Liberals...Destroying America since 1776

Today at work an interesting little exchange happened between a customer and myself. Not the usual type of unpleasant exchange, but one that had a political implication. At work there is a petition to stop unfair credit card fees that are charged to merchants every single time a credit card is swiped in their respective establishments. Basically what happens is every time you use your credit card the store you are using it in is charged 2% of the amount of your purchase, and if you're nice enough to be using American Express or Discover, the fee is 4%. For those of you who are mathematically challenged, merchants pay 2$ for every $100 you spend, or to make it sound like less of a big deal, since it isn't, $.02 for every $1.00 purchase. With this background information the following exchange occurred between me and one of our regular customers.

Customer: I will sign this petition, those liberals are taxing everything.
Me: Sir, I don't think that "unfair" credit card fees have anything to do with taxation.
Customer: Well, aren't you going to sign it?
Me: Not without sufficient background information on the subject. I am not one to just go around signing petitions that give me information that lead me to take a certain stance on an issue, without telling me the entire story. I like to think of myself as open minded and able to form my own opinions. I don't need a petition to tell me what to do.

I should have expected foolish commentary from a customer wearing a University of Michigan shirt. After busting up this guys chops for the fallacy in his argument I decided to find out what the real deal is with this position by conducting a little research.I found that there was an entire website devoted to this known as unfaircreditcardfees.com. I am sure the content matter on this website is designed to shove an opinion down my throat at all.

For those who don't want to read the article (I don't blame you, it's a snoozer), in summary, Americans pay $48 billion a year in "secret" fees. Notice the use of the word secret here. It is used in such a manner to cause the reader to think there is some heinous plot against them, causing them to stand up against this bullshit tyrannical stranglehold the big bad credit card companies have on us. The fancy term given to the aforementioned boogie man fee is "interchange fee." In describing this fee the website uses terms like predatory and reckless, which of course are not leading terms at all. Next comes one of my favorite parts of the article on the web page. "Because the big banks care more about consumers using their cards as opposed to paying them off, interchange has quickly become one of the root causes of billions in toxic credit card debt on the books of the big banks."

Of course big banks care about consumers using their credit cards geniuses. Last I checked, banks were businesses. What is the goal of a business? To post a profit, or at the bare minimum not lose any ground. Interest happens to be how these companies make money. The beauty of it is that the more they make, the more they have to lend out, in theory at least. The author's argument is dripping with uncogency. I don't know if any of you have ever been late on a credit card payment. I was once, and let me tell you, the card company was hounding me for the money on a daily basis. I am pretty sure lenders want their money back.

This argument also happens to be a red herring fallacy. The author is arguing about interest and the satanic banks being out to make money off of you (which is what banks are supposed to do), which has absolutely nothing to do with "interchange" fees.

When the author does talk about "interchange" fees, what would appear to be a decent argument is made, but it's still invalid, as there is not enough evidence to support the conclusion. The author claims that these credit card fees are driving up the price of merchandise. The very petition that gave rise to my intrigue claimed that it also impacted gas prices. I am going to call bullshit right now. What retailer in their right mind is going to lower the price of products if they've spent the past couple of decades getting bitchslapped around by the evil credit card companies and their bullshit fees? Get a clue, they're going to try to make back some of that money, and there isn't any evidence to suggest otherwise.

Rather than sit around crying about a bunch of hidden credit card fees, how about not using a credit card? It isn't hard. I don't use mine all that often, unless I am being bent over by Oakland University, which I guess actually is pretty frequent.