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Debtor's Prison -- The Poor Person's Best Friend
JesBeard.com ^ | Jes Beard

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: amodestproposal; credit; debtorsprison; paybacktime
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To: The Loan Arranger; longtermmemmory; shaggy eel; Indie; Fiddlstix
Family/fathers' rights ping!

About 70 percent of the dads who do not pay are not able to pay. Many of the "awards" are ridiculous, and many dads lose their jobs after divorce/separation. That's exactly why I'm very much in favor of debtors' prisons for everyone else who fails for any reason to pay their debts.

Don't expect the half of the fathers who were divorced/separated in this country and ordered to help with family breaking, feminist wealth reapportionment (alimony in the child support disguise) for bored/adulterous wives on a grand scale to speak for the rest when it's everyone else's turn to be defamed and deprived of their constitutional rights.

After legalization of debtors' prisons for everyone, everyone who misses any kind of payment for any reason at all should officially be a hated "deadbeat" (or worse label, if one can be found). Post their mug shots on the Internet.

Folks, when you helped to take away fathers' constitutional rights by chiming in with the feminazis ("deadbeat dads!" "deadbeat dads!"), you undermined your own rights. And remember that our Republicans in Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Child Support Act that included federal prison time for non-payment. The progression of that stupid move toward socialism is inevitable, as was the similar lobbying and vote for the VAWA (Second Amendment violation and imprisonments for nothing more than accusations by ex-wives without due process).

Don't ask for our support against debtors' prisons, unless you want to first work hard to repeal a few unconstitutional laws against fathers.
41 posted on 03/12/2005 4:39:09 AM PST by familyop ("Let us try" sounds better, don't you think? "Essayons" is so...Latin.)
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To: JOHANNES801
It can be done,just dont live above your means.

And don't develop any serious illnesses.

42 posted on 03/12/2005 4:48:10 AM PST by garbanzo (Free people will set the course of history)
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To: garbanzo

That is very true,dont get sick.


43 posted on 03/12/2005 5:37:31 AM PST by JOHANNES801
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To: durasell
People who owe money will be forced to work in small cubicles with motivational posters and Dilbert comics.

But that is what we do now.

44 posted on 03/12/2005 5:41:17 AM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (Res severa est verum gaudium)
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To: LPM1888
It would sure discourage lay offs.

We already have these things that discourage layoff. They are called unions and they make it nearly impossible to fire lazy layabouts or rewards the productive. The end results is that everybody loses their job as the company either folds or moves away.

And now you want to give them even more incentive to do this. Somehow I don't think you have thought this through.

45 posted on 03/12/2005 5:47:22 AM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (Res severa est verum gaudium)
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To: sevry
What he's saying is that the American economy is on the skids, is in deep trouble, where a host of people literally cannot find good paying jobs.

Then I call bull. There is no such thing as a living wage. People will not control their spending.

You want people to have money? Then they must learn how to handle money. Wages have little to do with that. Michael Jackson is a case in point.

46 posted on 03/12/2005 5:51:20 AM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (Res severa est verum gaudium)
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To: blackbart.223
Credit card companies nowadays securitize their receivables and float them in the market. If you have an 401k, then you (together with me and the bunch of others) are the creditors.
Since the property rights are the bedrock foundation of human civilization and thus of all that is good in it (like liberty and pursuit of happiness, to begin with; just take a look at the baboonery predominant in the places where the property rights are nonexistent or not respected) - hence the creditors' property rights are to be enforced to the limits of imagination.
Noone forces an irresponsible person to sign on the dotted line, and even then nobody tortures him/her into pulling the credit card out and using it. And if the card is lost or stolen from a person and used fraudulently, the law already provides for the damages limitation, if the card loss is reported promptly.
Maybe a lot of people should be declared by courts to be incompetent, and then legally excluded from all the activities demanding responsibility, with some incompetents even put away in secure storage facilities.
47 posted on 03/12/2005 7:22:58 AM PST by GSlob
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear

...my guess is you owe money.


48 posted on 03/12/2005 7:24:16 AM PST by durasell (Friends are so alarming, My lover's never charming...)
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To: The Loan Arranger
>A return to debtors prisons would help poor people


49 posted on 03/12/2005 7:27:27 AM PST by theFIRMbss
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To: theFIRMbss

Sick, but mildly amusing.


50 posted on 03/12/2005 7:29:53 AM PST by durasell (Friends are so alarming, My lover's never charming...)
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To: The Loan Arranger
Reading this reminded me of another literary exchange:

"....``At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,'' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, ``it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.''

``Are there no prisons?'' asked Scrooge.

``Plenty of prisons,'' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

``And the Union workhouses?'' demanded Scrooge. ``Are they still in operation?''

``They are. Still,'' returned the gentleman, `` I wish I could say they were not.''

``The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?'' said Scrooge.

``Both very busy, sir.''

``Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,'' said Scrooge. ``I'm very glad to hear it.''

``Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,'' returned the gentleman, ``a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?''

``Nothing!'' Scrooge replied.

``You wish to be anonymous?''

``I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. ``Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''

``Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''

``If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.'' ....."

51 posted on 03/12/2005 7:32:37 AM PST by Tench_Coxe
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To: Tench_Coxe

As long as we're bringing back Victorian anachronisms, can we bring back the bustle? Hot chicks with bustles! Yeeee-ha!


52 posted on 03/12/2005 7:36:16 AM PST by durasell (Friends are so alarming, My lover's never charming...)
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To: durasell
Actually no. I live with in my means. I will be taking on debt in a couple of years when I buy a house but I plan on having a 20% down payment and a 15 year mortgage.

But I know a lot of co-workers that are in that situation. One came by my office to talk about the $3,000.00 she had just spent on camera equipment. The next week she was talking about how she was so broke she had to borrow money from her parents to buy a tank of gas. The kicker is that she knows how to handle money but she chooses not to.

Her motto is, "I want it. Gimmme!"

53 posted on 03/12/2005 7:57:11 AM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (Res severa est verum gaudium)
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To: durasell
>As long as we're bringing back Victorian anachronisms, can we bring back the bustle? Hot chicks with bustles! Yeeee-ha!


Oh, yeah. And, of course,
the SI swimsuit issue
will get a revamp . . .

54 posted on 03/12/2005 7:59:15 AM PST by theFIRMbss
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To: theFIRMbss

Work will free you?


55 posted on 03/12/2005 8:01:53 AM PST by Former Proud Canadian (.)
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To: durasell
As long as we're bringing back Victorian anachronisms, can we bring back the bustle? Hot chicks with bustles! Yeeee-ha!

I work out three times a week to have a pleasantly shaped backside. I am not putting on a bustle!

You like them so much you wear one.:)

56 posted on 03/12/2005 8:08:00 AM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (Res severa est verum gaudium)
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To: Former Proud Canadian
>Work will free you?

Yeah. That little phrase
was on the gate leading to
Auschwitz. It was first

Dachau's motto, then
became used by almost all
Nazi "labor" camps.

57 posted on 03/12/2005 8:09:38 AM PST by theFIRMbss
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear
>I work out three times a week to have a pleasantly shaped backside

You know, technically,
some Freeper could enforce the
picture rule on this . . .

58 posted on 03/12/2005 8:11:30 AM PST by theFIRMbss
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To: theFIRMbss
I just spent 60 days in the jailhouse
For the crime of having no dough
Now here I am back out on the street
For the crime of having nowhere to go

Save your neck or save your brother
Looks like it's one or the other
Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in

The Band

59 posted on 03/12/2005 8:21:12 AM PST by eddie willers
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To: The Loan Arranger

"The harm to business from unpaid debt"


What about the massive billions business write off in their bankruptcies and the financial damage the executives who run these companies into the ground while getting millions in "bonuses" cause?


60 posted on 03/12/2005 8:21:23 AM PST by shellshocked (They're undocumented Border Patrol agents, not vigilantes.)
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