In Bram Stoker's book "Dracula," Count Dracula was a rather traditional, old-world vampire who had a proclivity to choose young, naive and well-to-do English ladies (I presume a blue-blood connoisseur) and shunned the blood of peasants and the lower classes. Flash forward to the early 21st century, and this type of vampire has become modernized, institutionalized and targets the very poorest and neediest in our society.
I have been a donor at CSL Plasma here in Minneapolis for around 6 months. Monetary compensation was initially dispensed from an on-site cash machine. Unfortunately, this system has been replaced by a Citibank debit card on which the compensation is added to your card electronically. But here is the corporate vampire Citibank, which has put its fangs into the blood of the poor. Here is a partial schedule of fees from the Citibank Prepaid Services handout that Citibank charges for using their card. There is no option to opt out of this program!
ATM Withdrawal fee...$1.50 per withdrawal
PIN Point-of-Sale (POS) Transaction...$0.50
Signature Point-of-Sale (POS) Transaction...$0.25 (one free per donation)
Plastic Replacement Fee (if applicable)...$6.95 per incident (First free)
Account Inactivity Fee (if applicable)...$3.00 per month
Not content to gouge the average consumer with exorbitant credit card interest and fees, nor engorged by the taxpayers' multi-billion bailouts, the corporate monsters (is there any other kind?) are preying on our most vulnerable citizens. What future delights do Citibank and their corporate cronies have in store for us? For-profit homeless shelters, food shelves and soup kitchens could garner a tidy sum by exploiting the poor. But hey, maybe in their generosity, they'll build work farms, company stores and relocation camps to allow the poor to work off their debt.
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