According to “An Analysis of Consumers’ Use of Payday Loans” by researcher Gregory Elliehausen of George Washington University, “customers used the loans a small or moderate number of times during the past year, typically for less than a month at a time. Such use seems consistent with the intended purpose of payday loans as short-term borrowing to pay unexpected expenses or relieve temporary shortfalls in income.”

Finally, “few payday loan customers considered payday loans as a debt trap. Only about 3 percent of payday loan customers mentioned difficulty of getting out of debt as a reason for being dissatisfied or only partially satisfied with their most recent new payday loan.”

Have you noticed how rarely newspapers editoral writers quote solid, respectable scholarship in their rants?