George McGovern on payday lending: Freedom means responsibility
March 2, 2008 | Wall Street Journal, customers, industry, media coverage, positive media coverage | Comments (0)Former Democratic presidential candidate and South Dakota Senator George McGovern has an outstanding piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal on the problems with “economic paternalism,” in the effort to ban payday advances. Here are a few choice quotes:
“Payday lending bans simply push low-income borrowers into less pleasant options, including increased rates of bankruptcy. Net result: After a lending ban, the consumer has the same amount of debt but fewer ways to manage it.”
But McGovern goes beyond the mere mechanics of how banning or restricting payday advances hurts consumers. He offers insight into the very foundations of individual liberty and how it’s engrained in American society and culture:
“Since leaving office I’ve written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I’ve come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.”
At the risk of getting too classical, your Payday Pundit is reminded of this gem from Italian statesman and poet Dante Alighieri which well parallels the sentiments in McGovern’s WSJ piece:
“Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds.”
Seems we could use a little more 14th Century wisdom in the 21st Century.
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