When tech vendors lock you in.

Some of us are the just-right amount of macho.

Journalism for fun and profit.

An award-winning German magazine writer who resigned in disgrace for making up stories is suspected of embezzling cash he collected on behalf of children orphaned by the war in Syria, according to his former employer.

https://nypost.com/2018/12/23/disgraced-german-journalist-now-suspected-of-charity-scam/

Corporate welfare and the "sneaky fucker" strategy: amend the bill late and see if it sneaks thru.

A $54 million Ohio spending bill will include $15 million in taxpayer money earmarked to subsidize a soccer stadium near downtown Columbus for the city’s Major League Soccer team, the Columbus Crew. The stadium is a $230 million project and is also being subsidized by Franklin County and the City of Columbus to the tune of $50 million each.

However, it is unclear whether all of the senators who voted in favor of the spending bill were aware of all the provisions after a series of last-minute amendments were added to it.

https://freebeacon.com/issues/state-local-subsidies-to-columbus-soccer-stadium-dubbed-corporate-welfare/

Girls gone wild down under. The last entry has some wisdom.

http://thedailychrenk.com/2018/12/21/girls-gone-wild-brisbane-tinder-part-xii/

A big swinging pair.

The man asked the victim, "What's up?" Caught off guard, the victim thought he might know the man, who entered the vehicle and sat beside the driver. A woman got in, too, sitting directly behind the driver.

By then, the victim realized he didn't know the suspects. The man in the passenger seat then reached under his shirt indicating that he had a gun and told the victim, "The next thing you say, you're going to heaven."

Unfazed by the threat, the victim responded by reaching into a bag beside him and pulling out his own .40-caliber handgun. He pointed his weapon at the suspect and said, "Let's go!"

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2018/11/29/carjacker-tells-texas-driver-going-heaven-grabs-gun-says-go

Life is expensive for America's poor, as this article in The Economist points out.

Life is expensive for America’s poor, with financial services the primary culprit.... Mr Martin at least has a bank account. Some 8% of American households — and nearly one in three whose income is less than $15,000 a year — do not (see chart). More than half of this group say banking is too expensive for them. Many cannot maintain the minimum balance necessary to avoid monthly fees; for others, the risk of being walloped with unexpected fees looms too large.

Pre-paid debit cards are growing in popularity as an alternative to bank accounts. The Mercator Advisory Group, a consultancy, estimates that deposits on such cards rose by 5% to $570 billion in 2014. Though receiving wages or benefits on pre-paid cards is cheaper than cashing cheques, such cards typically charge plenty of other fees.

The high cost of being poor has two main implications. First, inequality is worse than income figures alone suggest. This is true even before non-financial disparities, such as the implications for health of living on a low income, are considered. Second, finding ways to reduce these costs, for instance by making it easier to claim the EITC without borrowing, or by changing the rules on overdraft fees (which at the moment are used to cross-subsidise banking for other customers), would be a cheap way of helping low earners—and bargains are rare for the poor.

Ever notice how your Lyft driver seems to have precisely the demographic data required to play the greatest radio hits of your 21st birthday? That kid yesterday had obviously never even heard of Shirley Bassey or Rare Earth.

Nice ride, though.

The very stable genius hires only the best people

As with yesterday's link, the problem isn't that they're overwhelming the United States in some sort of high school sports contest, the problem is that they're fucking everything up.

"Life is expensive for America’s poor, with financial services the primary culprit...."

Well, duh. "The poor" are notoriously bad with money, which makes them a horrible risk... no, forget that, you can guarantee a loss in many cases because they cannot hold money. They have no concept of a "future {anything}".

Example: many of the homeless in SC are there because they thought an eviction would only put them on the street outside, when in fact it is the major legal reason another landlord will reject them. After all, you cannot compel a landlord to tie up their property through onerous eviction processes again and again when squatters simply remain - and trash the place.
This brings rent to $150/wk for one room.

But wait - "financial services"? What, banking? I can show you a hundred people who can't bring themselves to deposit a dollar. They take it right to its end-use.

What, banking? I can show you a hundred people who can't bring themselves to deposit a dollar. They take it right to its end-use. ~ Radwaste at December 28, 2018 9:51 AM

Rad, being bad with money is not the same as not having much money. Sometimes the dollar has to be taken "right to its end-use." Don't make being poor the crime.

Banks today require a minimum balance in order to avoid fees. Many poor folks don't have the money to maintain that minimum balance and avoid the fees, so they avoid banks.

Excessive fees on people that cannot afford them seems to be a recurring theme these days. The recent unrest in Ferguson was motivated less by racial animosity and more by anger at an excess of municipal fees and fines levied upon people who could not afford them.

The average Demand Deposit Account (DDA or checking account) nets a bank roughly $15 per year, so the banks are not motivated to reduce the fees associated with them, nor to reduce the minimum balance requirements to incentivize people to open more of them. Loans and other financial instruments are much more profitable.

In the '90s, I worked for a bank taken over by another bank and when we met with the new management, we were astonished at the indifference with which our new management proposed hitting customers with NSF fees -- thinking nothing of imposing 2-3 NSF fees of $25 each for a single failed transaction on online bill pay customers. Our system had imposed no NSF fees on online bill pay failures -- the determination of the non-sufficient funds was entirely in-house, so its failure cost us nothing (i.e., no ACH handling fees).

Because of that indifference to imposing fees, poor people are finding alternative banking methods, including reloadable debit cards and virtual banking.

Civilization is in trouble. It's regressing, folks. 1843 Magazine examines civilizational decline as evidenced by a decline of manners on mass transit in a review of In Pursuit of Civility by British historian Keith Thomas.

The book "tells the story of the most benign developments of the past 500 years: the spread of civilised manners. In the 16th and 17th centuries many people behaved like barbarians. They delighted in public hangings and torture. They stank to high heaven. Samuel Pepys defecated in a chimney. Josiah Pullen, vice-principal of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, urinated while showing a lady around his college, “still holding the lady fast by the hand”. It took centuries of painstaking effort – sermons, etiquette manuals and stern lectures – to convert them into civilised human beings [...] and comes to a terrible realization, "everything our forebears worked so hard to achieve is now reversing. A process that took centuries has been undone in just a few decades."

The Lord of the Rings as fascist allegory?

"Civilization is in trouble. It's regressing, folks."

Not a surprise. Robert Heinlein called the arrival of "the age of the Common Man" with an observation about the condition of public toilets.

Many modern Americans are "me first!" consumers, not citizens. Running the country? That's someone else's job. Making America great? Ha, ha, ha did you see Walking Dead? Here, have some weed!

Some voted for the candidate that called half of them "deplorable". That such a person ever advanced to candidacy should be all the proof you need that the system is broken.

"Because of that indifference to imposing fees, poor people are finding alternative banking methods, including reloadable debit cards and virtual banking."

Is that a bad thing? Clearly this is a business that large banks don't want to be in. If there are alternatives why shouldn't they be allowed to leave it? I would just prefer they be honest about it and completely refuse the accounts instead of nickel and diming them to death.

Is that a bad thing? Clearly this is a business that large banks don't want to be in. If there are alternatives why shouldn't they be allowed to leave it? ~ Ben at December 29, 2018 7:30 AM

I never said it was a bad thing, hopefully I didn't imply it either.

What Uber and Lyft are doing to a bloated and inefficient taxi industry, prepaid and reloadable debit cards, along with virtual banks, are doing to a bloated and inefficient banking industry.

Change starts with the folks who cannot or will not use the services of the established players in the game.

In an efficient and functioning market economy, sacred cows are regularly made into hamburger.

I would just prefer they be honest about it and completely refuse the accounts instead of nickel and diming them to death. ~ Ben at December 29, 2018 7:30 AM

In reality, they probably cannot "be honest" about it and refuse certain customers. That would leave them open to charges of discrimination. Banks are heavily regulated and discrimination charges are taken seriously.

"Rad, being bad with money is not the same as not having much money."

If you can show me how one does not lead directly to the other, I'm moving to your universe.

Rad,

One can lead to the other, but is not, by default, the cause of the other.

Being bad with money will lead you to not having much money. But not having much money can be caused by things other than being bad with money.

And some people with lots of money are still bad with it. If they're fortunate, they have enough to outlast their incompetence or are on an annuity so the damage they can do to themselves is limited.

Rad, I know a guy who made over 90k/year and used check cashing places because he couldn't manage to hold on to enough to keep a minimum balance for a bank account. Also couldn't pay the rent on time.

But at the same time I know people who aren't really able to make much money and that is why they are poor. Some people just aren't healthy. Some are old. It isn't that they are bad with holding on to money. They just can't generate much of the stuff.

Conan, Agreed that banks cannot be honest about what services they want to offer. The government has seen to that. But things would be better if they could be honest.

There was a story that made the rounds recently. A guy went to a bank to cash a check. The check wasn't from that bank and he didn't have an account there. The bank had problems recently with fraudulent checks so they were extra vigilant and annoying. After not getting anywhere for a while the guy tried to leave and the tellers called the cops on him. Neither the cops or the tellers were able to contact his boss who wrote the check that night, so the guy spent the night in jail. The next morning the cops got in contact with his boss who confirmed the check was valid and the guy was let go. The thing is the guy is black, so a lot of people are crying racism. Makes you wonder if they've ever tried to cash a check without an account like that. I wonder why he didn't go to a check cashing place. They exist for exactly this reason.