With Tesla, you can turn a $2,442 windshield installation into a $3,174 windshield installation through the power of interest.
This is being reported by the Teslasphere as an “excellent option” to restore affordability to a car market that desperately needs more affordability.
Only, neither of those numbers is even in the same ballpark as affordable.
A sane society would ban interest rates beyond 2x the Fed. 12% is plenty to make profit.
Higher interest rates allow creditors to take on riskier customers. Having said that, the US sorely needs regulation in all financial matters.
A sane society wouldn’t create a currency based on debt
Our entire economy is balancing on infinite growth, because it’s all made up of chains of debt that all siphon off money upwards, at every step
If this was done in the USA, a lot of airlines would struggle or even collapse if they couldn’t figure out how to adapt.
The four biggest airlines in the US (United, Delta, American and Southwest) all lose money on flights. The way they make a profit is through their co-branded credit cards. The banks pay the airlines to purchase miles from them to use as points, and one of the primary ways the bank makes the money to do that is from interest payments.
https://www.investopedia.com/the-four-biggest-us-airlines-all-lost-money-flying-passengers-last-year-8781856
I’m not saying that interest rates shouldn’t be limited, just that there’d be some major impact since a lot of the financial industry is funded by interest payments.
I have one of their cards but I pay my balance off every month. They have got to hate me.
Even when you pay off your balance every time, they still make money charging merchants for every transaction. But yeah, they make shit tons more from people carrying balances.
This is one of the reasons merchant fees are so high in the USA.
In Australia, merchant fees for a medium-sized business are an average of 0.75 to 1.5% for credit cards and 0.25% to 1% for debit cards, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia (https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/pricing/card-surcharges).
In the USA they’re often over double that. Some payment processors charge 3% or more for credit card processing.
Yeah, it’s an absurd amount. A lot of restaurants add on an extra fee if you pay by card. When will the madness end?
I mean that’s credit cards in general. The alternative would be to switch to a debit card, but as a consumer there’s quite a few protections I’d lose out on like charge backs and fraud protection.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I use credit cards for everything and pay it off in full every month. I get extra benefits over using cash or debit. Gotta play the game