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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   24433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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There was a twitter debate on Trumps plan to limit credit card interest rates to 10%.

In my view this is an interesting exchange between bad academia (fed paper), expert (Patrick Mckenzie), MBA logic, populists (Trump).

Trump proposed a policy of capping credit card interests rates at 10%. That set up a twitter folly of the high rate people are subsidizing low rate people with rewards backed by a fed paper.

https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2023/054/article-A001-en.xml

Ackman backing it: https://x.com/billackman/status/2009976076559077844?s=46

Personally being a dumb MBA I feel like I can perfectly segment pnl between subprime borrowers and rich people. If I make money on subprime and lose money on rich people I can just shutdown the rich people business and deploy more money to poor people. So the academia people are most likely wrong based on simple logic?

I can’t find it now but somewhere he did a longer post on how all cc are segmented https://x.com/patio11/status/2010185232159518904?s=46

I think for culture war attributes there are: Academia can do bad research. Ignore basic (or a price) and find a conclusion that seems smart but does not pass a logic text.

Honest experts can give full market breakdown.

MBA and idiots can give a logic that makes sense and is more correct than an academic trying to make a paper.

And then there is the Trump 10% interest rate cap. Maybe most borrowing above 10% interest is bad? I might compare this to online gambling where the people doing it and are profitable it’s bad for them. Or legalized weed.

If I didn’t make it clear above. Most of the rich people rewards are paid for by the high interchange fees of 3%. It’s not credit risks. It’s not subsidized by poor people.

Edit: as a high income high fico. I would prefer we limit credit card fees. And rewards go to zero. Then the store I go to doesn’t pay a processing fee. So they cut prices. And it probably saves me more money than getting 2% cash back.

Any store that would cut prices if processing fees weren't a factor will already give you a discount for debit.

Usually they can't because when they sign a contract for credit card processing, they have to agree not to offer a lower price for debit/cash. It's pretty normal in some countries like Australia to have a credit card surcharge though. In Australia the surcharge is capped at the cost for the merchant to accept that payment method, which seems pretty reasonable. That way there is actual price pressure to cut interchange fees.

Pretty common IME for gas stations to offer cash discounts. Much rarer among other businesses though.

Asian/Arab owner you need to ask for a cash discount. Asians give you one calibrated to the amount they save; Arabs give you a bigger one for the sheer thrill of tax evasion.

Nobody actually enforces explicit cash discounts in the US, and everyone knows that's for tax evasion. You think the credit card companies are better at checking up on that shit than the IRS?

Usually they can't because when they sign a contract for credit card processing, they have to agree not to offer a lower price for debit/cash.

This practice was recently curtailed in the US as part of a lawsuit brought against the credit-card companies. Visa and MasterCard settled the lawsuit by agreeing to stop including these "anti-steering" provisions in their contracts, while American Express refused to settle and got the Supreme Court to rule that anti-steering provisions are legal.

Anecdotally, I definitely have seen "a surcharge of X percent will be imposed on credit-card payments" signs posted at various US businesses in recent months.

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