Don’t worry though.
The well-to-do probably aren’t doing this.
The beauty of credit cards!
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I wonder where they learned it from.
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As ignorant as I was from 18-21 years old, I knew a credit card was not an extension of my income, but an alternative. I am at best of average intellect. I knew not to be that stupid.
Any time I used a CC it was because I needed something now instead of later. Which was rarely. But that then altered my spending for the month. Why do people not care about making their situation worse?
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temporary gratification
Allan
And instant gratification
I hardly ever use credit cards. It’s only if I need something now as opposed to later. Do you know what credit card companies call people that pay their bill every month?
That’s what I did as a young adult. If I used a credit card, I paid it in full in one month. Do you know what they call us? Serious question. You’ll be surprised by the answer if you don’t already know. Don’t go looking it up. Just guess.
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smart.
Allan
Deadbeats.. This is not a joke. People that pay their balance every month are considered deadbeats. Because they’re using the service free of charge.
cost of doing business. its only hurts profits slightly.
more than made up for people that pay the interest charges and other fees.
Allan
There needs to be a coordinated effort, pushback bipartisan against AI is literally being used and will be used for one purpose alone to take jobs. Not sure how all these companies gonna make any money when everybody’s broke.
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Company A (located in Canada or China etc.) uses AI to reduce workforce.
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Company B (located in the US) does not use AI to reduce workforce.
Fastforward 10-15 years – Which company as the lowest prices and the biggest warchest to expand, advertise etc.?
Which company is out-of-business or nearly so?
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Well, that’s the problem. I’m seeing is like who’s gonna buy all the stuff if nobody can work? So people who outside digging a ditch or they say nursing, they might be protected for a while, but anybody that puts data in a machine whether it’s computer science or even lawyers are screwed.
I just saw where they have an AI actress she can do everything a regular actress can do and do it better and you can change your looks within three seconds older or younger or whatever. And I see where people in Hollywood are pushing back against it, but they need to do that from the beginning, not just when it comes after their jobs.
That is never a problem in the long term.
It involves a multipart process that is sometimes hard to see
but when the weaving loom was invented 1 in 5 (20%) of English industrial workers worked in the textile industry
- the long term result was NOT permanent umemployment of 5% or 10% or 20%
- the long term result WAS that textiles became cheaper, plus labor and factory space were freed up and redeployed so other things became cheaper too.
I don’t mind too much, but I do wonder why you are discussing this topic on this thread. I don’t see a direct relation.
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And I don’t mean to further derail the thread but another example: In 1860, 50% of the US workforce worked in agriculture. Still, people sometimes went without food and starved.
In 1900, 40% of US workforce worked in agriculture. Still, people sometimes went without food and starved.
In 2025, less than 1% of the US workforce works in agriculture. We produce so much food that no one starves and we export about 30B worth of agricultural products.
Did we lose a lot of jobs in ag? Yes we did. Did it make us better off? Yes it did.
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Not true.
Credit cards get a transaction fee from every purchase.
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and its no small matter - a couple percent of an extremely large number is a very large number! It’s good to be a credit card issuer.
I present the follow in good humor
(It is not intended to be mean-spirited.)
“Well if ya open the Erie canal, all them folks driving wagons are gonna be outta a job!”
“And if you automate the grain harvest all them farmworkers are gonna be unemployed.”
++++
In the 1830 Americans spent a whopping 30-50% of our incomes on basic food stuff. Grains, esp. wheat were the main part of our diets then.
- In 1825 the Erie Canal opened making it a LOT cheaper to transport grain from farms in the Midwest to markets in the East.
- In 1837 Cyrus McCormick perfected the mechanical harvester.
This was big! It was AI big! It was big as the automobile or the lightbulb.
As a result of those two things a lot of labor was saved and the price of wheat dropped 43%.
(GASP! Massive unemployment is a’coming. Grab yer gun. Lock up yer womenfolk. Shreik!! We need Universal Basic Income!)
(more)
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Other technological improvements that led to lower prices (and quality improvements)
but DID NOT lead to massive permanent unemployment.
.
.
.
Model T
In 1910 a Ford Model T cost $950.
By 1925, the price had dropped to around $290.
Refrigerators
1950s: Early home refrigerators cost between $500 and $1,000
1980s: $500 to $1,500
1990s: $800 to $1,200
Televisions
1950: $500 to $1,000 (for a B&W with a crappy picture)
1970s: 21-inch color TV might cost around $500
Today: Walmart is selling 24-inch flat screen TVs for $74. Free delivery in 1 hour.
Technology can be very disruptive.
In the short term it often does cause unemployment.
But as long as the government does not stick its nose in and try to “fix” this temporaty problem, in the long term, these things cause our standards of living to go up, not down.
I’ll also point out that the credit card fees paid by vendors have to be factored into the cost of business. (And they prices they have to charge to stay in business.) Therefore, not only do credit card users (even if they pay off their balance each month) NOT use the service for free, but also cash customers pay for that (unless the vendor gives a cash discount.)
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