Three Reasons
* Practical
* Theoretical
* Theological
Practical
* Usurers may be few, but borrowers suffering usury are many
* Examples of usurious debt (personally secured loans for profit)
* Credit cards
* Pay Day Loans
* Student loans
* Car loans
* Most mortgages
* Impoverishes many people, e.g. student loan debt
* Leads to hatred of the wealth not suffering the debt
* Hatred of institutions involved in it, such as universities
* Destabilizing force on the economy
* Aquinas: usury is selling what does not exist
* Usurers have fake wealth on their balance sheets
* Can't sell a person if he defaults
* Bad risk management
* 2008 Financial Crisis
* Implications of enforcing usury
* Healthier economy more based on real property and assets
* Almost all business credit would still be in place
* Consumer credit would be gone
* Universities would suffer
Theoretical
* Usury is generally excused because of theoretical financial/economic concepts
* Time value of money, opportunity cost, risk premiums, etc.
* Usury doesn't invalidate these, but limits their scope
* Time value of money is an abstract way of measuring the value of a productive good in terms of the goods it produces
* Example of an apple tree - power to generate apples has value, can abstractly measure value of tree in terms of the future apples, but it is the tree that has the value
* A mutuum has no productive property, the one paying the claim is a person
* Legal Theory
* Moves us to a more classical understanding of contracts
* Since usury is based on property rights and the nature of contracts
Theological
* Reintegration of dogmatic and moral theology
* Fundamental moral determination in light of the moral object
* Reaffirmation of the dignity of the human person
