[Bud]

No. Emphatically, no. It IS robbery. Have you ever been a poor person? Have you ever been overwhelmed with depression and the panic of a lost job, a few dozen bills you probably can't pay, the shame of asking friends and relatives for help, and in so doing, risking your relationships with those people and your own self-esteem?

What you're missing here is that poor people KNOW that they are poor and right on the edge. They are already making a lot of adjustments that you probably can't even conceive of. They have a daily, hourly even, intellectual load from financial panic that more privileged people cannot even imagine.

The banks are the guilty party, here. They know that some of their customers are near the edge and in trouble, and they are strategically choosing to exploit them. Period, paragraph.

[yummyfajitas]

Have you ever been a poor person?

This is a fallacy. If you were to claim AGW occurs or that outer space is a vacuum, it would be a fallacy for me to say "have you ever been planet-sized body warming due to excess CO2?" Of course not, but one can still reason about such things.

If you are claiming that the poor are incapable of taking responsibility for their choices, recognize that there is a term for this: incompetent. Are you claiming the poor are incompetent and unable to make choices like the rest of us?

[OrwellianChild]

@yummyfajitas - I often appreciate the clear thinking you can bring to a discussion, but I just as often see you reduce human beings to logic machines in ways that are unfair to both them and your intellect...

There is a large and growing body of research around the limitations and capabilities of human decision making that shows just how/when these gaps appear. At a very basic level, poor (and otherwise distracted/overwhelmed) people suffer from decision fatigue [1]. There is much more going on, however, and I'm sure you'd find the studies fascinating, given your penchant for data-driven analysis. I cannot recommend Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow for starters...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue

[Touche]

> No. Emphatically, no. It IS robbery. Have you ever been a poor person?

Yes, I overdrew my account when I was in college and had $50 to my name. It was my mistake, I made a purchase unsure of how much money I had.

I also used to work for a bank that gave out RALs so I'm perfectly aware of the unethical behavior that happens in banking. So call it unethical, call it what it is. Using inaccurate alarmist language does not help the matter.

[tdfx]

As a college student, I am assuming that you didn't have much money, but also likely had rather limited expenses. To the family with children that has $50 to their name, a rent payment, childcare expenses, etc, most of which they can barely afford already, an unexpected overdraft can be the trigger that sends them off a financial cliff.

Poor people often make very bad financial decisions. But so do rich and middle class people. The difference is that the poor people have no one to turn to for help. Exploiting that may not fit the statutory definition of robbery, but it meets it in every other way I can think of.

[Touche]

All true, but you can't regulate away bad decisions. By attempting to do so you just make the next scheme even more disgusting.

[maehwasu]

Challenge accepted. I am going to regulate this problem away. New proposed regulation:

1. Banks must make rejection of a charge, rather than overdrafting, the default.

2. When overdrafting is enabled, cap the fees at some amount (say, $5), and also cap the amount the account can be overdrafted at, say, $50.

Looks like a pretty disgusting scheme to me. /sarcasm

[Swizec]

Funnily, that's how it works in Europe. Or at least anywhere in Europe that I've had an account.

[logicchains]

You can't regulate away bad decisions, but you can regulate away the consequences (by shifting them onto the wider population). Not that I support this, as I believe it unfairly penalises people who make good decisions, but it's certainly possible.

[nicksergeant]

Being in college with $50 to your name does not qualify you as poor.

[rfrank]

The unethical behavior in question is robbery. End of story.