XPost: alt.usenet.legends.lester-mosley   
   From: bill.sloman@ieee.org   
      
   On 23/01/2026 3:52 am, Phil Hobbs wrote:   
   > On 2026-01-21 19:59, Cursitor Doom wrote:   
   >> On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:24:42 -0800, john larkin    
   >> wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 19:28:02 GMT, marika  wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> Bill Sloman  wrote:   
   >>>>> On 18/01/2026 3:22 am, Jan Panteltje wrote:   
   >>>>>>> Bill Sloman wrote:   
   >>>>>>>> On 17/01/2026 5:06 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:   
   >>>>>>>> On Tue, 13 Jan 2026 16:05:30 -0800, john larkin   
   >>>>>>>>    
   >>>>>>>> wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>>> On Tue, 13 Jan 2026 23:42:30 GMT, marika    
   >>>>>>>>> wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>>>> Bill Sloman  wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>>>> On 8/01/2026 6:22 am, john larkin wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 8 Jan 2026 03:55:12 +1100, Bill Sloman   
   >>>>>>>>>>>>    
   >>>>>>>>>>>> wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>>>>>>> On 8/01/2026 1:02 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:   
      
      
      
   > Not everybody's income is that regular.  When you're living hand to   
   > mouth, getting sick or hurt can be hard to recover from.  Credit cards   
   > can be the difference between being hard up and being homeless.  Of   
   > course they're dangerous, and capping interest rates would help.   
   >   
   > When I got my first credit card in Canada, around 1981, it was illegal   
   > to charge more than 12% or 15% (can't remember which).  They were still   
   > giving cards to students.   
      
   The Melbourne University Economic Department carried out an essentially   
   sociological poverty survey in the 1960's. I took one of the graduate   
   students who had done some of the interviews to a graduate student party   
   once in the late 1960's. One of the more right-wing chemistry department   
   graduate students told her that the poor were poor because they were   
   feckless, and she dismantled him on the spot - the take-away message   
   from the interviews was that people fell into poverty because something   
   went wrong and if you were close to the edge it could be very difficult   
   to get out of poverty once you'd gone over the edge.   
      
   She's now a professor of Sociology in Sydney and I still get to talk to   
   her from time to time.   
      
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)