The US Marshals enforce (federal) court orders. He was subject to a court order mandating the payment of a debt. It's not like he fell into arrears and they "just showed up". If it was a mortgage debt, or an eviction proceeding, typically it'd be the local sheriff.
No story.
That is itself absurd. As a private person you can really only ask courts to put liens on property (or garnishes on income) to get your money. You essentially must identify specific property you own due to their lack of payment as not paying you isn't a crime.
> It's not like he fell into arrears and they "just showed up". If it was a mortgage debt, or an eviction proceeding, typically it'd be the local sheriff.
No, they interfere to allow property to be taken by its rightful owner as decided by a court. If you don't struggle to stay in a house you are not arrested when evicted.
It's extremely common for someone to owe a very large, possibly non-dischargable debt (as a result of a criminal fine, lawsuit, alimony, child support, etc), and the court order is something to the effect of "pay $100 / mo", even if this would never actually pay off the debt.
[1] http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/2011/03/11/c...
And in particular $1500 owed since 1987, almost 30 years ago. Now of course we don't know when the last payment was but it makes sense that they would pull an enforcement list based on age of debt and also perhaps smaller amounts where it was clear that the debtor was making no attempt to pay off the debt.
However, if some Feds showed up on my front porch after 30 years, I'd probably make sure I pay it off promptly. Going to jail or paying off my student loan? No contest there what I would do.
They could have forgiven the debt and come out ahead. Or they could have garnished his wages, or seized his assets and got their money while spending very little.
I think use of the police force to enforce private loan contracts is short-sighted based on the ham-fisted overuse of incarceration as punishment in our legal system. Interest rates are already built into the loan instrument to compensate lenders for the risk of nonpayment, while this practice is just kicking someone when they're down...
Isn't this pretty much the argument for law enforcement in general? I doubt it's ever "cost effective" to have police respond to say, noise complaints or minor acts of theft, but the goal is to show people that are consequences for breaking the laws or going against court orders.
Whereas kicking someone when they are down (i.e. already can't pay) is cruel and unusual, I agree that making an example of willful nonpayment makes sense, but that shouldn't be done at the expense of taxpayers(/no need for police involvement). That's why wage garnishment and other tools already exist for lenders to use with a simple court order. If the government foots the bill of enforcement, rather than the lenders footing the bill of wage garnishment intervention and court costs, then it will get represented in taxes rather than loan interest rates, which privatizes the gains (loan payments) and publicizes the losses (enforcement costs). The other side effect is that it subverts supply/demand based pricing of education based on student loan interest rates, which props up higher education price inflation.