Author: TheConversation

Installment loans by Payday lenders evade laws and perpetuate predatory assault on consumers

By Paige Marta Skiba, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University; and Caroline Malone, Ph.D. Student in Law and Economics, Vanderbilt University Installment loans seem like a kinder, gentler version of their “predatory” cousin, the payday loan. But for consumers, they may be even more harmful. Use of the installment loan, in which a consumer borrows a lump sum and pays back the principal and interest in a series of regular payments, has grown dramatically since 2013 as regulators began to rein in payday lending. In fact, payday lenders appear to have developed installment loans primarily to evade this increased scrutiny....

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Moral licensing: How philanthropy encourages bad behavior under the guise of making the world better

By Patricia Illingworth, Senior Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Professor of Ethics, Northeastern University I teach a course on ethics and philanthropy and have written about how to donate to charities ethically. Recent news about people who make big charitable gifts acting badly is making me wonder whether philanthropy really does make the world better. Think about it: Members of the Sackler family, who have given millions to arts institutions, also own Purdue Pharma. That’s the company that patented and aggressively marketed Oxycontin, an approach that helped bring about the opioid...

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Red Kettles: How Salvation Army bell ringers became a Christmas tradition

By Diane Winston, Associate Professor and Knight Center Chair in Media & Religion, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Tinseled trees and snowy landscapes are not the only signs of the upcoming holiday season. Red kettles, staffed by men and women in street clothes, Santa suits and Salvation Army uniforms, also telegraph Christmastime. The Salvation Army is among America’s top-grossing charities. In 2018, its 25,000 bell-ringers helped raise US$142.7 million. That was part of the charity’s $3.8 billion year-end revenue from bequests, grants, sales, in-kind donations and investments as well as direct contributions. William Booth,...

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Processing Pain: Why we avoid adversity even if it fuels our own personal growth

By Eranda Jayawickreme, Associate Professor of Psychology, Wake Forest University Frank J. Infurna, Associate Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University In our culture, there is the idea that enduring a tragedy can be good for your personal growth. But what does the science say? Surviving adversity will provide you with a newfound appreciation for life. You will be grateful for your friends and family. You will learn from the experience. You will become more resilient. This theme appears in media coverage, time and again, in the wake of natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Is there actually value in pain...

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The Invisible War: Much still unknown after a century of studying combat trauma

By MaryCatherine McDonald, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University; Marisa Brandt, Assistant Professor of Practice, Michigan State University; and Robyn Bluhm, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State University In the wake of World War I, some veterans returned wounded, but not with obvious physical injuries. Instead, their symptoms were similar to those that had previously been associated with hysterical women – most commonly amnesia, or some kind of paralysis or inability to communicate with no clear physical cause. English physician Charles Myers, who wrote the first paper on “shell-shock” in 1915, theorized that these symptoms...

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African-American soldiers fought for democracy overseas and freedom at home

By Maria Höhn, Professor and Chair of History, Vassar College Until the 21st century, the contributions of African-American soldiers in World War II barely registered in America’s collective memory of that war. The “tan soldiers,” as the black press affectionately called them, were also for the most part left out of the triumphant narrative of America’s “Greatest Generation.” In order to tell their story of helping defeat Nazi Germany in my 2010 book, A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany, I had to conduct research in more than 40 different archives in the...

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