What micro-credit recipients get IS capital. Their problem is that they can't monetize their work product as easily as they should be able to. Micro-credit helps them to that so that they can shift into new lines of production.
I really think you have to keep in mind that there are many, many people whom capitalism has simply left out of the system - not exploited but ignored.
On 10/17/06, joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> Yes, it's very, very expensive to be poor. No humor intended.
>
> What rally burns my ass about the microcredit movement is that it
> supports the very ideology that creates poverty. Theoretically, it turns
> every individual into a mini capitalist, even if the only worker to be
> exploited is the self. It also makes a mash of the idea of capital,
> since it implies that what the microcredit recipients get is "capital."
>
> Nothing I have left to say on this subject is printable.
>
> Joanna
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > On 10/17/06, boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> connect poor people to the financial system
> >
> >
> > In the heartland of capitalism called the USA, there are "56 million
> > individuals" who have no access to a regular financial system.
> >
> > <blockquote>In 2002, there were almost 56 million individuals in the
> > U.S. who did not have either a savings or checking account at a bank
> > or other traditional financial institution.1 Additionally, over 83
> > percent of families without a bank account earn under $25,000.2 These
> > families often use alternative financial services, including check
> > cashing, payday loans, refund anticipation loans, and others, that
> > provide convenience at high cost. A 2004 report estimated that these
> > alternative financial services handled 280 million transactions,
> > generating $78 billion in fee revenue.3 As a result, "unbanked"
> > low-income workers who can least afford to pay more for basic services
> > often do. They pay to cash checks, are subject to higher interest
> > rates on credit, and pay higher fees and interest rates for consumer
> > loans, auto loans, and home mortgages. (David Marzahl, O.S. Owen,
> > Steve Neumann, and Joshua Harriman, "First Accounts: A U.S. Treasury
> > Department Program to Expand Access to Financial Institutions,"
> > Profitwise News and Views, February 2006,
> > <http://www.chicagofed.org/community_development/files/02_2006_first_accounts.pdf>)
> >
> >
> > Given recent (still continuing?) discussion of American Populism in
> > the 19th century, I should add that populists called for establishment
> > of postal savings banks in the Omaha Platform: "We demand that postal
> > savings banks be established by the government for the safe deposit of
> > the earnings of the people and to facilitate exchange" (at
> > <http://www.historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5361/>). That was an excellent
> > demand, but it still remains unrealized.
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>