Direct deposit is "a pain in the ass to set up" because of the required accountability and tax compliance. They need a paper trail if someone in the chain tries to pull a scam, up to and including the payroll processor. They also want it doc'd that you set your witholding via a W-4 in case there's ever a discrepancy. It should literally take less than five minutes (if that), even for a new employee -- my business does it a half-dozen times a year or so. It's a common sense regulation that protects the employees, the employer, and the payroll processor -- let's not dump it because a few lazy folks don't want to fill out a form and provide their SSN or look for their account and routing #s.

You are correct, but it only makes business sense if you can mitigate some of the inherent higher financial risk that comes with doing business with poor people. That's why it's a fee-based structure, and that's why the fees are so high -- they have to offset the statistically-higher percentage of poor people who (for whatever reason) don't / can't hold up their end of the bargain -- by trying to cash bad checks etc. Many people blame the banks for this simply because "the banks are evil," but in reality, that's why interest rates for people with low credit scores are so much higher than they are for people with good credit scores -- there's a direct correlation between credit score and lending risk. The less risky borrowers are more desirable potential customers, so the banks compete for them by offering them a lower rate.

I do agree that this country needs to have an conversation about the growing number of poor, but it must be an honest conversation -- one that acknowledges that sometimes the poor are exploited by lenders, and also one that acknowledges that it's risky to lend money to poor people, because they're less likely to be able to pay it back.

Real estate prices inflated by speculation in 2014? Where? Maybe in San Francisco, or Manhattan, or the ultra-wealthy DC suburbs, but not in too many other places. Most markets are still recovering from the implosion and are *barely* beginning to show signs of that recovery despite years of the lowest historical interest rates ever. Borrowing money to buy a house isn't free, but it's as close to it as it's ever been, especially if you have made good financial decisions. One of the reasons the Fed has kept rates so low is precisely that -- housing lobbyists were screaming that raising rates even a tiny bit would damage the recovery. Again, I'd rather get a reasonable mortgage rate on my house and a crappy return on a savings account than be shanked by the banks for many hundreds more / month in interest, for decades -- but I guess that only impacts, you know, people who buy houses and actually plan to be responsible and pay on them.

had good interest rates

This is because historic interest rates were insane at the time -- the highest they've ever been. When you bought a house, your mortgage rate was about the same as the one you have when you run a balance on a credit card today. Can you imagine buying a house with your credit card, and running that balance for decades? That's what it was like -- so be careful what you wish for when pining for the 80s, especially regarding interest rates.

What could possibly be any more evil than what this old bat has done, for decades now? Yet you still blindly pull the lever for her, knowing full well that she's a piece of shit hellbent on destroying the Constitution, just because she has a "D" next to her name. It's lazy, irrational, stupid, and pathetic. You -- and the other people like you on both sides -- *absolutely* are the problem.

She's a Senator . . . what does gerrymandering have to do with re-electing her? The plain fact is that the majority of California voters want her to continue on as their Senator -- otherwise they'd elect someone else and she'd be out of a job.

Ahhh, so you're willing to vote for evil just so "your team" wins. Except that you haven't figured out there's only one team -- Team Status Quo -- and you're not on it.

You're a coward, and absolutely deserve every nasty thing Feinstein inflicts on your state. You have no principles -- only a tribe. People like you are why this country is fucked.

You jest, but you're talking about a real thing called reinsurance.

He's paying per MB downloaded . . . it costs him money for them to download their patches using his bandwidth, even if nothing else is going on.

"Students of the Code.org tutorials have written 507,152,775 lines of code.

So *that's* how they fixed the ACA website. ;-)

The real problem there is there are a few Congress people that are on the NSA's side

Not just a few . . . a bipartisan majority.

Bullshit. The leftist "big gov't is always right" crowd wants to nail him just as much. How dare he have the audacity to paint the result of the granting of unchecked Federal power in a negative light to the serfs?

This is NOT a left- or right-wing issue. Both parties gleefully hate your freedoms and civil liberties and take turns shitting on the Constitution while playing people against one another with wedge issues like abortion, gay rights, and illegal immigration. And people like you who put the blame on one side but not the other are part of the problem.

You are bound to the city by the choice you made (to become a father) and by your own morals, not by some law of the land. Legally, you can get up and leave right now . . . but of course, there are consequences. For childless folks (and even for some folks with kids), it can indeed be that easy to move, whenever and wherever you want . . . I've done it many times. I'm not judging -- just pointing out a huge distinction.

This means you can be absolutely ruthless with the price . . . you can get the same thing anywhere else. Do your homework online and find the price that people are actually paying, and call every dealer within 150 miles and ask for their best price. Start playing them against each other, and eventually, one will work with you -- typically towards the end of the quarter when they're all trying to make their number, or at the end of a model year when they have excess inventory. If you don't get exactly what you want from a certain dealer, tell them to pound sand and walk. They prey on most folks' discomfort with the negotiation process -- you need to turn the tables on them and be a little opportunistic, but you can save many thousands if you do so.

Traditional car dealerships are owned by wealthy, powerful folks who've managed to preserve their monopoly via lobbying their local and state legislatures to force the auto manufacturers to sell thru the dealer chain. This forced "3 tier" system (a lot like the others many states enforce on commodities which throw off a lot of tax revenue, like alcohol, where a chosen few are granted a limited number of licenses) does nothing to help the consumer -- instead, it limits choice and artificially drives up the price. There's no practical reason for these laws in 2013, yet we still have them. I'm hoping that companies like this one and Tesla manage to disrupt the obsolete, 20th Century business model, but I have my doubts.