN recommends it as a good overview of predatory lending and the problems with payday loans.
8 comments from Hacker News
I highly recommend you watch the John Oliver segment on Payday Loans. this video ANYTHING that helps get rid of those scum is a huge improvement.
Spend some time with John Oliver, discussing just a few of the problems with predatory lending: this video Usury laws go back to Biblical times: [LINK] - there is plenty of literature to follow from this point. There are still prohibitions on drug use that most agree should still be upheld due to the serious harm they tend to cause (addiction -> crime, serious health decline) relative to their benefits: heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, crystal meth, etc. Go spend some time in some majority Black neighborhoods in the U.S. like deep East Oakland, Detroit, Philadelphia, etc. if you want to get a real sense of how bad the problems are and what the locals think about it. Or spend some time in poor white areas in Appalachia or the midwest U.S.
If you are interested in this topic, you should watch: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Predatory Lending (HBO) [1]. I think he does a pretty good job in giving an overview of what predatory lending is. Although, he does not talk about Harvard, MIT, or pension funds, this is all new as far as I know. [1] this video
Even better, check out Last Week Tonight's bit (John Oliver's show on HBO) on payday loan companies [0] - they're utterly appalling. [0] this video Edit: spelling
fairness is a horrendous choice of words, but the one this article chose to use there are many unfair side effects of current economics look at taxes.. recently i read a major corporate entity paid 4k pounds in taxes in 2014(o). The top comment says: TIL our small UK startup pays 10-20x more corp tax .. Doing things honestly and by the book is expensive in both money terms and time terms (paying accountants) Big corps .. make me feel like a fool. though these corps are seen as equals in buraecratic lines, the expectations and avenues of utilising those regulations seems unfairly balanced or look at fines.. if i get a parking ticket(i) for 100$, i may be unable to pay it right away with my zero savings and my 12k/yr income, someone making 80k+ a year will just pay the 100$ grievance and be done with it i will have to start budgeting myself to make enough to pay the 100$ fine, but it will take time with bimonthly paychecks and in that time i will be punished with late fees only increasing the financial burden and time needed to accrue the funds even if trying to do the right thing people punished further simply for economic circumstance so though the two violators are seen as equal, the expectations and avenues of how to rectify the violations seems unfairly balanced people making less end up paying more for the same violation due to the bureaucracy maintaining the violations or i could use a payday loan(ii), another damning option these are only two examples of areas where a c