What would you charge him with?

How about facilitation or criminal solicitation?

LK

There are shooting incidents at inner city schools but not mass shootings.

A gang has a problem with a member of a rival gang or two drug dealers have a problem and someone gets shot. There aren't mass shootings because inner city schools are built with security in mind and often have an armed police presence.

LK

Unless we switch to solar, wind and/or nuclear for the bulk of our electricity generation, all electric cars do is concentrate where we burn the hydrocarbons to power them.

LK

I didn't word my statement clearly.

No, I wasn't "charged" to be a member but I had to agree to sequester $10.00 in my account as my membership stake or some such.

If and when I decide to close the account, I get my $10.00 back.

LK

I left out an important detail. So I can understand why you'd see them as separate issues. The piece of information that I left out is that my friend's financial decision making have led him to live in his mother's house. His mobility could be regarded as a side-effect of his inability to purchase his own home or to get a lease.

LK

It's not my intention to be judgmental about anyone's circumstance.

I come from modest beginnings. I'm not the best handler of money. I have a friend who's a good example of what I'm talking about.

He and I are from very close parts of town. We both come from divorced homes. He went to art school and I went to college. We're both pretty good in our respective fields. He is over 40 with no children. I am 37 with several children.

Despite the fact that we had similar educational backgrounds, he can rarely go an entire month without overdrawing his bank account. I own my own home and he does not.

He's my friend so I don't judge him. I don't look down on him. I don't think this makes me a better person than him. It does make me more fiscally astute. On several occasions I have asked him why he doesn't make certain changes and the answer usually ends up being that he prefers his system of financial management to one with more stringent rules. He has the freedom to pick up and move whenever he wants to, while I do not.

Basically, people choose their own lives. There are pros and cons to every decision. Choose yours widely.

LK

The Nigerian scam still works on this principle. They send you a check drawn from a foreign or at least out of state bank. You deposit it and the check clears. One business day later all of the funds are available. If you're stupid enough to send them the money, when your bank finally figures out that the check was worthless, they back-charge your account. You end up several thousand dollars negative that you have to repay out of your own pocket.

Despite the instant clearing, this process can sometimes take 8 weeks to play out.

LK

I wholeheartedly agree. The problem I see is that many conservatives and liberals are all for government partnership with big business, when it suits them.

LK

With all due respect sir, you don't know what my life and upbringing were like.

I've been luckier than many. Perhaps in some ways, I've been luckier than most. However, I have faced more than my fair share of hardship.

These are not perpetual infants that we're talking about. These are people who are presumably adults and are responsible for their own decisions, rational or not.
At some point, we become responsible for ourselves.

LK

Please don't take this question as an attack, I do not mean it as such...

Have you ever offered to give one of those domestic employees a $10.00 loan to open an account at a Credit Union?
$10.00 interest free, paid back $2.00/month...

I would suspect not. I would also suspect the reason is that you know they either wouldn't take it or for some other reason it wouldn't work out.

My point is that at some point, people are responsible for their own decisions and their own positions in life.

LK

I switched to a credit union in 2010 after I got fucked over by S & T Bank. My credit union charged me $10.00 for membership.

If you're in a bad financial situation, it can be hard to come up with a spare $10.00 but isn't that better than getting charged $4.00 EVERY TIME you want to access your money?

Yes, being poor sucks. But at some point, you have to start making decisions with an eye towards the long term.

LK

I'm not sure it's just having bounced checks so much as having bounced checks and not paid the money back.

LK

You are correct, check cashing places are on par with "payday lenders" as the lowest of the low when it comes to exploiting the working poor.

I have difficulty believing that aside from the most remote enclaves of humanity, the working poor in the US don't have access to banks or credit unions. This is speculation on my part, I admit that, but I would guess that the bigger problem is the lack of financial education for the poor. When you're more worried about where your next meal is coming from, it's less important to compare fee schedules from financial institutions.

Even a $5.00/month fee for a checking account is still better than the $2.00/transaction that they would get hit with by these rip-off cards,

I'd be less inclined to give the banks incentives. If it were my decision(admittedly it is not), I'd mandate that these cards have maximum fees capped at something like $4.00/month per card. Let the banks negotiate with Visa/MC for a little slice of the 2-4% on credit transactions that they'll make on purchases.

LK

I've done both. I've been salary and bi-weekly, semi-monthly and monthly. I don't think there really is a "normal" in this regard. It's just whatever the employer feels like doing.

LK

Agreed. I would opt the hell out of those BS cards. I can't believe that this is even a real thing. The first I heard of it was last week.

LK