It sucks but things were worse before, especially if you were black.
Or an immigrant. Or a woman (especially if you're pregnant). Or if you lived near black people or immigrants. Or if you had long hair. Or maybe the local bank manager just didn't like you. These were all acceptable reasons to deny your loan application prior to credit scores.
They literally made decisions based on things you can't control. Banks are now legally prohibited from even asking these things. If you notice, people working at a bank will never ask "where are you from?"
Fuck I sound like a bootlicker but the net result was that it took away some control of the rich to influence social mobility.
But rich people are living organisms and their think tanks are the smartest. They’ve already found ways around it.
As time moves on, a lot of things containing racial bias have gotten more abstract. For example, we don't segregate schools by law anymore, but African-Americans do tend to live in neighborhoods together, those neighborhoods tend to have lower property values, and schools are funded by the taxes on property values. Segregation is still there, but you have to go a few layers deep to find it.
However, as its been forced to get more abstract, it's also become less effective. Without absolute prohibitions against African-Americans attending the same schools as white people, there has been more upwards mobility of African-Americans to live in better neighborhoods with better schools and end cycles of poverty. Still, it would be better if we got rid of this dumb property tax system for schools altogether.
Credit scores are the same. It abstracted away the racism. It's still there, causing unnecessary hardship, but not to the degree previous systems did. There is more room for upwards mobility, but that doesn't mean we should leave it as it is.
Came here to say this. Credit scores are meant to remove some of the racial and social bias from the decision making. That was the idea anyway.
Doesn't mean this is how it has to be. It can be improved further.
While true, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
It's not like they didn't look through your financial history before then - they just didn't have to show their working publicly, which meant you could ne discriminated against for any number of things
So the same now, except now all personal data is located in one place according to the rules they set, from which they can sell your data and preemptively block you or refuse to meet you to discuss your practical repayment capability.
All of those could be and were done before, only it wasn't public so you had no way to also know your score.
You're not wrong - I was just pointing out it's always been that way. The rich never played fair, they played to win.
Do they show their work now, or just a score based on a bunch of non-public calculations?
They don't provide the exact formula, but they will provide what influences the score and their record of those factors.
I tried to open a bank account at a credit union while homeless. Had $42k on my direct express card, finally on SSI, lump sum was for the previous year while unable to work.
No debts, never used a credit card. Couldn't open a bank account. Had to go thru a program that assigned me a fake credit card debt that I had to pay off for 6 months to get my credit score high enough.
Credit scores are a scam.
Sorry but that credit union sucks and you needed to move on. Credit unions should never deny someone an checking or savings account if they do not have a history of abuse.
Indeed. As evidenced by the fact that doing things that are money-smart (in general, stuff that amounts to avoiding debt) is actually harmful to a credit score. The powers that be want you to consume on borrowed funds.
This is my point, thank you for sharing your story.
If you are injured, not lucky or born into less fortunate circumstances, this credit system will stop you from taking control of your life.
It's depressing what happens when we give corporations the leeway to do whatever they want, isn't it?
It’s our version of China’s social credit score.
Credit scores didn’t exist but credit bureaus date back to the mid 1800s in the USA. Also, as others have mentioned creditors would do their due diligence and try to assert that you would be able to pay back your loans by doing many of the same things they do now.
This really isn’t some new, crazy concept like you’re making it out to be. The score has only simplified the process.
Back in the seventies/early eighties, I remember my grandmother getting financial privilege by showing the check numbers in her checkbook, which were in the high thousands.
If you ran around bouncing checks, you would get cut off long before that and have to start over at the dreaded check number 101.
Such simpler times.
Remember when there wasn't a proprietary algortithm giving everyone a social credit score and instead you had to get a letter from an existing member to signify your trustworthiness?
I dont like the proprietary nature of credit algos, but I'm not a fan of the letter system either
Tbf personal credit cards have only been around since a couple decades before that.
But they primarily use credit scores to deny mortgages to people. Getting a CC with a bad credit score is very easy. The rates will just suck. And we've had mortgages, car loans and business loans a lot longer.
Just wait till you learn what they used to deny people mortgages before the invention of credit scores.
Correct. Credit scores are bullshit.
The idea is fine, but when they’re run by the credit bureaus, they’re subject to extreme corruption. Even if run by the government, as they should be, they’d be subject to extreme corruption.
What will blow your mind is that there is now an insurance score that insurance companies use similar to a credit score.
In Norway having loads of credit cards is negative for getting a house loan as it is potential debt that goes against your payment ability for the house loan.
Meaning we do have a credit score system for getting loans and more stuff on various credit solutions, but credit cards works against larger loans.
Which can be a pain in the ass when you want to buy a house/apartment and have credit cards that might deny you the last bit of money to win the bidding war...
I will just leave this here. Your employers can snitch on you as well and just give all of your paystubs to...Equifax. It was shocking to see which ones did and which ones did not.
The first time I saw this I was shocked. Every single paycheck of mine is there and there's basically nothing you can do about it without having negative credit impacts for having manually disabled it. Why on earth is this opt-out rather than opt-in? Then it wouldn't look like you're trying to hide something if you value your privacy at all.
It's crazy this is legal. So dystopian.
The whole financial system is only about 50 years old
Credit scores have existed for decades, as the article states. It's specifically the FICO system that was started in 1989.
1989? Blame Taylor Swift
Wait until you hear about Dunn & Bradstreet and Moody's
FICO is kinda stupid in some ways but with responsibility it's not hard to get a decent rate/favorable score. Yes at the top end is dumb you need to open more credit but in practice that's not hard to do assuming you aren't just forced by circumstances to just live off credit.
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