Fuzzy Vision | Religion and Payday Loan Politics (Pt. 6)

Who’s a Christian?

This concludes this article. CLICK HERE if you missed part five.

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Go where there is greatest need

Meyers takes exception to the authors’ claim that “75 percent of America considers itself Christian. It therefore stands to reason that three out of four of any type of retail store will exist in an area where Christians live and control others.” He takes this position primarily because the authors’ present no evidence that proves this theory. And as far as 75 percent of Americans claiming to be Christian, there are polls to support this, but there is also ample evidence that many people in America change religions or support atheism, so take the numbers with a grain of salt. It all depends upon who you ask, their methodology and which way the wind is blowing.

Meyers states that payday loan stores appear where there is need. Otherwise, they would be much less likely to remain in business. This is no different than with any other storefront business that aims to stay in business. It would be illogical to expect to find a BMW dealership in the inner city, generally. This has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, or religion. It’s economics. The only way to truly understand the variables at play in payday loan store location is to conduct grassroots, person-to-person surveys at storefronts. The authors did not do this, and hence their viewpoints on clientele cannot be accurate.

Here’s the punch line

“Our findings should serve as conclusive proof that conservative Christian Americans are a prime target of PDLs,” write Graves and Peterson.

Wham! Bam! It’s that simple. Yet their findings offered no conclusive proof and their research methods were completely ineffective, says Meyers. They began their study with a pronounced bias against payday loans, and their methods did nothing but solidify that bias in readers’ minds. As Meyers begins his concluding statement:

They select data from biased sources in financial competition with payday lenders, cherry-pick quotes from studies that reach divergent conclusions, selectively interpret Scriptural passages to support a flawed definition of usury, base their entire methodology on inaccurate data and sampling bias, and present data subject to omitted variable bias.

Was this trip really necessary?

Graves and Peterson’s work proves no correlation between the location of payday loan stores and societal exploitation. There is no proof of causation. They even take it upon themselves to attack Christian legislators who vote in favor of payday loans on the free market. Meyers wraps it up by stating what we already know:

With the hypothesis itself of no value, and the methodology and conclusions also demonstrated to be false, the entire paper is rendered meaningless. It renders unfair judgment on payday lenders and Christian politicians. Worst of all, it implies favoritism towards paternalistic government policy.

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