My last post noted how the credit card companies are out for blood, garnishing huge portions of workers’ wages for consumer debt payback. The callous tyranny of capitalist greed for profit continues as yet another kind of company is out for working-class blood—auto loan companies.
Have you ever heard of a starter interrupt device? I hadn’t until this past weekend.
But apparently these devious devices are installed in about two million cars. The devices can disable a car at the click of a button by collections agents when those car “owners” are even just a few days late on their payments. One loan collection agent callously noted how easy it is for him saying “I have disabled a car while I was shopping at Walmart.”
Subprime auto loans have jumped in recent years. Last year about 25 percent of all new auto loans were subprime. Wall Street wants to sell cars to people with poor credit because those loans offer high returns at a time when interest rates across the board are generally low.
So a person who has poor credit—as many of us do because of student loans, medical debt, or any number of debts that pile up as we try to survive living in a capitalist world—buys a car. They are happily offered a subprime loan and then told they need to install a starter interrupter device before leaving. Now, a loan company can stop that person’s car just because they are a few days late on their payment.
The key is that these aren’t rich people’s cars. Nope. Rich people aren’t hounded by callous, uncaring loan sharks who see people with low credit scores as a great, big money pot. Now that poor, working class person’s car can be stopped when she or he needs to drive their children to the hospital or when he or she is stopped at a light on their work commute or in any number of embarrassing, detrimental or life threatening situations. Just for being a few days late on a payment.
It’s an absolute tyranny of money, of greed for profits that is yet one more example of the nature of the capitalist system. And yet another reason to struggle to replace that system with something humane.
