Congress might actually crack down on the crazy fees banks charge retailers when consumers use debit (not credit) cards, and this might happen:
Consumers also could save money, particularly at businesses like grocery stores that compete on price. But some experts warned that lower profit margins could lead banks to curtail bank card reward programs.
You mean that instead of competing on “rewards” or “miles” or some other impossible-to-price shiny bullshit, banks might actually have to compete on quality of service and fees?
Also, too, I’m not an economist like McMegan, but it does seem a wee bit odd that banks charge 1.6% of the transaction for use of debit cards. That’s almost as much as they charge for credit cards (usually 2-3%). In the credit transaction, the bank is taking a risk by making a loan to the cardholder. But a debit card transaction is essentially riskless for the bank. There’s small risk of fraud, but other than that, the bank is simply taking money out of your account and transferring it to the retailer’s.
El Cid
mistermix
Hee hee. Because reading Atlas Shrugged makes one an economist.
cleek
experts with no ties to the banking industry, i’m sure.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Unless the bank creates a risk by allowing the card holder to overdraw on their account without telling the card holder about the policy of the $35 fee for each overdraft. The risk is the holder will have difficulty catching up.
Looking for the report I saw about this…
frankdawg
@El Cid:
No, reading Atlas Shrugged makes one stupider, believing it makes one a perpetual 14 year-old boy economist.
I have had 2 experiences this week with retailers wanting to charge me 3% to use my cash card. Wrote the first two checks of the year.
kommrade reproductive vigor
of = or
And I can’t find the fucking report and I can’t even remember who ran it. Frontline? 60 Minutes? Any one know what I’m talking about?
arguingwithsignposts
@kommrade reproductive vigor: I recall what you’re talking about. was it the frontline doc. on the credit industry?
ETA: Not much pisses me off more than McMegan calling herself an economist. And I’m a biologist because I took a biology class.
Tom Hilton
When I was in 8th grade, my social studies teacher asked the class what the word ‘bank’ meant to us. I raised my hand and said ‘exploitation’. Of course back then I had only the vaguest idea, but…I was not wrong.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@arguingwithsignposts: That looks right, thanks. I remember they interviewed a teacher who wound up with a shit-ton of fees because a check was deposited in her account a couple of days late.
Really, and these fuckers wonder why no one likes them.
You are! In the Post-Palin world I’m a botanist and an ornithologist because I can see plants and birds from my front yard.
Oh look, a squirrel! I’m a … er … a squirreloligist!
The Grand Panjandrum
I actually don’t give a shit about this since it is a convenience for the consumer. What does piss me off is that as someone who uses cash for 99% of all transactions in a store I have to pay the same price. Credit card companies don’t allow merchants to give discounts to cash purchasers if they wish to accept credit card transactions. Hence, cash purchasers subsidize everyone else.
But my favorite people to be behind in line is the little old lady with blue hair who stands and watches the cashier ring up each and every item. THEN she opens up her fucking purse to get out her check book! This woman, and any one else who waits until the entire purchase is rung up before writing out the check, are the people who should be first in line for Obama’s death panels.
nanute
@arguingwithsignposts: How about Amity Schlaes calling herself an economist?
WereBear
Debit cards mean profit to the bank. Processing all those paper checks is a lot of peoplehours. Then they have to scan & destroy, or file and store and mail.
Banks love debit cards. Charging merchants to accept them is just frosting.
John
Are we talking about debit cards, or check cards? I always find the language on this stuff to be really confusing.
Because you have credit cards proper, where you’re borrowing money to pay for your purchase.
Then there’s check cards, which work exactly like credit cards except the money is immediately taken from your account.
And then there’s debit cards proper, where you have to enter your PIN, so that it’s like you’re withdrawing money from the bank at the point of purchase in order to pay for your purchase.
I’m never sure when articles like this talk about “debit cards” whether they’re referring only to debit cards proper, or to check cards as well.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Why do banks do this? It has 1% to do with risk and everything to do with BECAUSE THEY CAN. Think “dogs licking themselves there” and you’ve got the same picture.
As a small bidness, we can tell you that one of the biggest evils in this country are credit card processors. They have been virtually unregulated and basically screw businesses with every changing, upward, fees, non-adherance to their own contracts, etc. My wife would line em all up against a wall and gun them down…in front of their children, if given the chance, *that’s* how bad they are.
atlliberal
The bank takes no risk, even if there is fraud. The bank will process the charge, but if it is fraudulent, the store gets charged back for the amount.
I discovered this when someone got hold of my credit card and charged $1200 to 2 stores. The bank called me to see if I had made the charges, and when i asked them if they knew who it was, she acted like she didn’t care. So I said, but you are out $1200 and she said that in fact the merchant is out $1200.
My question is, what do the banks charge the merchants 1-3% for if they aren’t going to guarantee that if they approve the sale they will pay the bill?
WereBear
@atlliberal: See dogs/licking/there for your answer.
Merchants have to accept cards. There are a few businesses here that are exceptions, but I live on the edge of civilization, and there’s no where else to go. People don’t carry cash anymore, and the banks control the means of processing.
arguingwithsignposts
Have to say I actually like using a debit card instead of a paper check or cash or credit card. But the transaction fee is bullshit – it costs more to process a check, as is the $2-3 fee for getting cash from another bank’s atm. That said, credit unions FTW.
And Amity Schlaes can DIAF.
Mumphrey
@arguingwithsignposts:
And I’m a fireman, since I once saw a burning house. Oooh, and I’ve ridden on trains, so I’m an engineer, too. And I guess I’m an astronaut; I’ve seen the moon, after all. This is easy. I took a splinter out of my wife’s finger the other day, so I guess I’m a doctor, too. I had no clue I was so accomplished.
As to the main post, though, I think we shouldn’t be so hard on banks. They are, after all, only looking out for our best interest, right? I mean, they must be; otherwise the invisible hand would crush them, right? It’s unpossible for businesses to behave unethically or cheat their customers or the country they derive so many benefits from. If consumers are harmed, it’s only because government has overburdened them with needless and counterproductive regulations, and they need to shaft their customers to pay for the hordes of lawyers and accountants they need to make sure that they don’t mistakenly break one of those needless and counterproductive regulations. If the goverenment would only get off their backs and let them get back to the business of looking out for their customers’ best interests (which is all they want, as businessmen are as near to selfless and ascetic saints as we get in our world), then these “problems” would take care of themselves.
You should listen to me. I’m an economist: I had a piggy bank as a child.
mr. whipple
@WereBear:
“Merchants have to accept cards.”
Our little business only accepts CC’s via PayPal. I know we lose some sales because we don’t take them directly, but don’t care. I know of others like us who have dropped taking them because of the fees and hassle.
cleek
my bank apparently has agreements with a lot of other local banks – i get refunds on most of those ATM charges. so that’s nice.
MattF
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage
Yes, exactly. Banks + credit card companies own the highway, and if you use it, you pay a toll. There’s nothing wrong with this, a priori.
In terms of policy, the question is how (and whether) one should regulate a service that has evolved into a utility. Since there’s no competition for the service (your choices are Mastercard or Visa or Mastercard or Visa or…) it’s no-brainer, policywise.
John
@WereBear:
I live in a major east coast city, and there’s a fair number of places (generally restaurants and bars, but some stores, too) that don’t take credit cards. And lots of places have minimum purchase requirements.
Randy P
This puzzles me too. I didn’t even know about it till some conversations with some of my favorite local small business owners. I knew the dry cleaner hated credit card transactions for small payments, so I always try to pay him cash. But I didn’t know about the fees for debit transactions till a conversation at my favorite breakfast joint.
There’s no reason for that fee. It’s pure ripoff.
Does anybody know about those little ATMs that a lot of small stores have, that typically charge much higher fees than the ones in banks? Does the store get a cut of that?
There’s a chain of convenience stores in southern NJ and southeast PA called Wawa. They all have ATMs and there is no fee at all. Is Wawa eating the cost of those fees and the banks are still making money?
Because somehow the banks always seem to make obscene amounts of money.
Hal
So you mean going 3 cents over on my debit card won’t let the bank “reward” me with 80 dollars worth of overdraft fees?
Mudge
Be very very glad that you are not an economist like McMegan.
Randy P
@WereBear:
Plenty don’t. I guess it all depends on how friendly the relationship is with the customers. And even for those that do, like the dry cleaner I mentioned in my previous post, he’s comfortable telling me about the fees and asking if I wouldn’t mind paying cash for the small transactions. And I’m happy to accommodate. I know life is stressful enough for a small business and you’re perpetually on the edge.
I agree it’s a vanishing minority, but those that don’t take cards often have a loyal customer base who don’t mind working with them.
henqiguai
@The Grand Panjandrum (#9):
Yeah, my subscription form for that newsletter is already in the mail…
superdestroyer
As pointed out above, a debit card fee is the price of maintian the infrastructure for make debit card fees. How else would the banks and credit card companies pay for the server farms, the communication lines, and the IT support to keep it all going. That they make a profit on top the cost of infrastructure.
Look at pay.gov and one will see the future. Do people think that drug companies pay their FDA fees with cash?
Mumphrey
@Randy P:
I love Wawas. I grew up near the town of Wawa. It’s an old family dairy company that began builing little corner stores, and did pretty well for themselves. I think the same family still owns the company, though I could be wrong about that.
Jrod, Slayer of Phoenix
How about a fun “how the bank fucked me” story to start off the morning.
I had an account with US Bank, whose motto, by the way, is “5 star service.” It was the end of the month and money was tight, and at some point I did the math wrong. I used my debit card to buy a corn dog and a soda in separate transactions during a shift at work. Less than $3 purchased equaled $74 is overdraft fees. Yes, $37 per overdraft.
Since rent was due, I knew I couldn’t pay off the overdraft for a couple weeks. I did the responsible thing and called up the bank to work it out. The bank had worked things out on its own, however. I was informed that after my account was overdrawn for a week, an $8 a day fee would be added to the debt. By the time I’d have a paycheck that wasn’t spoken for by bills or rent, the fee I owed the bank would have nearly doubled. Unless I could get every last penny paid off, the $8 a day would continue to be charged.
At the time, I was barely scraping by on a measly $600-700 a month, so $56 a week to keep my account was no joke. I informed the bank that I couldn’t make their payments, and I’d have no choice but to abandon the account. They seemed ok with that, informing me that after a month of adding fees the account would be closed and sent to collections. This seemed preferable to me than taking two or even three months to catch back up with $0, even if my credit would be hit.
(At $56 a week, taking out a fucking payday loan to cover the growing overdraft would have made sense, as they only charge 15% a week, rather than the bank’s less reasonable 80% or so of the principal. However, those require 6 months of employment and a working checking account, neither of which I had.)
Cut to a few days before the account is supposed to be closed. I get a call from US Bank with an offer. Since I now owed them around $350, they wanted to set up a payment plan, where they would set my balance to $0 in exchange for a promise to pay the amount down when I could. Right. So the motherfucking payment plan wasn’t available back when it could have saved me any money, but it kicks in when it can save the bank the 50% or whatever they would lose when they sold the debt to a collection agency. I knew I’d just been run through a well-rehearsed scam, but I took the bank’s offer. I’d be out the same amount of money, but this way my credit wouldn’t get hit.
I never did put any more money into that account, dealing strictly with cash after that. I was lucky that my job allowed checks to to cashed from a till, and my landlord took cash. In a couple months, my debt to the bank was down to $100. I went into the branch where I’d first opened my account and demanded that they forgive the rest of my so-called debt if they wanted any more of my business. Well now, you see, since I’d agreed to the payment plan it was just impossible for that debt to be forgiven. Guess I should have brought it up before, eh what. So I slapped down a crispy Benjamin and ordered that my account be closed out in the most final and definite manner they could.
I now keep my money with a credit union. It’s so nice to keep my money with people whose goal isn’t to drain me like a chupacabras. And I’m not losing any sleep when I hear that congress has regulated yet another shady banking fee.
slippy
@superdestroyer:
So using their customers’ money to make investments in flaky get-rich-quick schemes that wreck the economy is no longer cutting it for them? Who knew?
You have no chance to survive make your time. For great justice.
Excuse me, I’m off to play Zero Wing.
burnspbesq
@The Grand Panjandrum:
“This woman, and any one else who waits until the entire purchase is rung up before writing out the check, are the people who should be first in line for Obama’s death panels.”
Don’t forget their first cousins, the people who stand in line for ten minutes at a concession stand at a stadium or arena, and don’t know what they want when they get to the front of the line.
Florida Cynic
@John: Ah, no. A debit card is a debit card is a debit card. “Check Card” is marketing lingo. The difference in using a PIN or a signature at the point of sale is that by signing, you’re subjecting the merchant to the higher interchange fee, which is something that Visa/MC promote because the banks make more money off of it, as do the card companies.
To the commenter asking about the convenience store ATMs, yes, the store gets a cut.
Steeplejack
@burnspbesq:
I’m always amazed when I get behind someone in a fast-food restaurant line who acts like they not only have never been in a McDonald’s before–ever!–but are unfamiliar with the whole concept of the industry.
OriGuy
@Steeplejack: Then there’s the parent with three kids who waits until they get to the counter to ask the kids what they want. This invariably leads to a discussion about the relative merits of the contents of the Happy Meal, the type of toy, etc. I usually know what I want when I walk in.
However, counter person, if I’m standing three feet away and looking up at the menu, I’m still deciding. No, I’m not ready to order.
Nicole
I love my credit union as much as the next person who also belongs to a credit union, but they, too, have been benefitting from the debit card fees. When limiting this was first proposed, my beloved CU sent an email to members requesting us to contact our Congress members and ask them to vote no so they could continue to make the money. Again, I love my credit union, but just because they are not-for-profit, it doesn’t mean they weren’t happy to collect the money, too. It just meant the money was (indirectly) going to members, and not to bank shareholders. But still being taken from the merchants.
I first learned about the credit card fees while overseas- the hotel we stayed at charged us the three percent that the bank charged them for us using our credit card. Annoying, but understandable. And far better than how some businesses here handle it- my husband was once hired at a restaurant that, if the customer used a credit card, charged the WAITPERSON the 3 percent fee. My husband walked out during training.
Corner Stone
@The Grand Panjandrum:
You have at least a couple supporters for this:
https://balloon-juice.com/2010/05/04/i-guess-that-would-render-miranda-moot/#comment-1741847
Church Lady
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Absolutely, and you are correct. Most banks will let a debit card overdraft up to $1,000 before finally declining a purchase. Our son ran into this problem this year at school, and ran up almost $300 in overdraft fees, in the process of charging a few bucks here and a few bucks there. I asked our bank if there was some way to have the card refused if there were not enough funds in his checking account to cover the charge. The answer was no.
We solved the problem by opening a new Visa account, adding him as an authorized user, and placing a very strict limit on the card. Now, he can’t spend more in a month than we have alloted. Once he reaches his limit, his card is declined.
different church-lady
–throws water in America’s face–
CASH, people, crikey!!!
I no longer have ANY tolerance for people who complain about bank fees on their $5 foot longs. YOU are the one giving the banks all this power over you! Don’t involve the bank in every penny-ante purchase you make and they won’t have the opportunity to rob you.
Bill H
Actually they are not taking money out of your account for the fee. When the bank charges a fee for the use of a card, be it credit card or debit card, they transfer the money out of the amount of the sale into the bank’s account. The purchaser’s account is unaffected, and the retailer’s income is diminished by the amount of the fee.
I am a retailer. I pay those fees on a regular basis. They are higher on credit cards than they are on debit cards because the former involves a risk. As a retailer I sign an agreement that I may not pass the fee on to the purchaser, and I may not charge a different price to users of a card than I do to cash purchasers. I may raise my prices overall to cover the cost of taking cards for purchases, and I do.
The fees charged for card purchases may be higher than is justified. I would not know about that. But they are enormously lower than they were just ten years ago or so. On Internet sales I was paying as much as 10% of the sale and now I am paying 1.75% plus a few cents transaction fee.
Bill H
@Jrod, Slayer of Phoenix:
Anyone paying for a $3 corndog other than with cash gets no sympathy from me. If you don’t have the cash inyour pocket, skip the corndog.
frosty
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Gee, and as a credit card user, I find that we are having the same experience. They “screw
businessesusers with every changing, upward, fees, non-adherance to their own contracts, etc.”I have dumped Chase for my local credit union. I’ve had enough of “surprise” 28% interest rates.
frosty
@Mumphrey: Brilliant! FTMFW!
ally
@kommrade reproductive vigor: You are right and the debit fee scam was horrible. New Fed rules will help a little
Boots Day
This can’t happen anymore unless you want it to. Banks are now required to ask you whether you want overdraft protection, or whether you prefer to have your card declined if there’s no money in the account.
Hob
@Bill H: I think you misread that comment. It was referring to debit card transactions, where the bank is indeed taking money out of your account — not the fee, but the amount of the sale. The point of the comment was to contrast this with credit card transactions, the point being that the debit transaction is more straightforward and doesn’t carry the same kind of fraud risk — at least that was the theory.
Corner Stone
I don’t understand this issue. I use my debit card from BoA for a lot of purchases and never pay any fee or vendor markup.
Am I talking about something different?
Hob
@mr. whipple: PayPal takes a cut on credit card transactions too — at least they do for me. But probably my little business is littler than yours.
ThresherK
I’ve about given up on Retirement Plan A (a steamer trunk full of Confederate scrip and Weimarks left to me by ancestors).
Now those Commies are coming after my bonus miles?
Hob
@Corner Stone: Yes, you’re talking about something different. When you pay for something at the store with a debit card, the store gets hit with a fee. They mark up everything in the store accordingly for everyone.
russell
I think this has been addressed in full upthread, but for the record, McArdle has a undergrad degree in English Lit and an MBA. She worked for some start-ups.
So yeah, McArdle is an economist like some guy with a telescope is an astrophysicist.
Bill H
@Hob:
I know of no banks that still charge a fee for debit card use, if they are doing that to you you should change banks immediately. In any case if they do charge your account each time you use your debit card the fee goes to the bank, not to the retailer. I can assure you, the retailer never, ever, gains by accepting a card of any description.
Corner Stone
@Hob: Hmm, so I’m socializing the costs by being a part of the system?
Bill H
@Hob:
Ah, I do see the point. On third reading my little pea brain finally got it.
Banks do, however charge a smaller fee for debit than for credit cards because of the lower risk, and there is some cost in processing the funds transfer. I have no reason to believe that the transaction should be done at no charge. They are not charging me any amount that I believe to be unreasonable. I am small and not free of credit risk, and they only charge me 1.75% for credit cards, which doesn’t strike me as exactly usurious.
What they charge for overdrafts and such is a whole different ballgame, and I am with the ranters on that.
Libby
I’m so old I remember when using the ATM card was free. At the time they invented them, they were selling the idea on the premise that it cost less than having to pay a teller to make the transactions.
Of course I also remember when they told us that cable tv was going to be cheaper and we’d get more choices if we allowed the corps to consolidate. And that electricity was going to get cheaper if we deregulated and allowed competition.
Turbulence
People may be interested in this interfluidity proposal for government provided debit cards. The idea is that it is really handy, economically speaking, for people to be able to pay with limited debit cards and interchange fees are way too high. So have the government issue a card with a $1K limit to anyone who wants one. You have to pay it off within a month. If you don’t, the card goes dead until you do and the debt turns into a tax lien (just like when you don’t pay your taxes). Since the government is massive, it could drive down interchange fees like crazy.
Mumphrey
@Jrod, Slayer of Phoenix:
That’s a shitty story. I wonder if banks even serve any useful purpose any more. I know that they came to be as a way for the economy to develop in Europe, but now, they don’t seem to be developing anthing at all, other than ways to fuck over their customers, or, if they’re really good, the economy of the whole country.
I recall a year or 2 ago, I was listening to Dianne Rehm in the car, and some guy was on talking about regulating credit card companies and banks, and he said that a lot of people will say, “Oh, we can’t overregulate them; it’ll stifle their innovation.” And he said that the only thing these companies were any good at innovating was ways to gouge their customers, so we should be regulating them out the ass (not his words).
He also said that when we regulate, we shouldn’t be outlawing this or that thing that they do to cheat and scam people, either, since they’ll find ways around the new restrictions; in other words, we shouldn’t pass laws that tell them what they can’t do, we should pass laws that tell them what they can do: “If you’re a bank, you can do A and B, and nothing else. If you’re a credit card company, you can do C and D and nothing else.” And then if they try some funny little trick, then they’re overstepping their authority, and the law can come down hard on them. I know conservatives have great faith in the Free Market, and that if companies behave badly, then Adam Smith’s Invisible Penis will crush them or something, but it’s all just bullshit. These guys have found ways to get away with doing stuff that would land mobsters in jail.
Jrod, Slayer of Phoenix
@Bill H: It’s not about sympathy, you jackass. It’s about the bank charging 10,000% interest on a loan. If you’re cool with that, then obviously there’s not much I can say to you, as you’re pro-gouging.
Hell, getting charged the overdraft didn’t really offend me. It was a mistake on my part, and even though $37 for a mistake isn’t exactly reasonable, it’s also not bugfuck insane. We’re not talking about $37 though, are we?
At least that’s not what I’m talking about. Apparently what you’re talking about is finding some way for massive corporations to justify robbing the poor and desperate for hundreds of dollars at a time. Or maybe you’re talking about how being broke and hungry enough to buy a shitty corndog to stave off the hunger sickness for hopefully enough time to get through a work shift without passing out is a crime against humanity that needs punishment.
Either way, fuck you.
Jrod, Slayer of Phoenix
@Mumphrey: It’s the peasant mentality that’s so prevalent here in the US. People have become so accustomed to being reamed by banks and big business that they think it’s the natural order of things. That might not even be inaccurate, as the strong dominating then weak is the law of the wild.
Of course, we’re not in the wild; we have a supposed civilization thing going on here, but for some people we never really left the jungle. Might makes right, so if a financial giant comes down and crushes one of the little weaklings, people will make up a justification for it on the spot. For a fine example of this, see Bill H. above.
superdestroyer
@Mumphrey:
If you try try to limit checking accounts to institutions that do nothing else, then why would anyone want to invest in such a company. If the government is going to limit an organization to zero growth and no profit, then no one will invest in it. The same could be said of credit card companies.
You should look up Montgomery County Maryland trying to regulate home mortgages a couple of years ago. Virtually every mortgage company suspended mortgage operations until the county relented. Massive regulations can kill an industry.
Corner Stone
@superdestroyer:
Why shouldn’t they be regulated as utilities? Why should a bank expect to “grow”?
They are skimming middlemen who do nothing but leach off people. Take a reasonable transaction fee to cover shared risk and otherwise get the hell out of the way.
Give deposits X% interest and loan out money at X+3% (or whatever). Why should a bank be an innovative company that craves capital expenditure to grow?
ETA – there’s clearly no cost of scale sized savings as the biggest banks still charge the same (or more) sized fees for doing the same tasks as smaller banks.
So tell us why they should exist at scale?
Corner Stone
@superdestroyer:
This is an example of extortion, not regulation.
DougW
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
That’s a feature, not a bug. Those $35.00 pops are pure profit.
Jennifer
The problem with all you folks is you aren’t working the system.
Me, I’ve never had a debit card, for the simple reason that I know I’ll forget to write down transactions and thereby give the bank an excuse to rape me, their valued customer. I had an ATM card for a year or so back in the early 80s and they used that scam then…they’d allow you to overdraft your account via ATM withdrawal, and then charge a “return” charge, never mind that nothing was being “returned”. So I chopped up the card and stuck to writing checks.
More recently, I’ve endeavored to cost the credit card companies etc as much as possible. I pay the bill in full, every month, so they collect no interest. Even though I pay online, I won’t sign up for paperless statements to save them the expense of mailing the bill. If that sounds petty, it is, but it’s no more petty than the rules and fees they impose upon their customers. I figure I’m treating them with the same level of respect they show to all of us.
And aside from the reason already stated about why I won’t get a debit card, it also occured to me that it costs the bank a lot more to process a written check than an electronic funds transfer, so I write checks. Sure, I have to spend a few dollars on checks (very few, if you order them online), but I don’t forget to record checks I’ve written, and if a number is missing in the register, I know to backtrack and record the transaction. But the bank not being able to collect any extra fees on it – that really clinches the deal.
prufrock
On the plus side, the current debit card policies can provide a useful barometer for the quality of certain businesses. For example, if a restaurant doesn’t accept credit/debit cards and thrives despite the inconvenience, you can rest assured that its food kicks ass (the best cheese steak shop in Dunedin, FL is fits this to a tee).
superdestroyer
@Corner Stone:
The mortgage brokers looked at the law and decided that the risk was too high and the potential profit was too low. The law was written to make it easy for lawyers to second guess every product offer and every mortgage deal made.
The more regulation leads to fewer companies in the market. Why do you think that no company in the U.S. makes Technetium-99 in the U.S. It is easier to do it in Canda and use international controls to limit the authority of the regulators.
Lewis Carroll
So I give my bank $$ for a year in a CD and they give me, if I’m lucky, 1.5%, and they move some electrons around when I make a purchase with my debit card, and they charge the merchant 1.6%.
So that’s how the economic rentiers are doing God’s work.