A Word of Caution on Buy Now, Pay Later

 From Medium:

You know the products — Klarna, AfterPay, Sezzle, Affirm, even PayPal “Pay in 4.” They offer you the chance to buy what you need or want right now and pay for it over a short period of time, usually in four total payments.

This type of purchasing power boost can be especially helpful in a time of rising inflation. You get the product you want now at today’s price and manage the total purchase over time. It’s generally free, so it seems great.

Consumer groups, however, are warning that so-called “Buy Now, Pay Later” products actually come with a cost — and that cost can be high in terms of fees and even hits to your credit report.

One group that took a look at BNPL is the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG). They analyzed complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to determine trends in the use of these products.

Here’s a quick distillation of the core findings:

Our findings, based on a review of complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Better Business Bureau (BBB), show that hidden fees, interest and debt collection problems can harm consumers. We also find that consumers also face problems with customer service.

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                                                    Marcus Loke/Unsplash

  

Writing Fiction on Simily: Will the Site Survive?

 From Medium:

Last week, I wrote about stagnation on the platform. The growth remains slow. As of today, they still have less than 3200 members. I’ve read stories on Medium of writers who started there and have since left. The biggest complaint: Lack of engagement.

This is to be expected on a platform with just over 3000 members.

I’ve posted five stories there and gotten some engagement on each post, but that has slipped in recent weeks.

Simily has been doing a round of 1:1 Zoom calls with members. They are seeking direct feedback about how to improve the platform. However, the call I had scheduled with them was not until April.

Now, they are doing small group calls with five people each. This means the calls will happen sooner and they’ll get feedback more quickly.

This indicates a sense of some urgency. They want feedback, they want to give everyone a voice, and they want to do it more quickly than originally planned.

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                                            Yannick Pulver/Unsplash'

Saving Billions on Health Care

This post by Negin Owliaei highlights the crisis in American healthcare and the urgent need for Medicare for All.

One night a few years ago, my partner woke up delirious with fever, a bright rash, and joint pain so bad he couldn’t get out of bed without help. I was scared — mostly for his health, but also for our financial situation, which weighed heavily on me during our 4 a.m. ride to the emergency room.

As a freelancer, his catastrophic health insurance plan had an outrageously high deductible, and every day he couldn’t work was a day he wouldn’t get paid. I’d lost my job — and my own health insurance — earlier that year, and was still piecing together a livelihood from gig to gig. I didn’t know what we’d do if something went seriously wrong.

We left the hospital several hours later after an IV and a couple ibuprofens — and no diagnosis. Even after insurance kicked in, we were billed about $1,000 for the experience. My partner’s joints hurt for months afterwards, but the already hefty price tag scared him off following up.

It turns out he’s far from the only one who looked at a bank statement before considering a trip to the doctor.

A recent study found that 65 million Americans had a health issue over a one-year period that they didn’t treat because they were worried about the cost. And 45 percent of Americans — including a third of households making more than $180,000 a year — worry they could go bankrupt over a major health issue.

Nearly half of those survey respondents said they thought U.S. health care was either the best or among the best in the world. But our actual health tells another story.

By a long shot, the U.S. has the most expensive health care system among the 36 mostly high-income countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. But for all that money, we rank just 28th in life expectancy and 31st in infant mortality.

Nothing about this system is healthy or caring. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In 2014, the same year we worried about a $1,000 trip to the emergency room, our insurance company spent nearly $20 million on executive compensation. More than $5 million went to the CEO alone.

What if our health care system didn’t allow people to make these exorbitant profits off our pain? What — and who — could we save?

By one assessment, a universal, single-payer system like Medicare for All could expand coverage to everyone while reducing the cost to American businesses and people by as much as $310 billion — primarily by cutting down on industry bloat and by negotiating fairer pharmaceutical prices.

While our monstrously expensive health care system is maddening, the harm done to people who can’t afford to participate in that system is what’s truly enraging.

Read the stories attached to the one-third of GoFundMes specifically devoted to crowdsourcing money for medical costs and I’m sure you’ll feel the same. Thousands of people in the United States die preventable deaths each year simply from lack of insurance.

Fortunately, there’s a groundswell of support for a publicly funded health care system. And researchers say one proposal — the Medicare for All Act — sets “a new standard for universally and equitably guaranteeing health care as a human right in the United States.”

No one should have to worry about bankruptcy before seeking out the treatment they need. Health care is a human right, and we deserve no less than a system that provides it universally and equitably.

Negin Owliaei is a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-editor of Inequality.org. Distributed by OtherWords.org.

Billion Dollar Shave

A note on wet shaving... with a brush and double-edge blade … from an expert:

The primary question from men considering the traditional shave with brush, shaving soap, and safety razor is, “Why bother?” Or, as a friend put it, why put aside all the modern technology of pressurized cans of formulated shaving foams and gels and the modern multi-blade razor cartridge that allows you to shave while still half asleep?

The answer varies by person, but for me it is the sheer pleasure that the morning shave now affords. Shaving has moved from a routine at best, a chore more often, to a wonderful ritual from which I emerge feeling truly pampered. I now look forward to shaving each day, and that feeling more than repays the little bit of equipment required. The daily shave: a daily pleasure. How many guys can say that?

The reason many men are choosing to shave with a safety razor, however, is much more down-to-earth: the multiblade cartridge uses a tug-and-cut approach that, for many, causes ingrown whiskers, razor bumps, and skin irritation. These men turn to the double-edged blade and safety razor for the comfort they achieve once they learn how to use the instruments, which might take a week.

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The Marijuana Gateway

This article originally appeared at OtherWords.org

Like nearly all Americans of a certain age, I was told in school that tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana are gateway drugs — and that is why marijuana should remain illegal. 

First of all, even if you accept that these three substances are “gateways” to something worse, why is it that adults can use alcohol and tobacco legally, but not marijuana?  

This is particularly outrageous given that, unlike alcohol and cigarettes, marijuana has a wide range of medical applications. 

Other than prescription opioids, marijuana is the only drug that relieves my chronic migraines. I like that it doesn’t come with the addiction or overdose risks that opioids do, and I want to use it legally and under a doctor’s supervision.

Unfortunately, I live in Wisconsin, where even medical uses are illegal.

For me, marijuana is a gateway to relief from headaches, not a gateway to harder drugs. Legal medical marijuana allows me to decrease my use of opioids.

Senator Kamala Harris recently reframed the gateway idea in another way. The war on drugs approach of criminalizing marijuana, she said, “is the gateway to America’s problem with mass incarceration.” As a former prosecutor and drug warrior who now supports decriminalization, she would know.

While I was sitting through D.A.R.E. classes in school, others were being criminalized and locked up for nonviolent drug offenses.

These harsh drug laws and strict sentencing guidelines were not enforced equally, either. Although blacks and whites use and sell drugs at similar rates (white people actually use drugs a bit more), black people are 6.5 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses.

In part this is because law enforcement spends more time looking for drugs in communities of color than in white communities. They could have found plenty of drugs and underage drinking among the rich kids in the dorms and frat houses of the mostly white, elite private school where I went to college, but they weren’t looking.

After the arrest, racial disparities continue, disadvantaging low income people and people of color at every stage of the judicial process. The racial disparities continue even after someone has paid their debt to society. A black person with a felony record faces more employment discrimination than an equally qualified white person with a felony record.

It seems like the war on drugs is on its way out, although not quickly enough. The tide is turning toward medical usage of marijuana and even some psychedelics, legalized recreational marijuana in some states, and handling addiction with treatment instead of prison.

Yet marijuana is still fully criminalized at the federal level and in many states (I’m looking at you, Wisconsin).

Many jurisdictions that have legalized marijuana have also expunged the criminal records of anyone convicted of nonviolent, low-level marijuana offenses. But there’s no way to give them back the years of their lives they spent locked up for pot.

Why are we still paying taxpayer dollars to incarcerate cannabis users, taking them away from their jobs and their families? Our current path is a gateway to misery. Let’s choose another.

OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is pursuing a PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Distributed by OtherWords.org.