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Notes -
The most likely result of a 10% credit card interest limit is that
poor peoplepeople who are bad credit risks stop getting credit cards. Note the difference between poor people and people who are bad credit risks is actually a major point in that first paper, which claims that credit card rewards to high-income people with good FICO scores are paid by high-income people with bad FICO scores, not low-income people. You can't perfectly segment people between subprime borrowers and rich people, because some rich people are bad with credit and the credit card companies are happy to charge them for it. And some low-income people are good with credit, and credit card companies will give them rewards.One secondary result will be a curtailing of rewards programs. I suspect high-FICO-score customers will miss the rewards programs a lot less than the low-FICO-score people will miss their credit cards.
Another secondary result will be a drop in consumer spending, which no one but miserly paleoconservatives and neo-traditionalists will like.
Whether it would help the subprime people who lose access to credit is hard to say.
You should know better than that. Prices in stores are not cost-plus, and even if they were, the result of limiting credit card fees and rewards would not be limited to affecting those costs. Certainly discount fees would not go to zero. If as Ackman says, "classic" credit cards have about a 1.5% discount fee and top rewards cards have about 3.5%, then even if you recovered the entire difference from losing rewards cards, you'd break even.
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