RANKING: Call to end abuses
We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1! … we’re No. 1 in the percentage of citizens that earn $7.25 an hour and Idaho has the highest pay day loan interest of 582 percent. Isn’t that lovely. Not exactly what a venture capitalist is looking for to locate in a local economy to sell goods or services now is it?
The press published an article about how Idaho is in the top five states to do business in. I was encouraged until I read that the low minimum wage was one of the criteria. Idaho has the highest percentage of folks that make a whopping $7.25 an hour or about $14,000 gross wages a year which is not anything to be proud of. That reality is just placing more and more minimum wage earners on the handout wagon that also decimates the ranks of married parents. We are better than this.
We need to reserve tax incentives for businesses that actually pay living wages that don’t shift their employee costs onto taxpayers through Medicaid for the uninsured, rental housing assistance, earned income credit tax refunds that are often more than one pays in, or food stamps. It’s this socialism that enables any adult to earn minimum wage. And then I read Idaho’s unregulated pay day or car title lenders lead the nation and charge 582 percent annual percentage rate? If that’s correct, that is 50 percent interest a month! This is an embarrassment. Even shameful. Evidently Boise sees no need for reining in vulture capitalists. It doesn’t take a genius to determine that there is a huge disparity between Washington and Idaho since so many are lined up like cord wood at the ID-WA border. We are better than this.
Idaho is where one goes for cheaper booze, cigarettes, low wages and loans that rival big city illegal loan sharks. That’s not shared prosperity. That’s not the common good. 582 percent interest is virtually guaranteeing perpetual poverty for any borrower.
But not all red states are this self-defeating. So if Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas can see the light and ban such abuses, so can we!
MIKE RENO
Post Falls