That’s one modality of predatory lending: exploiting cluelessness and immaturity.

Here’s another: exploiting vulnerability. People who are at the worst times in their lives often can’t get credit elsewhere, and get screwed by the sub-prime industry. Now, you might claim that the borrower is better off than if no loan was available at all — but there are good economic reasons to think that exploitative loans act as a substitute for non-exploitative loans, and that if the exploitative ones were outlawed, there’d still be a sub-prime lending market.

Maybe we need to have a Single-payer legal system to get all these lawyers out to the people who need them instead of just sitting around writing law review articles…

“Although federal law says creditors can’t seize Social Security, disability and veteran’s benefits to pay a debt, enforcement of the law is scant, and many Social Security recipients are unaware of their legal rights.”

Just because a deadbeat has one income stream that is exempt for attachment doesn’t mean she doesn’t have others. Or are you suggesting that any and every recipient of Social Security should be sumarily exempt from any and all civil actions attempting to collect a valid debt?

Just trying to get a feel for what color the sky is in your world.