Posted on 03/11/2005 9:27:36 PM PST by The Loan Arranger
Years ago, this country did away with debtors prisons. The nation in general, and poor people in particular, would be well served to bring them back. The harm to business from unpaid debt, and the reduced productivity and even business failure unpaid debt can bring, is obvious. Businesses or individuals who are not repaid the money they loaned or who are not paid for the goods or services they produced and sold on credit are prevented from accumulating needed and even expected capital for expansion, and they are frequently thrown into serious financial constraints making it hard to pay their own creditors and employees. This not only can theoretically choke the gross national product, many recessions and even the Great Depression have been in fact brought on at least partly by unpaid debt.
But debt relief measures, either in the form of actual debt forgiveness or in the form of relaxed procedures to collect debt (including the abolition of debtors prisons), are generally thought to help the poor. The idea that once again forcing poor people into involuntary servitude to pay for meager food and shelter is certainly a tough sell. But here goes.
A return to debtors prisons would help poor people in at least five ways: 1) increasing workforce participation; 2) increasing personal responsibility; 3) making it easier for the poor to climb the economic ladder through entrepreneurship; 4) reintroduction of the virtues which have proven the only reliable way of the poor to leave poverty; 5) making credit more readily available.
(Excerpt) Read more at jesbeard.com ...
When you replied to me,you did NOT state a date;so cut the crap about "straw-men" arguments. That's the ONLY thing YOU have engaged in.
Projection is a really easy complex to get help for...do so. :-)
As to your lying problem,I don't know if you can be helped with that,dear boy. LOL
That must be some good whiskey you're sippin' there...
Okay. For some reason you claim that it cost 1250 for an entire year at an Ivy League college, and that a doctor somehow made only 22K a year. Great. So the doctor sends his kids to Harvard. 1951, let's say.
It's 2005. The doctor can't make a go of it as an independent agent because the insurance is killing him. He joins a group. They build a really nice three story office complex by the water. He gets most of the top floor, but shares expenses with one other general practitioner. They have a staff of nine, with some part-time contractors. The lab and pharmacy, etc. are on the ground floor. But that doesn't concern him, in this way. And he takes home maybe 220K at year, let's say. That's probably a little high, but just to make the comparison.
Now, we all know that tuition has skyrocketed at various schools. $12.5K a year seems low for Ivy League. I'd guesstimate that total expenses run upwards of 40K/yr. But, please, indeed, correct me if I'm wrong.
If you don't dispute the numbers, by my reckoning the doctor's son is paying 3x what Dad paid for his Hawvawd education. Close to 20% of his yearly pre-tax income. And at 22K, what did Dad pay in taxes, compared with Jr.?
Anyway, seems a simple point. Don't know why we can't agree.
Fine by me. Take it at a baseline of .35. It makes the same point. Don't you see that?
Why should I? You don't! As a matter of fact,you've not only lept all over the place,been extremely vague,but listed as facts,things which are easily shown to be incorrect.
Got me there, Riley. I take it you want the last word?
I state,as FACT,that in 1958 Tuition at Harvard was $1,250.00 a year and you then go on to say that I claimed that 1) it was 1951, 2) and even at that,you imply that my FACT is wrong.
That $22,000 a year for a doctor,is an average for 1958.
Wages haven't remained stagnant. The young man who went to Harvard,as a freshman,in 1958,makes far more than $22,000,as a doctor now and takes home more than his father,even with taxes and insurance.
Should you finally find hard,cold facts and post them,as I repeatedly have,you stop making silly pronouncements about things you have no grasp of,we just might find common ground...when you come to my side. :-)
You've made NO point,so how is that I'm now supposed to agree with you?
Look,of econ challenged....some prices have fallen,many have not since the 1950s. You don't know why that is. The reasons are several. First and not least of all,there have been no PANICS nor DEPRESSIONS in America in the last 76 years. In the past,prices fell during depressions and some times during panics.
Prices for some things have fallen precipitously ( T.V.s, video recorders,radios,computers ),because of new developments in technology and where and how they are manufactured.
In 1919,yes,I said 1919,the penthouse apartment in 220 East Walton Place,in Chicago,cost $5,000 a month to rent...RENT!
Let that figure sink in a bit............
Today that building is no longer a rental,but the monthly assessments (yes, it's co-op now)aren't double or even triple that amount...they're less than double it.
Nope,just giving you a taste of your own medicine. :-)
Facts matter; the lack of facts will always do you in;especially here.
Any chance of America using REAL dollars again instead of these worthless Federal Reserve (DEBT) Notes I keep piling up??
Along with that, it would be nice for credit companies to be more responsible also. Some of the greed that reeks through these usurers is absolutely unbelievable.
That's what I said. You're repeating just what I wrote. Do you dispute the numbers? And if you say 1958, that makes the case even stronger. The run-up occured in less time. It took fewer years. Just read what I wrote, and look at the percentages. Do you think they are that far off? And if you do, tell me why, specifically - if you can.
So your 22K in 1958 doesn't take into account personal income taxes? What did he pay in 1958, compared to say the number I picked for his hypothetical son? His son earns an order of magnitude more to make the numbers easy in the example. Remember?
NO,I am not "repeating what you said" at all. And what you are then making of my posts,is an hilarious shambles, a hodge-podge of GOD only knows what. ROTFLOL
The salaries I've posted,are AVERAGES for the entire USA. HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ? Do you understand what an "average" is? And some of those averaged salaries were for an entire decade.
Since I didn't post for centuries,you are making a wild assumptions.So here is a bit more factual info......
In the 1880s,rural doctors got 50 cents for a house call. City doctors got $3.00 - $6.00 per house call and saw more patients.
In 1888-1889 the rural school term lasted for only 12 weeks. A male teacher was paid $42.43 per month a female teacher was paid $38.14 per month ( both of these salaries are AVERAGES!) and both had to also do what today is considered to be janitorial duties as well. So,in 1888 an average teacher's salary was $127.29 for a man and $114.42 for a woman.
Fifty years later,teachers' average salaries were up to $1,367 per year and that's not only during the GREAT DEPRESSION,but after other depressions,recessions,and panics,which had already brought down salaries.
If his son was a college freshman in 1958,he wouldn't have a child in college right now. Do the math.And your uneducated hypothetical guesstimates stink. WHY? Because you don't know what you're talking about and know no facts at all;that's why.
If his son was a college freshman in 1958,he wouldn't have a child in college right now. Do the math.And your uneducated hypothetical guesstimates stink. WHY? Because you don't know what you're talking about and know no facts at all;that's why.
The more you post, the more illogical you become and the more obvious it is,that 1)you have bad math skills 2)don't understand the topic at hand 3)have no facts to back your positions up with 4)know no American history 5)know no and understand less,economics.
Yes, you did. You wanted to be so contentious that you didn't realize that you agreed with me when I stated the obvious, that wages increased; just not to a matching factor of prices. I gave the hypothetical of 220K. I calculated the percentages for you. And you just engaged in a typically liberal personal attack (see the Ann Coulter debate thread), and did not dispute the figures. But if you want the last word - have at it.
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