I want a low minimum payment on my credit card

On Wednesday September 30th, the Canadian government unveiled new regulations concerning the information credit card companies must provide on the statements for consumers. This includes a summary box that will tell consumers how long it will take to fully repay their balance if they only make the minimum payments on their credit cards.

As someone that really enjoys numbers I may be amused at reading this number on my credit card statement; though the intent of providing this information to consumers is misguided. I am reminded of an article I read in the Toronto Star, "Credit card debt fuelling bankruptcies, group says", when a Senate committee began debating this issue.

The consumer rights advocacy group, Option Consommateurs, argued before the Senate that the cost of credit card debt has been increasing because credit card issuers have lowered the minimum payment that they require. To illustrate this they compare how long it would take off to pay off $1000 only making the minimum payments if you have minimum payments of 2% or 5%. It would take 4 times as long to pay off with the lower payments and you would end up paying 5 times as much interest. The unfortunate thing is that Option Consummateurs effectively argued that this was evidence that lower minimum payments hurt consumers.

Let me just mention a couple things that everyone with credit cards should know. Credit cards have very high interest rates; because they have high interest rates you should try to pay off your credit card debt as quickly as possible. Making minimum payments will keep the credit card companies happy (rich) but is not the best way to pay off your debt.

I typically tend to pay off my credit cards each month which avoids any interest charges but I do understand that there are times when it would be best not to pay off my credit cards immediately. I think of seasonal workers that have to live without a paycheque for a few months with the knowledge that they have a good job come the next season (My father was a school teacher and he would not receive a paycheque for a two month period every year). If the start to feel that money is tight they would want to make as little payment against their debt so that they have money for necessities until they start receiving their paycheques again. So if they were owing $1000 and decided not to pay it for 2 months it would cost them an extra $0.91 in interest charges if they were making minimum payments of 5% instead of 2%. As a consumer, I feel that if money is tight I would be happy to have $60 extra available that I could spend on food for my family than the $0.91 interest it costs me to keep that debt.

It is in the interests of consumers to have as low a minimum payment as possible. It does cost them more to make lower payments; but having the choice is better because they can simply make the higher payments if they believe the low minimum payments are bad.

I hope that providing information about the length of time to pay off the debt by making minimum payments; does not trick people into prioritising cards with low minimum payments instead of cards with high interest rates.

Ontario sues Tabacco companies

Ontario is suing the large Tabacco companies for $50 billion in order to recoup the cost of the health services provided as a direct result of people smoking tabacco. The Ontario government had changed the law in March in order to allow for this lawsuit to happen.

It is very harsh for the government to change the rules and then apply a penalty retroactively over the past 50 years. Imagine if the government starts taxing Carbon and then sues businesses for the cost of their carbon emissions over the past 50 years; people would rise up in arms.

The government is already taxing cigarettes above and beyond the typical provincial sales tax. This is presumably because they know that there are additional costs to society when people smoke. If the government believes that this tax is not sufficient to cover the costs that the government is forced to pay as a direct result of people smoking then they need to raise the tax. Perhaps the government is worried that with higher taxes people will no longer be able to afford cigarettes and quit, which will reduce their tax revenue (and their healthcare cost)?

There is no need for the government to sue an industry when they could simply tax that industry. Ontario should just set the tax on tabacco products to reflect what they feel it is costing society in terms of increased healthcare costs, loss of productivity and crime prevention.

Illiteracy

Yesterday, I read "Illiteracy costs Canada, individuals" by Ellen Roseman, in the Toronto Star. It was reporting on a study done by the Canadian Council on Learning which said that 48% of adults have low literacy skills. They use a 5 level scale to grade literacy levels. The five levels with a brief description are as follows:

Level 1: Very poor literacy skills.
Level 2: A capacity to deal only with simple, clear material involving uncomplicated tasks.
Level 3: Adequate to cope with the demands of everyday life and work in an advanced society.
Levels 4 and 5: Strong skills.

I cannot believe that 48% of Canadians scored less than level 3. To score less than three that means that they did not have adequate literacy skills to cope with the demands of everyday life and work in an advanced society. A score of less than 3 means that they are unable to cope with the demands of everyday life or work (I assume here that we consider Canada an advanced society). To state that half the country is unable to cope with life is laughable because they are coping with life.

I hate that I am probably demonstrating my poor literacy skills writing this. But I think that to have such a large portion of the population score so low on the test; they must be testing for something more than literacy skills to cope with life.

Flaherty increases deficit projection on good news

Jim Flaherty provided an updated fiscal statement yesterday at the Chamber in Commerce in Victoria. He has revised the projected deficit this year from $50 billion to $55.9 billion. In January the deficit projection was $34 billion. I find it amusing that on the same day the Bank of Canada made an announcement that says recent information suggests that "growth in the second half of 2009 could be stronger than the Bank projected in July". As well, last week Statistics Canada released a report that employment increased in August which was a pleasant surprise. So amidst above expected figures for job growth, GDP growth and on the stock market Jim Flaherty thinks that all of a sudden the economy is doing a lot worse than he previously thought. Does he expect us to take these projections seriously? Is he going to tell us next month "Surprise I think we might be in surplus territory"?

How does Flaherty plan on getting rid of this deficit over the next 7 years? Well he has promised not to raise taxes or to reduce transfers to individuals or the provinces. I presume that this means that the federal government will be reducing the number of people that work directly for the government and getting rid of the services they provide. Though maybe this will not be a problem because of the 10 000s of public servants who provide no service to the public. If only there was a government department of "Public servants paid for no reason" that would be easy to cut. Unfortunately, making significant cuts to government expenses will involving cutting the services provided by the government.

Afghanistan's Election results

I am going to be blogging about stories I find interesting in the news. Too often I feel there is a lot of nonsense in the news and so I will give my perspective on these issues. I intend on focussing mainly on Canadian politics but with some foreign affiars as well.

The results from the Afghanistan election are in (with more than 90% of polling stations reporting): Harmid Karzai has won 54% Abdullah Abdullah has won 28% and Ramazan Bashardost has about 13% of the vote. There is significant evidence that there has been fraud with regards to 1 million ballots of the 5.5 million votes cast. To have 18% of the votes deemed fraudulent is disgraceful for the whole electoral system.

What is clear in the results however is that Abdullah Abdullah and Harmid Karzai are the two candidates most preferred by the electors. The Afghanistan electoral system involves having a preliminary vote for President; then the two candidates with the most votes in the preliminary votes will be the only two names on the ballot in a run-off vote. The run-off is not deemed necessary if a candidate gets more than 50% on the initial vote because with more than 50% support the run-off would likely be a foregone conclusion and simply waste time and money to run. However, with ridiculously low voter turnout of 25% and large accusations of fraud will anyone in Afghanistan be satisfied knowing the president won with 51% support under those circumstances? I would suggest that Afghanistan needs to have a run-off vote between Harmid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah. This would give Afghanistan a second chance to run a fair election. The election should not waste 6 months going over 2000 accusations of fraud; instead they simply should declare that a run-off vote will be held that will be fair. Anyone that thinks they have more than 50% of the support should not object.

I am astounded by many of the accusations of fraud which I have read about in the news. Polling stations which return more votes than they were issued ballots. Boxes that get stuffed with 500 or 1000 votes all for one candidate. If a run-off were to be held I think it should be reasonably easy to organise scrutineers for each side. Scrutineers would prevent much of the fraud. On voting day both scrutineers could sign that the ballot box is empty to start and then both be present for the counting of the votes. After the counting is done they would then sign a slip with the official count and seal the ballot box in case of a recount. Then neither side could dispute what their scrutineer had signed off. This would stop much of the ballot stuffing and votes not being recorded.