For many people, there is not a lot of leeway in available funds. If something becomes fouled up, a veritable nightmare can begin. For example, say you think you have a hundred bucks in the bank, and so you write eight checks to pay bills, buy bread and milk, pay for school lunch, or whatever. In reality, you forgot that last week, you had to pull eighty dollars out of the ATM to have your broken car towed from the side of the highway.

The grocery check comes in for $10, and all is well. The other seven checks come in behind it. The school lunch check was $20, and bang, the bank does you a favor by paying it, but they charge you $28 to punish you. Now you have a -$38 balance. The other six checks hit, and the bank decides not to pay those, and they send them back, but not without deducting (6 x $28) or $168 from your balance, which is now -$206, just to make sure you learn your lesson.

Now payday is five days away, but you have $220 in a savings account. You move it over to the checking account to bring things above zero, which leaves you with $14 as a balance. Unfortunately, the trash company sends their bounced check through again, which is $16. The bank sends it back again, but deducts $28 from your account, putting you at -$14, below zero again.

So what have we witnessed here? There is obviously a problem, and you should have kept better track of your account, but my logic detector is buzzing at the thought that the solution to a lack of funds to cover a customer's mistakes is for the bank to suck even more funds from the account, right in the middle of the crisis.

Credit cards are much the same. You are near your credit limit, you screw up and forget to make your payment on-line before 2:00 pm EST (you made it at 5:00 pm instead), and bang… the credit card issuer socks your account with a $38 late fee. Of course, this puts your balance above your credit limit, and bang… the credit card issuer socks your account with another $38 fee.

Of course, you have now violated the terms of service, which forces them to increase your interest rate from 14.9% to the default rate of 32.9%. If you keep your account current for the next six months to a year, your account might be eligible for a standard interest rate. Well, you do not have to take such abuse, because you can simply pay off the stupid card and take your business elsewhere. Yeah… that must be why you were carrying a high balance on your card account, because you had a load of cash sitting in your checking account, and you simply love the idea of paying interest.

Insurance (no offense to insurance industry workers) is a scourge on our souls. What drives me completely bananas is that we pay enormous premiums for various insurance policies, and then we end up paying for whatever it is anyway.

Take health insurance for instance. For a time, I was paying upwards of $800 per month to insure my family, which is more than $9000 per year. We barely had reason to see the doctor, but the few times we did, I still had to pay because of the deductible and the co-pays.

This seems especially infuriating when things are running a little tight anyway, and all of a sudden, I have to write a doctor check for two or three hundred dollars, after having paid the insurance company some $27000 over the past three years.

The explanations for all of these assaults on logic have roots deep in the bedrock of our free enterprise system. Unfortunately, there is a distinct odor of gouging, and these monstrous industries are doing it because they can.

I am not against profit, and I certainly disdain government over-regulation of business or personal freedom. Nevertheless, I have to believe that at some point, the frog suddenly realizes that he has been boiled, and surely, that must really piss him off.