Debt is a complicated concept.
An overdraft is debt.
A credit card debt is either a balance or the card can be 'maxed out' but the key word is still credit.
If I do a favour for a neighbour it could be a simple act of kindness or it could put them in my debt.
When the banks spent all the money that was characterised as a financial crisis.
But it appears that bankers to one side, it plunged us all into debt and ushered in a prolonged period of austerity.
In the UK the practise of sanctioning people who are in receipt of welfare benefits (other than the elderly who of course are the largest single group of welfare beneficiaries) is in practise the failure to pay the money that individuals have been guaranteed to maintain themselves and their families and makes the state indebted to those individuals it fails to pay.
No amount of harrumphing from the front benches changes that.
As it has it in the Book Leviticus: 'if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself .... you shall maintain him'.
The Greek people have elected a new Government charged with ending austerity and renegotiating debt.
In Britain austerity continues to hold us to ransom.
There is it seems TINA no alternative. But of course there is an alternative and it will be interesting to watch how Syriza in Greece negotiates with the EU and Angela Merkel to find an alternative.
Meanwhile the wealth of the richest 1% ratchets yet higher leaving the 99% to rely on credit to reach the next payday.
On TV last night a commentator stated that debts should always be paid but in reality the forgiveness of debt is possible and in some cases necessary.
There is evidence that in the earliest societies debt was seen as a bad thing and its relief by the state a social good.
In The Old Testament in the book of Leviticus debt was forgiven on a fifty year cycle where each fiftieth year was declared to be a year of Jubilee announced by 'the loud trumpet' each fiftieth year was to be 'hallowed' and all the inhabitants of the land will enjoy liberty.
This was a vision in which all returned to their families and their property.
This vision of Jubilee would be welcomed through out the world today in Palestine, in Syria, in Africa were it to be declared.
But just as there seems to be confusion over the true meaning of the word jubilee there is no real evidence that Jubilee was declared.
Just as in the UK the con-dems realise that their five year parliament is about to end so at some point in the past, human nature being what it is those who held the credit notes and mortgage deeds began to plan for the coming jubilee, it would they possibly argued be irresponsible to return a mans' 'patrimony' it might cause 'chaos', it would certainly mean that we might not pass go and indeed might go straight to jail.
Christians tend to start with the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples in which the word trespass in the common usage of the prayer, is in the Bible rendered as Debt.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive others theirs.
Stated like this it seems to me that it sounds like a simple and relatively incontrovertible position.
As has been argued by the anthropologist David Graeber in his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, debt has changed and been changed by the people and societies who have used it.
In his book Graeber compares and contrasts two forms of Debt, the first he identifies as imprecise, informal, community-building and this he describes the natural indebtedness that arises in human economies where people lend and borrow, repay and fail to repay but retain natural obligations between each other.
The second form of debt is monetised debt the outcomes of which are deeply negative often as Grabber observes resulting in impoverishment and violence.
The accumulation of wealth in the bank accounts of the few in practise puts them in societies debt to have so much money that you cannot spend even the interest on your capital is an obscenity but it is an obscenity that is not only not recognised but is denied.
Capitalism, unlike Marxist and Islamic economics, consistently confuses price with value. This is what is meant by monetising debt.
A recent large purchase made using an 'interest free offer' has resulted in my receiving weekly letters from the lender offering more and more 'credit' in the form of bank loans and 'credit' cards.
Recently as a seventy year old pensioner I was offered a £10,000 loan for 10 years!
There's optimism?
Borrowing money to pay off debts is in the simplest sense of the word usury.
Whilst it is clear that neither of the main political parties in the UK will ever consider the possibility it will be fascinating to see whether Syriza can achieve a Jubilee in relation to its continued membership of the eurozone.
Meanwhile the rest of us must keep up the payments ........
An overdraft is debt.
A credit card debt is either a balance or the card can be 'maxed out' but the key word is still credit.
If I do a favour for a neighbour it could be a simple act of kindness or it could put them in my debt.
When the banks spent all the money that was characterised as a financial crisis.
But it appears that bankers to one side, it plunged us all into debt and ushered in a prolonged period of austerity.
In the UK the practise of sanctioning people who are in receipt of welfare benefits (other than the elderly who of course are the largest single group of welfare beneficiaries) is in practise the failure to pay the money that individuals have been guaranteed to maintain themselves and their families and makes the state indebted to those individuals it fails to pay.
No amount of harrumphing from the front benches changes that.
As it has it in the Book Leviticus: 'if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself .... you shall maintain him'.
The Greek people have elected a new Government charged with ending austerity and renegotiating debt.
In Britain austerity continues to hold us to ransom.
There is it seems TINA no alternative. But of course there is an alternative and it will be interesting to watch how Syriza in Greece negotiates with the EU and Angela Merkel to find an alternative.
Meanwhile the wealth of the richest 1% ratchets yet higher leaving the 99% to rely on credit to reach the next payday.
On TV last night a commentator stated that debts should always be paid but in reality the forgiveness of debt is possible and in some cases necessary.
There is evidence that in the earliest societies debt was seen as a bad thing and its relief by the state a social good.
In The Old Testament in the book of Leviticus debt was forgiven on a fifty year cycle where each fiftieth year was declared to be a year of Jubilee announced by 'the loud trumpet' each fiftieth year was to be 'hallowed' and all the inhabitants of the land will enjoy liberty.
This was a vision in which all returned to their families and their property.
This vision of Jubilee would be welcomed through out the world today in Palestine, in Syria, in Africa were it to be declared.
But just as there seems to be confusion over the true meaning of the word jubilee there is no real evidence that Jubilee was declared.
Just as in the UK the con-dems realise that their five year parliament is about to end so at some point in the past, human nature being what it is those who held the credit notes and mortgage deeds began to plan for the coming jubilee, it would they possibly argued be irresponsible to return a mans' 'patrimony' it might cause 'chaos', it would certainly mean that we might not pass go and indeed might go straight to jail.
Christians tend to start with the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples in which the word trespass in the common usage of the prayer, is in the Bible rendered as Debt.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive others theirs.
Stated like this it seems to me that it sounds like a simple and relatively incontrovertible position.
As has been argued by the anthropologist David Graeber in his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, debt has changed and been changed by the people and societies who have used it.
In his book Graeber compares and contrasts two forms of Debt, the first he identifies as imprecise, informal, community-building and this he describes the natural indebtedness that arises in human economies where people lend and borrow, repay and fail to repay but retain natural obligations between each other.
The second form of debt is monetised debt the outcomes of which are deeply negative often as Grabber observes resulting in impoverishment and violence.
The accumulation of wealth in the bank accounts of the few in practise puts them in societies debt to have so much money that you cannot spend even the interest on your capital is an obscenity but it is an obscenity that is not only not recognised but is denied.
Capitalism, unlike Marxist and Islamic economics, consistently confuses price with value. This is what is meant by monetising debt.
A recent large purchase made using an 'interest free offer' has resulted in my receiving weekly letters from the lender offering more and more 'credit' in the form of bank loans and 'credit' cards.
Recently as a seventy year old pensioner I was offered a £10,000 loan for 10 years!
There's optimism?
Borrowing money to pay off debts is in the simplest sense of the word usury.
Whilst it is clear that neither of the main political parties in the UK will ever consider the possibility it will be fascinating to see whether Syriza can achieve a Jubilee in relation to its continued membership of the eurozone.
Meanwhile the rest of us must keep up the payments ........
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