There are businesses out there that make a living off of exploiting poor people. They take the normal hopes and fears of decent people and use them as fuel for taking their money.

Example:

Last Friday I was talking with one of my friends, a Latino man I first met when he was homeless and sleeping in a church parking lot, behind the dumpster. I watched him move from Muslim to Christ-follower, from living outside to working a full time job and renting his own place. While I hope that my relationship with him has helped, he did most of the work himself.

Our conversation was somewhat routine: He had just gotten a new place, a small efficiency apartment and he wanted me to come over and see it.  He said he would be home all afternoon, as he was waiting on them to deliver the television.

“You bought a TV” I asked?

“Nah. I am renting one – only $20 a week.“

The resulting conversation, where I explained that he was getting ripped off and that if he waited just six weeks he could buy one new and own it outright and where he told me he worked hard and deserved it, did not go well. When I found out it was a big screen plasma TV, I went nuts.

Who do you blame here? He is proud that he can work and grant himself a luxury. Everything he sees on TV and in the culture tells him that “normal” people have these things and he should have them too. The salespimp at Rent-A-Center encouraged him to upgrade to the bigger TV, and it is “only” $20 a week, - or about 8% of his income. No one in his life has taught him about delayed gratification or how to goal set. He lives in a ‘right now’ world. And he sees the rest of the world having these things, and after sleeping outside for several years, it is probably normal to want to feel normal.

I am a capitalist, more or less, and I want people to make money. But when your business model depends on the gullability of uneducated poor people and on exploiting their weaknesses, you are a special kind of slime.