Debt collector profits soar with people flush and easy to find
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I keep having debt collectors call me for a fake debt. I've been an AT&T customer for 25 years. About a decade ago I upgraded my broadband, and instead of upgrading my account they closed my old one and opened a new one. I got a final bill on the old one and that was that.
About two years later I got a debt collector trying to collect on the old account. At first I thought it might be legit, maybe I missed the final bill. So I asked for a copy of the records. They stopped calling.
A couple years later a new debt collector called on the same debt. Again I asked for proof, again they stopped calling.
I think my name was finally deleted from the spreadsheets they pass around, but who knows. Maybe one day someone will call again.
Got a plain paper print-out in the mail with "medical services ----- 1,234.56." He called again I said, "you're gonna have to do better than that. He never called again, it was BS. Wonder how he even got my details?
One account from 2017 on the subject: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-06/millions-...
There are price sheets with unique codes on them that are used for billing in hospitals. These price sheets are used for a provider (hospital) to send to your payor (your insurance). They have the minimum amount of information on them to get the insurance company to pay their portion. They are not set up for the actual human being being treated to understand or find them useful. It's a systemic problem with the way the industry is configured. Good luck changing it.
Super frustrating, but medical billing is so complex, it feels like it's intended to make the patient give up and simply accept whatever charges are present, and not even attempt to verify bills are correct.
Nobody would accept a single line bill from a mechanic for "car repairs", yet somehow that's standard for the black check of financial liability we sign up for when we see providers.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/06/24/7354323...
There are several unscrupulous debt collectors/scammers that use public information to try and frighten people into paying off non-existent debt or debt that is way beyond the statute of limitations to be sued over.
But they are very convincing and claim that they will be sending a court summons (that never arrives)
My elderly neighbor got taken for several hundreds of dollars by one of these Scumbags until I found out what was happening.
And just as the other commenter had said, the debt collector never sent proof of the debt. Just more threats.
Ostensibly they are independent of the government, but they get residence information from the government even if the citizen slave has denied giving out such information.
Then, even if you do not have a Volksempfaenger (TV), they send bills. If you don't pay, they pose (independent as they are) as a government agency and send a fake title, which normally can only be obtained in court.
2. It's not just state television, but state television, radio and by now also their associated internet platforms. They also fund public offerings on Youtube etc..
3. Since they also fund things on the internet (though I think that still a small percentage of their total budget), it makes sense that everyone with an internet capable device pays. Shortly after that switch in legislation they also went from trying to detect if someone has one of those devices to just having every household pay, so of course they send bills.
There are a lot of valid points to be criticized about how the former GEZ is run (e.g. paying a shitload for sport event broadcast licenses to corrupt organizations), but yours are not it.
2. They are forcing themselves upon the Internet, and I can assure you I don't read them.
3. Sending bills for something that a person does not want and enforcing that is protection money.
4. You are defending mafia tactics.
Literally people who earn something above social security level are squeezed dry by the ARD ZDF parasites with their bad program and high salaries stolen from the population.
https://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/news/gez-urteil--zwangsvolls...
A court found that the ARD/ZDF are a commercial enterprise, so their incasso tactics are not lawful.
Bringing up "Nazi slang", which was clearly using a term in a negative way (which is quite customary in Germany if you want to point out an exaggerated parallel) is dishonest.
The term was used in an anti-Nazi manner, but I suspect you are aware of that and just tried to discredit the post.
(Not an approval of the other commenter's choice of language or viewpoints, by the way, and not sure what it is with the pile-on of new accounts here).
With any debt collector or buyer, per FDCPA, they must stop calling if you notify them. Best way to do this is by a certified letter stating your name, your phone numbers, and that it is not permitted to call you regarding this alleged debt. Offenses here can net you a bounty in court, but worth noting most folks with valid debts, can't afford to fight the onslaught of robocalls from spoofed numbers, as is all too common in the trade
Requesting validity of a debt is also covered under FDCPA, but with some general stipulations. Legally, a collector or debt buyer is required to provide validation in the 30 days after the initial notification to you if requested in writing. Most will still send documentation out of this window if they have it, but it becomes less transparent under your civil protections for them to be mandated to do so.
Obligatory IANAL, but if you find yourself in a similar position here, doing a few minutes of research on your protections and common "gotchas" of dealing with these outfits is incredibly valuable.
Corporations dedicated to, essentially, harassment is much better than the first obvious alternative, which is having officials involved. If the police think you've done the wrong thing they generally won't be dissuaded by a certified letter.
It's not hard.
That'll look pretty much the same as what they are doing now. People who take money on the basis that they will do a thing in the future should then do the thing. If they can decide not to do the thing and walk away with the money then the situation gets a bit silly.
Persistently asking for the money back is about as mild a recourse as possible. The hoop-jumping to make them stop is horrible for people who get caught up by mistake, but is not that terrible.
The alternative is magistrates and lawsuits. That would be much worse. Getting into to a fight with the tax office when they mistakenly think you owe them money would be much worse.
The problem is 1) when people act in good faith and assume the debt is actually real and just pay, 2) people who might be afraid that things escalate and pay to "avoid trouble", and 3) the fear that it might negatively affect your credit score. The power imbalance is very real.
When a debt collecting agency sends you a bill, this is essentially it's an accusation that you didn't fulfil your responsibilities and duties. I don't know about you, but I tend to make pretty darn sure that I'm right when I accuse of someone, especially if it's a very specific accusation.
While mistakes can surely be made with the best of efforts, it's the debt collector's responsibility to correct any, rather than just shrug and ignore any rebuttals.
Of course, that's not in their financial interests (quite a few debt collecting agencies "buy" outstanding bills and try to make a profit from collecting them).
It's not my responsibility to prove I don't need to pay something; the burden of proof is completely reversed; eBay has been harassing me for years for an £18 alleged "debt" where I have already explained in great detail and with great patience why it's erroneous, but they don't listen: they simply don't reply and then send a new message as if I'm talking to a wall. I had to block a whole bunch of email addresses and phone numbers, instead.
> The alternative is magistrates and lawsuits.
"Oops, sorry, looks like I don't actually have a bill from AT&T which says you owe anything!"
As for the law - in the UK debts are a civil not a criminal matter. So unless there's been obvious flagrant fraud they end up in county court before a judge, not a criminal court before a magistrate.
Consumer orgs like the Consumer Action Group (https://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/) and Legal Beagles (https://legalbeagles.info) who make it their business to offer free legal information for anyone being chased for debts, whether "reasonable" or not, with a view to avoiding a court case, getting the best possible result, or - in some cases - winning compensation for unfair/unreasonable claims and DCA/bailiff actions.
It's not unusual for lenders to have poor record keeping. People who keep original paperwork have found that some DCA "proof of debt" is entirely fake, assembled as required, with a creditor's signature copied from recent correspondence.
It's hard to feel any sympathy for an industry that operates like this.
of course if you have an alternative idea please share.
Back when they were pushing UVerse they wanted to combine billing with their other services. For what ever reason they weren’t combined to begin with.
Well when you did that you had to get both on the same cycle. UVerse I believe was post paid at the time. You needed to pre-pay as their other services. Maybe it was the other way around, don’t remember. Either way you are stuck with 2 months of UVerse plus your other services when you combine it. So a large bill.
Well here comes the fun part, I had that service for maybe a year. I canceled it and to my surprise nobody seemed to remember that I had an extra month I already paid for. The system didn’t seem to account for it.
I called numerous times and talked to quite a few different people. I ended up getting about 700 in credits because I was able to walk people through the billing who were able to see what was going on.
I thought about taking this to a few attorneys I know since this had to have impacted a ton a people. Never got around it.
From experience I can tell you the billing system of a Telco is at least 1000 times more complicated than I ever would have believed. Maybe 100,000 times. The number of edge cases and complicated stuff it has to deal with is utterly staggering, and every single one of them is being changed repeatedly by marketing and project managers and people from all across the company - products for partial months, discounts, packages, rate changes, non-recurring charges, changes to non-recurring charges, fees, taxes, government subsidies, overages, products that have to exist by law but we don't want to sell, products that customers have because "grandfathered", products that don't exist in real life but do in the billing system, etc. etc.
Keep in mind the billing system is extremely tightly coupled with the provisioning system (the one that actually makes the internet lights blink and the voices actually work), which has ten thousand more edge cases and complicated configuration than the billing system.
Once you dive into the provisioning system, the billing system looks straightforward!
My personal bill from the company I worked for often had mistakes, and frankly I was shocked it didn't have more!
The only debts I owe are a student loan and a mortgage.
I half suspect it was a scam actually. Like the other company bought them and just decided "naw let's say these people didn't cancel, lets see what we can get".
I told them I'd never pay them and so on ... they just quit, never showed up on credit report either...
I noticed the trend start in 2018. Midland was one of the first to adopt it, then PRA a few months later.
For those unaware, paying a collection account was of little to not benefit for improving your credit score. The negative tradeline(s) would still be present for the typically 7 years (less, depending on type of debt and state in some cases).
Put another way, once you were in debt, there was little to no incentive beyond traditional "morals" that these folks would play to for you to pay. That, and legal action, which is still a highly effective source of revenue for these outfits.
Most that are sued either ignore legal service, aren't aware of service by publication in obscure notice ads, or don't show up for the designated day in court, awarding a default judgment to the collector. From there, they can garnish, seize, and follow your ass for years, in most cases for a debt they paid pennies on the dollar for in an excel document auction of sorts.
In the last few years, most of the debt buyers and collection agencies will delete the negative tradeline when you settle for less or pay in full the amount owed. This was a previously a "one in a hundred" chance you'd see discussed ad nauseum on debtor boards; that is, including a pay-for-delete stipulation in settlement negotiations.
If you're in debt, read up on your rights, and how to play the game with these folks. Whether you can pay it easily or not, knowledge in the processes is incredibly valuable.
I suppose the thing to know would be how many people are just paying because they have extra money and just assume paying it consigns it to Oblivion.
I've settled nearly ten thousand dollars of debt for far less than what I owed over the years thanks to the introduction of these programs, getting me to a point where I finally had my own credit cards instead of being an authorized user a few years earlier than I would have been able to.
It is unfortunate that I had to attribute this ability to pull myself out of dire straits to being rear-ended by a teenager texting, and getting a larger than expected settlement through a referral to an accident attorney from a close friend of mine -- and a lot of teachings from the experience of my father, who dealt with quite a 180 of his financial situation during the great recession.
I really can't put into words how much of a relief it was to stop fearing The eventual litigation of most of these debts, having my credit damage for another 7 years into the future, having what wages I was earning at the time garnished... The psychological damage that some of these outfits play too in a way is reprehensible in my opinion.
A Pay-For-Delete seems to suggest that you should double check terms you are being offered for an explicit contract clause that binds them to report the resolution of the debt to credit bureaus.
If the debt is disputed as ”not mine” the collection agency will be contacted to ask for verification of the debt. If the agency says no go ahead and delete it, well you got your “pay for delete.”
Keep in mind paying a collection off may not increase you score and in some cases may lower it. Getting it deleted is ideal, but the collection agencies should not be doing this(its in the agreement the collection agency makes with the credit bureau).
Historically, this was hard to accomplish. By 1 in a 100, I mean most frontline agents you'd speak with or have written correspondence would outright say it was impossible.
Now, many of the large companies that facilitate these services offer it as an incentive for paying your debt in full, or getting a settlement.
The lifecycle of a bad debt normally follows this pattern:
- you default with original creditor, e.g. stop making minimum payments in your credit card for 90 days
- you get placed in internal collections. Your card is shut off, and they call 3-5 times a day to get you to pay
- if you fail to make arrangements, at around 180 days, they will "charge off" your account, writing it off as unrecoverable debt. This is the second negative mark you will have, the first being your late payments
- if you continue to be in default, they will sell the debt to a third party collection agency or debt buyer. Typically these are bought at thousands of accounts at a time, for pennies on the dollar. Let's say you owe $1,200, they likely paid far less than $100 to own the rights for that debt. Because of the contract that you agreed to when opening your account, and the statute of limitations in your state, they can legally pursue the full amount even though they paid less. If you do not pay this in the first 30 days of receiving notification of the intent to collect the debt (required by law), they will add a negative trade line to your credit report, as a collection account
- for the next few years, they will call you, write you letters, occasionally offer payment plans or the ability to pay it off for less than the full amount. During this time, your credit continues to be damaged. Eventually, one of two things will happen: the statute of limitations, or the timeframe in which they can sue you to force payment, will expire. Either you are worth the contracted paralegal time or not.
Ideally by this point, you've resolved the financial situation that resulted in in the default in the first place. Contrary to common belief, paying a collection account does not improve your credit score in nearly all cases.
This is where the pay for delete comes in, you would attempt to get the debt collector to agree to remove the negative reporting from your credit report upon settlement -- or as is the case with most of the big players in the last couple years, they offer it by default, confirmed by their public FAQ pages and such.
Whether you should pay a collector or not is up to your financial situation, your understanding of your rights, and ultimately your unique situation.
Some will argue that you are morally obligated to pay the debt that you created for yourself, and agreed to by nature of a card member agreement.
Others will say that medical bills in the US are unreasonably high cost, that this industry is one of the factors in keeping the poor poor, or that once it is sold to a third party agency for pennies on the dollar, you shouldn't pay the full amount or be on the hook for it.
Why lifes and mental health are being ruined, while Fed is just pumping gazillion of free money into corporations?
Not taking any debt is the best decision the person can make in their lifetime. In some cases it is OK to do it, when buying a house or using debt for business purpose from non institutional lender: friends, family etc.
Companies should just write it off. It is just money.
Why do you think the government is handing money over to corporations? Hint: It's not just to give their big business friends some moolah.
I mean, sometimes it is. Thats why they bailed out banks for making loans to people who could be reasonably expected to default, but failed to bail out the homeowners who were dumb enough to believe the bank when they were said they were able to become a homeowner in America by signing some papers they didn't really understand. Regulatory capture is absolutely a factor in explaining the government's response to many financial crises.
I'm pretty sure the average Joe would be better served with a system where corporations that make poor decisions go to bankruptcy court and their assets are sold to other people in order to pay their creditors and reallocate the capital more responsibly.
in a capitalist economy, profit is supposed to be the reward for correctly estimating risk and correctly allocating capital. in a socialist economy, the government is supposed to redistribute wealth to people who don't have it. in the current system, profits are privatized and losses are socialized, at least for powerful and connected people.
what's your alternative explanation?
There is nothing wrong with government providing liquidity by purchasing corporate debt and replacing lost cashflows.
A lot of corporation are so leveraged, that if they can't get the new loans to pay principles on old loans, they are in big trouble. They constantly refinancing every few years.
Market conditions are so uncertain right now, that investors don't want any of that and would like to sit on the sidelines or charge crazy interest rates.
As a result Fed stepped in and said that they are happy to participate in the market to make sure the interest rate stay low and companies have access to capital.
EXAMPLE:
Corp borrows 100 dollars to build a factory at 5% annual interest to be repaid back a year later.
Corp builds a factory and makes 7 dollars that year profit.
In the end of the year they have 2 dollars in their account ( 7 minus 5 interest). So how they supposed to pay back 100 they borrowed?
They just go borrow another 100 , pay it back to early investors and cycle repeats. This business is generating 2% return to shareholders and 5% to bond holders. Sucks to be a shareholder in this, but they are in the green.
Obviously it is way more complicated in real life but it is exactly the same principle. Access and cost to capital is what businesses needs to survive. Here is example of Tesla doing it -> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/investing/tesla-cash-crun....
The moral here is that Fed willingly just creates money out of the thing air, totally realizing that they might never get it back. If those loans blow up, they just write it off and add to the national debt for future generations to pay.
If corporation goes bankrupt, nobody is chasing CEOs to pay back their multimillion salaries funded by taxpayes. It is just cost of doing business and I am fine with it.
Can we just extend same courtesy to the rest of the citizens. As the great American philosopher said: "Corporations are people my friend"
Which means that a responsible person, who simply lives within their means and pays bills on time, buying used cars and such, winds up with no credit history. This means that folks might deny an apartment or that you'll pay a higher interest rate on a car loan. You might not get a loan for housing until you build up credit.
Credit was an issue for women specifically at one time because most bills were in their spouse's name - and joint bank accounts were usually "owned" by the husband, so that history wasn't working towards the woman.
I'm not sure if medical debt still counts towards credit scores or not: All you used to need for negative marks was to have an accident and be poor. (I have an uncle that had bankruptcy because of it: He wound up with a 250,000 hospital bill. He only made 30k before and could no longer perform his job)
It is a really crappy system, and I truly wish it were geared more towards folks simply being responsible and living within their means. Or at least minimally, require more of the positives be reported (so a hospital bill will never be negative unless that hospital also reports that folks paid on time).
In the US, it seems that you're basically forced to live "an average life" if you want to get any decent credit score. Land of the free indeed.
Banks know it — Citi and Chase pretty much stopped cheap balance transfers in April for most customers.
https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-historical-prices/table/by-ye...
Long story short by making inflation appear lower then it is, the tax brackets have stayed lower then they otherwise would, costing tax payers an extra 130 billion over 10 years
The Fed hasn’t been around that long, and isn’t even involved in inflation numbers, which come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Department of Commerce.
Inflation or no, the banks are going to go bust without infusions of cash as retail folds up and securitized leases and leveraged commercial developers implode.
I live in upstate NY, not exactly a boomtown... the economy is stabilized by government workers whose wage growth is 0-2% annually. The apartment that I rented in a nice suburban development for $550 in 2000 is $1150 in 2020 — well ahead of inflation. I see that pattern in many categories.
1. of which a slight majority are private investors https://fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/treasury-bull...
The Fed doesn't have a specific mandate for inflation levels, so it is impossible to be below it. The Fed mandate is to “promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long term interest rates”.
Inflation mostly encourages lower/middle class people to consume every dollar instead of saving for the future.
In Santa Clara county 40K+ of possible evictions are coming.
1. Rental property one - walked away. The bank sold it for $70K less than was owed. I payed $0
2. Rental property two - owed $130K. Did a short sale for $30K. I paid $1K
3. My own house. Walked away. It was sold for $70K less than I owed. They threaten to sue me. I told them that they could either sue me and I would file for bankruptcy or I could get 1/4 of what I owed from my 401K. They couldn’t touch my 401K in a lawsuit.
3 years to the day after the foreclosure, I got an FHA loan for 3.5% loan for a new house.
It’s a business transaction. Businesses default on loans and go bankrupt all of the time and it’s just part of doing business.
Startups fail all of the time and lose investor money and can come right back to the trough.
That’s like businesses that say “we are family and we are in this together and we need to make a shared sacrifice” while they walk away with golden parachutes and leave the employees with nothing.
Heck we elected a president that filed for bankruptcy 4 times.
Businesses love to talk about morality as long as it benefits them. My last company had a budget shortfall because of Covid and trotted out the “we are family” schtick along with a 10% pay cut. The same day of the announcement I was looking for another job.
3 years later when I did get another loan, the banks saw my foreclosures and short sales and were more than happy to give me a mortgage that was 50% more than my prior one. It was just business to them too.
FHA loans are guaranteed by the the federal government. During the next recession if you default on this loan because you no longer want to pay the loan, it will be the rest of us taking the loss, not the bank. So, not very surprising that the bank was willing to give you the loan.
Btw, none of the other loans were “conforming” ie government backed. Especially the investment property. The banks should also take risk into account when deciding interest rates. The government had no reason to be on the hook for non conforming loans.
insurance needs to make a profit or there is no incentive for investors to risk the loss of capital or assume the opportunity cost (meaning they could invest elsewhere). The person selling the insurance exchanges gives up a known regular amount to protect themselves against an unpredictable potential loss. The insurer accepts the risk of paying the unpredictable future cost in order to receive known predictable regular income. If the expected value of the transaction is zero then the insurer is essentially risking their capital for nothing.
everyone likes socialism when they get paid, no one likes socialism when they have to pay for other people's stuff. This is probably a failure mode.
The taxpayers definitely shouldn’t have had to bail out the banks for loans that the government didn’t back.
Yes.
Wikipedia has a more-substantive bit on the ethics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_default#Ethical_issu...
Breaking a contract by itself isn't morally questionable, but if you perhaps contract to provide PPE for hospitals in a pandemic, and then choose to not provide that PPE for no reason other than you don't want to (or it's more profitable to just not fulfill the contract) causing people not a party to the contract to be harmed, that's morally questionable. It's a very fact specific inquiry.
Depending on context it can be a sweet deal for both parties. When times are tough it's time to play the game.
I've had people owe me money. It's not pleasant when you know you've basically given money to them for free while they can laugh in your face. Sometimes I've got it back via debt collectors. It's a good thing.
Maybe you don't like predatory lending, but that's not the same as trying to help out somebody who's having hard times then getting ripped off by them. Not all debtors are some kind of helpless victim of life's unfairness. Often they're just selfish bastards trying to take advantage of whoever they can.
You should no more expect someone not to collect debt than you should expect to walk out of Walmart with whatever you want. If someone needs charity, that should be supplied OUTSIDE the normal system (non-profits, governments, friends and family), otherwise the system itself is ripe for abuse.
So you believe scams only happen on one side of the equation? No one has ever faked being homeless, having a medical condition, or faked some other loss or emergency to get money from people under false pretenses? You believe this is never happened in all of history?
People have never borrowed money from friends and family for "food" or "housing" only to find out they spent it on drugs, alcohol, vacations etc?
Debt Collectors are not the only scammers out there
The grocery store doesn't "help" me with food. I pay for it.
The problem emerges when the debt is sold and resold for pennies on the dollar to unethical people that use unethical means to collect on debt that may not even be legally actionable any more (i.e the debt was paid off, written off, or other wise cancelled by a number of programs or other factors but still ends up on a list some where)
This is one area that needs more regulation, and personally I would like to see these 3rd party debt collectors stopped as a industry, if the bank does not care enough to collect on the debt personally then it should simply be vacated
Graeber covers this very point in his book "Debt". It's fascinating.
We all have moral obligations to the people around us: to our families, our friends, our neighbors, the people in our lives. We are generous to our friends, and moral obligations will make them return our generosity.
However, when you borrow money, you are making a gamble. If you manage to repay the loan, you will be allowed to borrow again. If you fail to repay, you will lose something: either the collateral (as in a mortgage), or low interest payments (if you become a "bad risk"), or the right to borrow at all (if you declare bankruptcy, you will have trouble borrowing for 7 years).
The lender is also making a calculated bet. If they ask for collateral, their risk is lower, and they will charge less interest. If they lend you money without collateral (eg a credit card), the interest will be higher. The very fact that unsecured loans charge higher rates means that the lender expects, on average, to make a profit, because the higher interest will make up for the occasional default.
There is no personal relationship between lender and borrower. There is no moral obligation. It's just business and probabilities.
Unfortunately, people confound the two kinds of obligations, personal and financial. Lenders benefit from this confusion, because borrowers will have trouble being cold-blooded about the agreement they are entering into.
If we considered to be ok to not repay debts because a borrower just does not feel obligated to do so (and does not need more loans from that lender), then risk-surcharge would be extremely larger.
High trust societies where individuals can be expected to fulfill their obligations tend to prosper. Low trust societies where individuals cannot be trusted in this way tend to languish.
Paying back debts according to an agreed upon timetable is one of the important ways that high trust societies are built.
Everyone from the bankers themselves to the POTUS knows that paying off debts is only for suckers.
Let the billionaires pay their debts and their taxes first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_Bankers_Association#D...
Or people with significant savings?
I'm no religious person, but there certainly seems to be a certain theme about debt forgiveness... https://www.openbible.info/topics/debt_forgiveness
Debt is pretty central to most problems in society, actually.
1. Historical debt like referred to in the book that destabilized society was generational debt, passed on in the family. Unlike modern debt where your debt dies with you.
2. Historical debt there was no concept of bankruptcy in the legal systems of that time. There was also debtor prison and indentured servitude to pay off debt.
Those 2 factors are what destabilized societies and caused the need for mass debt forgiveness, we solved those by changing the lender risk metric, and allowing for a case by case relief valve called bankruptcy
Student loan debt breaks both of these. Student loans were supposed to be low risk, but the jobs never materialized, and they can't be discharged by bankruptcy.
There's also the matter of people even being able to afford to file for bankruptcy. Just for that you're looking in the ballpark of $1500 in court and attorney fees.
Not true, only government backed student loans are non-dischargable via bankruptcy (but there are other programs in place in lieu of bankruptcy including income bases repayment), other types of student loans are.
>Student loans were supposed to be low risk
Low risk to the LENDER not the borrower, they are low risk because they are guaranteed by the federal government
>but the jobs never materialized
That depends on your field of study, it was always a myth that just have any degree would net you a high paying job. If you fell for that will I am sorry you got scammed
STEM fields still have a high ROI on their education, but Liberal Arts, Social "Sciences" and other such non-STEM fields do not and never will
>There's also the matter of people even being able to afford to file for bankruptcy. Just for that you're looking in the ballpark of $1500 in court and attorney fees.
I take it you have never been through a personal bankruptcy. The first thing the lawyer will tell you is to stop all payments on all debt (for Chapter 7), it is with this money you will use to pay the costs and fees. If you have any income at all the filing fees are not a burden. In the event you waited to the point where are literally broke with no assets, and no money at all, only debt well not only did you wait far far far far too long before seeking bankruptcy protection there are ways to do it with deferred payments even some non-profits will help
For most people, you file for bankruptcy protection long before your situation is so dire you do not even have the filing fee money (which is about 1 month part time salary from Walmart)
It is up to you to understand and know the law, or hire someone that does
When your physical person ceases your fictitious entity remains and the executor of your estates is put in charge to close out that fictitious entity by settling any debts with any assets you may have, the remainder of the assets are then dispensed as declared by you, or by law
I fail to see how this is in anyway not inline with my statement or creates the same kind of generational debt that plagued the past
There's not much point in comparing modern, highly legalized forms of debt with the myriad much less formal systems of the past if you don't know much about them.
I do not believe I did, I believe my statements were specifically about the debt systems that destabilized their societies and cause wide spread harm resulting in the need for massive debt forgiveness
The owners wanted all employees to be available to work 8-10 hours/week. Employees were understandably not thrilled about a few hours of work (even at $13.25, Portland minimum wage as of 7/1/20) knocking out the $600/week federal plus whatever state unemployment they were getting.
Employee who posted said that the owners would report anyone who wouldn't work as having quit. Much discussion followed.
They sent out texts to all employees after having no contact with them saying you must come back to work now or we will report it as refusal and also never allow those people to be eligible for employment again. No concern for people who may have already found new employment since the company abruptly laid them all off, you don't come back and you can never come back. Forced loyalists is a weird strat
"Hey, I'm getting an extra $30k per year!"
"That's it? That's nothing."
I spend more than that on rent, but between my wife and I, we could easily cover all expenses on $600/week each. If I left the California coast, I wouldn't want for anything material on this budget, and I think I could maintain 2k/month of savings beyween the two of us while covering all other expenses.
And as I understand it, the 600/WK is on top of other normal payments.
e: Oh, cool, they're going to solve the problem with blockchain. Hard pass. https://cdn.spartacus.com/white-papers/fiduciarydatabanking....
The recent tax forgiveness that allowed all of those corps to bring their offshore money home proved your statement correct and the obvious falsity of the trickle down theory. The corps used the incoming money for bonuses, stock buy backs, etc. The effect it had on the lower income tiers of society was barely even noticed.
would still be running corporations beholden to company & shareholders before all else. Ignoring that (to be nicer than needed to employees or to over-hire) triggers automatic lawsuits from your institutional investors. There's a bit of wiggle-room for decision making, but why do good for the little people unless it's in your charter?
About 10 years later I got sent 25 bucks as part of a class action lawsuit against the bank. Thanks, I guess?