Eliminate Payday Loan/Advance Business

This is a petition to eradicate payday loan/advance. In the state of SC, you can write a check for $345 and get $300 back. In two weeks, the full amount of $345 is due. Can you pay it off or do you have to renew? In most cases, you cannot pay it off. The rent, car, electric bills etc is due. So the average consumer has to renew again just to pay for their current bills. If you “roll-over” your loan 26 times a year, you will pay $1170 in interest for the same $300 loan. Usury lending practices and rates are there way to keep you as a regular customer. "Effective" rate (such as an EAR — (1.15^{26} - 1) \times 100% = 3,685%.
Some of these payday loan advance companies market themselves as “if you need emergency cash for that unexpected bill”. There intent is not only to get you to take a loan, but to keep you as a regular customer. Let say they have 500 customers a week that loaned $300 per customer on a bi-weekly basis for one year, that is $448,500 annual income to the payday advance business.
Wikipedia says it best when it comes to Exploiting financial hardship for profit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payday_loan
“Exploiting financial hardship for profit
Critics such as the Consumers Union blame payday lenders for exploiting people's financial hardship for profit. They say lenders target the young and the poor, particularly those near military bases and in low-income communities. They also say that borrowers may not understand that the high interest rates are likely to trap them in a "debt-cycle," in which they have to repeatedly renew the loan and pay associated fees every two weeks until they can finally save enough to pay off the principal and get out of debt. Critics also say that payday lending unfairly disadvantages the poor, compared to members of the middle class, who pay at most a rate of about 25% on their credit card purchases.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payday_loan