Ever notice hardware, grocery stores and banks are harder to find than a Help Wanted sign in many black communities, but liquor stores are still standing on just about every other corner. Then, you have probably also noticed the black community has a “newer” menace in the payday lender.

I know there are some folks out there right now who might be sitting around with the lights turned off if it weren’t for that quick, few questions (all you need is a check book and a paycheck stub) asked and no credit needed, injection of liquidity. For these folks, there are no other options and payday lenders fill that need.

Hardline consumer advocates argue it’s an artificial one. But it’s a moot debate and likely one the payday lending industry relishes having.

As long as the issue is either or, folks will likely go with the status quo as opposed to risking having no service at all. After all, folks still have the freedom to not do business with payday lenders. You can’t legislate people out of making bad choices, right?

But ultimately, it’s not about the service but the terms. The real question: Is the high price you pay for that short-term loan justified? Is it an exaggerated interest rate explained by exaggerated risks — theft or other losses — due to the laxed lending standard?  Or is that premium so artificially inflated it bares no resemblance to any logical risk analysis? Is it simply usery?

In answering that question, I will just say 390 percent. That’s the amount of interest being paid on most payday loans even though it’s translated into fees on the retail end. A $39 processing fee is a hell of a lot easier to market than 390 percent in interest.

Back to my original point, there ain’t that much theft and “cost of doing” business nonsense in the world.

Simply put, payday lenders were the pioneers of the “underbanked market.” As pioneers, they defined the terms of doing business, which included double-digit profits and growth. Profits in this sector even in this economy and even with the unrealistic number of new players on the field are often about 20 percent. In Ohio, there were 107 payday lenders in 1996. Ten years later, there were 1,562.

The Wall Street Journal recently dismissed efforts to reform the payday lending industry saying it would simply make it harder to get and more expensive. The article was penned by Robert DeYoung, a University of Kansas finance professor.

“Research suggests that most payday borrowers are more rational and informed than critics believe” DeYoung wrote. Then he went on to site “new research”  indicating that half of payday loan customers “considered other options” prior to taking out a payday loan and 90 percent were satisfied with the transaction.

I imagine most crackheads might indicate a similar level of customer satisfaction if anyone is interested in surveying them.

Those guys at the Wall Street Journal assume people are really just that stupid, or genetically wired to be so pro-business that no one will bother debunking their one-dimensional supply and demand B.S.

Or could it be that journalism there has just regressed to blatant attempts at influencing an uninformed public opinion and blindly push a conservative economic philosophy regardless of the truth.

In any event, there is a huge cushion in the payday lending industry, in terms of profit and availability. It could be regulated within an inch of every one of its CEOs lives and it would still be a profitable sector. And as long as there is a profit, there will be a service.

There will be fewer of them, if Congress chooses to set limits on what they charge, but that’s as it should be. At present, you can’t spit in a transitional, semi-urban or urban community in the continental U.S. without it landing on a check-cashing or payday lending store font. In the words of Bill Faith, director of the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending, “There are now more payday lending shops in Ohio than McDonalds, Burger Kings and Wendy’s restaurants combined.

In fact, if you want to break it down to a strict dollars and cents argument, if this sector did scale back to something nearing a reasonable presence in poorer communities, it could logically make up the money it loses due to price caps by volume alone. Like I said, they fill a need. Even at a less criminal premium, they would still make money.

Regulating the market i.e. price caps would do one thing: Lower the cost for consumers of payday loans who are largely minorities, women, military personnel and folks who make less money and are often less educated than society in general.

Most conservative economic types hate price caps on principle. Price caps are evil. Alright, we get it. But this is not your average marketplace. It’s essentially a predatory services destroying many poor families, of all races, by luring them into a vicious lending cycle. Price caps are not only appropriate but the only socially responsible course of action. Do we not have laws limiting the sell of alcohol, lottery tickets, drugs, cars, cigarettes and every other type of financial service?

The conservative, free-market thinking defenders of the payday lending industry routinely ignore the concept of corporate ethics assumed in other markets.

They never address the issue that payday lending is the very essence of usery. And they routinely ignore the fact that banks would — void of the friendly, neighborhood, always within walking distance, loan shark — likely fill the void.

They always assume these lenders are a net benefit on poorer communities, ignoring all common sense. Often the payday loan is just the right amount of rope some poor, living on the margins, slob needs to hang themselves. And the payday lending business model entirely depends upon them doing just that.