In case you haven't noticed it, anything within a hundred yards of a dollar sign is a scheme to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich.

It was not that way before Reagan.

JzB

Your Republican mother didn't have credit cards, but she had frivolous lawsuits?

CUT UP YOUR CREDIT CARDS. PAY CASH, and LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT.

I earn somewhere on the order of $200/month in rewards points due to credit cards. I scheme the rewards points like a motha fucka. I buy a lot of equipment for work (expensible). Credit card, 1% bonus on any card. Restaurants? 5% on Discover right now; 2% on BP/Visa other times. Gas? 5% at BP; 3% elsewhere on chase card. Etc..etc…….

Plus, if I ever need to run up credit (which has happened before no thanks to our wonderous magnificent health care system), I have the advantage.

The problem is not credit cards. It's the regulation of credit cards. There needs to be limits on these late fee / increased APR nonsense; deffered interest that is immediately added back if a payment is missed; impossiblely large credit lines to people who would never be able to afford it (credit does not justify the limit); ridiculous "over the limit" charges (as if the credit card company is unable to just decline a charge that goes over the limit, instead of charging you a fee); etc.

Subsidizing people who don't need the money isn't the singular concern with HOPE, I'd imagine. Another rationale for it is to keep smart Georgians in-state. Admittedly, the smartest will go where the smartest were going to go, because their interests in going to an out-of-state school (equivalent-to-HOPE scholarships, sheer superiority of the out-of-state institution) will outweigh the HOPE benefits. My guess is that the scholarships are targeted at such suburbanites for a good reason: those students are good enough not to go to the U. of Georgia, but not good enough to go just anywhere for free or to go to a remarkably superior institution. Thus, the HOPE scholarships make the U. of Georgia competitive with mid- to upper-mid level private institutions, as well as out-of-state state institutions (e.g. U. of Florida) that might offer a good scholarship, but not a good enough one to compensate for the additional out-of-state tuition fees. In other words, it helps to make the U. of Georgia something other than a safety institution for Georgians, and as its student body's academic demographic improves gradually, so will (presumably) the successes of its graduates, and from that its endowment, and from that…on down the line.