America’s Dead Souls | Hacker News Reader

America’s Dead Souls

theparisreview.org

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I am in awe of her paragraph: “ Every time I read one of the Russian greats my life transforms into an eerie mirror of the work. I had already experienced a year of obsessive relationship analysis (Anna Karenina), six months beneath the thumb of a powerful boss whose political maneuvers were far reaching and whose requests quickly spiraled into the hellish and fantastic (The Master and Margarita), a week on the run with a depressive whose obsessive psychosis ended in a prison sentence (Crime and Punishment), a much-too-long friendship with a man whose preoccupations with his father were borderline incestuous (Fathers and Sons), and, after I finished War and Peace, years stuck in sprawling disillusionment that, unlike many characters in the novel, I have yet to overcome.”

Real talk.

If books by great artists were drugs they'd be illegal or at least strictly controlled.

There's a play on this idea by the way, "Dostoevsky-Trip". https://www.srkn.ru/texts/dostoev1.shtml

Not sure if it's been translated. I did see it in a theater, and it was a lot of fun.

It resonated deeply with me - there is something about Russian literature that worms its way deep into your essence, in a way I’ve never quite found with western literature, which, while impactful, somehow doesn’t have the same long-lasting depth of effect. I haven’t read Crime and Punishment in nearly 20 years, but I can still see Raskolnikov’s grotty abode, still feel the panic at the confrontation with Lizaveta, still feel the dazed ramblings through the streets of St Petersburg, the need for absolution. I still feel the blank and bleak repetitiveness of the existence of Ivan Denisovich, building up and breaking down, just because.

Is that really true? I have often felt that the French and English have given us great Novels too, especially in 18th and 19th century.

War and Peace is great, but perhaps Les Miserables pips it scope and dramatic stakes essential covering the same period of time. Flaubert is also very cinematic. Zola's naturalism is also deeply introspective.

English given us a more comic look at life, from Fielding, to Trollope, and even later in Evelyn Waugh.

If you want to read Dead Souls, there's a free high quality edition at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/nikolai-gogol/dead-souls/d...

It's a surprisingly funny and brisk read.

Gogol is the master of witty short stories. I also recommend Diary of a Madman, in which a mediocre civil servant begins to imagine he is the King of Spain.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36238/36238-h/36238-h.htm#Pa...

That's a great one! Also available at SE as "Memoirs of a Madman": https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/nikolai-gogol/short-fictio...

Speaking about his short stories, read "The Overcoat"/"The Mantle" by Gogol. Dostoevsky is said to have said that "we all came out of 'the overcoat' of/by Gogol", in the sense that the tradition of deep compassion with the simple/poor in Russian literature started with this work. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36238/36238-h/36238-h.htm#Pa...

Another very good (and short one) is 'the Nose' - this one is quite surrealistic, it's a hundred years ahead of its time. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36238/36238-h/36238-h.htm#Pa...

I enjoyed it but I also felt that there was too much of a culture gap (or simply my own lack of knowledge of 19th century Russia) for me to fully appreciate everything that was going on.

A big part of the jokes I seemingly missed reading it in English, according to a friend of mine who read it in Russian, is that some of the landowners and other characters' names are untranslated puns.

I remember laughing out loud at some description of how one may refer to a smelly cheese in polite society, but I can't find anything about cheese at all in the English translation. Maybe the Norwegian translator made up a joke more palatable to Norwegians =D

I am shocked to see the debt fall on the descendant. Is this legal? If a parent commits a murder the legal system does not blame the descendant. How is it legal for debt be passed to descendants?

Literally anything can be made legal. The people who want the money can lobby legislators until they get a law they want passed. Nothing stops it. Lobbying is legal, and lawmakers can make any law they want. They can even make a law that allows corporations to abuse people (which is weird since corporations are people, but we don't generally allow people to abuse people)

Thanks for writing this. Many times when people ask "Is it legal?" they miss this nuance. What they often mean instead is "Is it moral?" It is a great accomplishment of the political class to have manufactured this ambiguity.

Afaik if you accept the inheritance, you accept all of it. Normally the solution is to reject it, at least if you know the estate’s in the red, but you can not pick and choose.

We’ve done this for the inheritance of one of my uncles who died severely in debt, as well as his wife and children, everyone of his sibling, nieces, and nephews, had to refuse the inheritance when they came of age. For a few years that was basically the traditional birthday: eat cakes, get presents, sign letter telling the bank you don’t want that debt.

And apparently some states have filial responsibility statutes which makes children responsible regardless, which seems beyond fucked.

Beyond refusing the inheritance, could this be avoided by leaving the inheritance to the state in a will? In that case, would the state inherit the debt?

With proper estate planning, you can pass on assets while leaving the debt in a state where it can't be pursued.

Again something the affluent can do, those most at risk of being in private or consumer debt aren't probably even aware of all of that.

This is not just something for the well to do.

I have experience with government run elder care programs and the (privately run) estate planning that goes with it. Shoehorning all your worth into a trust (there's more to it than that) is something that not so affluent people commonly have to do in order to qualify for state run elder assistance programs/subsidies that they don't qualify for and couldn't afford themselves (fixed income) because their money is tied up in a non-liquid asset (their house). This isn't something just for the affluent. Basically if you own your own house or have a lot of equity in it it's what you have to do unless you want to give the state your house in exchange for a free van ride to the senior center or 7hr/wk of in-home care.

And before you assume everywhere is like SV and that owning your own house makes you affluent by default I would like to state that my experience is on the other side of the country.

Luckily your family catched it. Sounds similar enough to German law, so. But I have honestly no idea about the details. We do have the situation so, that children can, and are, be hold liable for their parents living costs. E.g. when the parents are under the last tier of social security (Hartz IV is really fucked up not just in that regard) or in a retirement home of sorts. Which sucks, because if your parents abused you, courts can still force you to sustain them.

If this happens to you:

1) The creditors are full of shit. Don't accept the estate, don't acknowledge that you owe any debt, and you don't owe them a damn thing. If no-one accepts it, they're simply screwed. They'll try to trick you into paying anyway, because they are, in fact, monsters, but they're full of shit.

2) Look up (online) the correct magic words to tell the creditors to go fuck themselves, or else face charges. They'll stop. On the off chance they don't, a call of complaint to your representative(s) or to the correct state agency will do the trick.

Yeah this article is a bit dramatic. As evil as the rich people who try to recover debts may be, children are not legally responsible for their parent's debts.

Real life can be very dramatic and it doesn't make it less true to the people involved. Many people don't know to question the debtors, get overwhelmed, get bullied, and don't have the energy or resources to fight the onslaught of aggressive communications and serious looking mail they receive from these predators.

Except when they are! https://www.paelderlaw.com/asset-protection-medicaid/supreme...

That is so ridiculous. You can be born into this world without your decision or input. Your parents made that choice. Your parents can also choose to kick you out right at 18, after fulfilling their legal obligation.

Then, down the line, you can be held responsible for potentially even more than 18 years of more expensive care? Absolutely unfair.

I read a book that had a quote:

    "'Fair' is the first half of 'Fairy Tale,' and you won't find either in the real world."

I was aware of filial support laws but it seems like they're only applied this aggressively in Pennsylvania? Generally they're used to keep children from looting grandma's bank account and then sending her to a nursing home on the government's dime--which seems reasonable to me.

One notable, and very underreported exception, is Pennsylvania's filial responsibility law[1]. In Pennsylvania, if a resident of a nursing home is indigent, the liability falls statutorily on their family, who the home is free to sue and secure a judgement. This may not have gotten much attention due to uncommon use, but it's very real, and it's been upheld by the PA State Supreme Court. A handful of children of seniors have been bankrupted by filial responsibility judgements.

[1]: https://www.paelderlaw.net/pennsylvanias-filial-support-law-...

Actually, I dont think PA is an exception here. Most states have similar laws on the books.

https://www.robertreeveslaw.com/blog/children-support-parent...

The interesting part is how they're not applied. There are federal statutes that are more specific - and only two states have used these laws within the last 20 years.

There are only extreme corner cases where you need to worry about this.

No one needs to worry, until money gets tight. Then it's every man for himself, and the government will go after you. Or they will stiff the nursing home, and then let the nursing home go after you, like the what happened to the guy in Pennsylvania.

With the government budget situation in many places, and large amounts of people about to become elderly and rack up bills, I would consider it more than a remote possibility in the future.

Yes, in fact the details vary some depending on which state you're in and how you're related to the deceased. In general, though, I'd treat unsolicited calls attempting to get you, personally, to pay for a dead relative's debts, as bullshit until you're 100% sure they're not. Most (all?) state governments have FAQs for this sort of thing online, and the federal government also offers guidance (all trivially Googleable).

Personally, I would hire a lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction and specialty. Laws are complicated, and collections and court cases are very expensive if you happen to be wrong. The lawyer can help you reduce the amount if you happen to be responsible for part of it. The "magic words" will have much more power if they come from an practicing attorney.

I wish I'd been more aggressive about this when my mother in law died. She left behind a house, but also a half a million dollars worth of medical debt from a decade of chronic illness that eventually took her life. We thought "fine, we'll let the creditors fight over the house and be done with it", but they refused. They told us it was our responsibility to sell the house at at least market rate--which was hard because it had several decades of deferred maintenance. They would only take cash and refused to do any work for it beyond making threatening phone calls about garnishing our wages if we didn't get it done in time.

Since it was the state Medicaid office harassing us I really didn't want to get in a legal fight so we did all of the work of selling the house. Our lawyer did at least manage to get our costs taken out of the closing fees so we weren't out of pocket except for the time and effort and miles since we live in a different state. All in all I can't recommend having a loved one die.

The worst part is back when my mother in law got sick my wife convinced her to write us out of her will because we were told that the state would get the home anyway after her medical bills piled up. What she didn't tell us is that she just changed her will to name her church as the beneficiary. Once we read the will it became yet another mess to clean up. It should have been easy enough, we talked with the pastor and convinced him to refuse the estate easily enough. Unfortunately the church board overrode him (I think they believed we were trying to pull a fast one), and then found themselves in a fight with the state over a house they also had no intention of putting the effort into selling and also a huge medical debt. It was very tempting to just drop the thing and walk away at that point, but it was clear the problem would never be resolved and it would almost certainly come back to haunt us in the end. We had to do the work because nobody else was going to. I never did get a clear answer from the Medicaid debt collectors why they couldn't just put the estate up on a government auction. I think it would have required them to do some work and they really just didn't want to.

I think it is important to raise awareness about Filial Responsibility Laws which hold children accountable for the debts of parents. More than half of US state have laws on the books which enable debt holders to go after assets outside of the deceased's estate.

It is becoming increasingly common for nursing homes to bring suits against adult children of their residents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws#Sta...

This is pretty damn scary. Are debtor's prisons about to make a comeback too?

Dude, that's basically what we have now. Bond, fines, court fees, lawyer fees, prison labor, etc. Even if you win, you still lose financially.

Edit: I forgot a big one. The early intervention or accelerated rehabilitation programs cost tons of money, paid both to the system and to the vendors of ignition interlocks, ankle bracelets, etc. You really are paying to stay out of prison.

They never went away they just rewrote the rules so you go in for something else on paper.

So basically the system in the medieval Arab Gulf countries. Unbelievable.

Your post implies that they have ever went away. They haven't, there's just a large middle-class America that's largely insulated from the barbarism of its legal system.

We already have them. Inmates in most US jails and prisons are charged a per diem just for being there. It’s disgraceful.

So.. what if they don't pay?

often you're billed after release, can take it from any pay you make when you're out, etc. It's pretty evil.

You find yourself with a judgement and garnishment should you ever be employed.

That’s not debtor’s prison?

Imagine being locked up for not paying fines, only to be fined further while your in, and unable to break the cycle...

Right, that’s not great, but that’s not what people mean by debtors prison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison

If someone is unable to pay their debt, they are thrown back in jail, accruing more debt. How is this not a debtors prison? Perfect examples are listed on this wikipedia article. Child-support, garnishments, confiscations, etc. It's exactly what I described.

https://lasentinel.net/if-youre-poor-in-america-debtors-pris...

Inmates who are unable to pay their fees (for even being in jail) are unable to leave. For-profit prisons are real.

I don't understand how this is legal, let alone upheld by a state Supreme Court. How can I be legally responsible for my parents? How would the courts even find me if I don't live in the US anymore (the example case is the courts successfully suing a man who moved to Greece)?

I am thankful to you for bringing this to my attention, but my WTF! meter is soaring.

In the example you mention, it was the parent that went to Greece. It was a child living in the US that was forced to pay.

It is actually worse than that. Many states also have criminal penalties allowing incarceration for financial neglect of parents.

> How can I be legally responsible for my parents?

Well your parents are legally responsible for you for a period of time. There are many countries (I am most familiar with Germany in this regard) where the children are considered responsible for the parents. I was not aware this was the case in the USA.

In some countries it's quite difficult / impossible to disown or disinherit various relatives.

In Germany, the obligation to pay alimony depends on the child's income. Only when the childs income (before taxes) excceeds 100,000 Euros per anno she/he has to pay something. There exists no obligation to pay alimony for grandparents.

What if you're estranged from your parents? If you haven't talked to them for twenty years are you still liable?

The law provides for exceptions in serious cases. However, the German Federal Court of Justice has interpreted this quite strictly. A son who had no contact with his father for 40 years and was disinherited except for the compulsory portion still had to pay alimony. The court reasoned that the son had received substantial assistance from the father during his first 18 years and that the father had only made use of his right to testamentary freedom.[1]

Just a side note: If someone has received gifts from a person who later becomes destitute, he or she must return the gift under certain conditions (the gift was made no more than 10 years ago, the recipient was not destitute on his or her part, it was not a gift of decency such as a small birthday or Christmas present, etc.).

[1] BGH, Judgment of 12 February 2014, Az. XII ZB 607/12 (PDF, in German) http://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/doc...

Realistically, when parents get old, it is their children who become responsible for them. I feel like this is quite common sense... especially seeing as children inherit from their parents...

Consider that parents may have children in their mid 40s. These children are effectively dependent until ~20. Often they'll accrue significant debt to pay for college. Then 10-15 years later their parents may need significant care. If those parents weren't wealthy or careful to save then these children could find that they've few if any years free of heavy financial or caretaking burdens. Then consider they may want children of their own.

The lack of a real social safety net in the US really feels like previous generations pulling up the ladder.

> The lack of a real social safety net in the US really feels like previous generations pulling up the ladder.

At first I misread the last word as 'latter' and I was confused because it completely reverses the meaning. English is fun sometimes.

Except parents can will nothing to their children if they choose? Many people inherit absolutely nothing from their parents.

Parents choose to have a child and should have the responsibility to care for them. Despite this, there are still mechanisms by which parent can legally abandon their children. Children do not choose to be born, so the moral contract is different. I would agree that most people who were cared for as children should care for their elders, and should want to. But what if they hate or despise their parents. Do they “owe” for what the parents did despite never agreeing to the obligations.

Children do not choose to be born, don't want to sound cynical, but they can undo it quite easily. If you think about it, being born is best thing that could have happened to you. Because without it actually nothing could have happened to you. So being alive is better than not to exists at all.

So, TIL the great, Freedom loving USA does have debt inheritance in 30 states.

This is breathtakingly well-written and also terrifying.

Unfortunately this is but one version: it’s also not uncommon for children and grandchildren to milk their elders dry financially, particularly when the elders are a bit addled. If those elders leave unpaid bills to a nursing home, why shouldn’t those children be held responsible? It’s rough out there.

Making nursing homes out to be the victims here is a real laugh. If anybody is milking anybody dry, it's nursing homes sucking up every last dollar the elderly have. Hundreds of thousands of dollars regularly spent to prolong suffering a few months more.

This reminds me, I need to get a living will written up to prevent this bullshit from happening to me.

>If those elders leave unpaid bills to a nursing home, why shouldn’t those children be held responsible?

Because people should only be forced to pay for things they agreed to pay for.

Creditors can only go after the assets of the estate. One does not inherit debts.

In this case the State likely got the house to pay back Medicaid via “Medicaid Recovery”.

> Creditors can only go after the assets of the estate. One does not inherit debts.

They sometimes do go after the family, hoping to trick them into paying. I'm sure they get a lot of folks to pay, too.

> hoping to trick them into paying.

That sounds like fraud. Can the families not sue afterwards to get the money they paid back, with damages, on the grounds they were victims of fraud?

I'd assume that, as long as they're careful about how they pressure you, it's not fraud if you decide to pay. AFAIK they're under no obligation to volunteer that you don't have to pay them anything, or to otherwise educate you about the fact that they're (in fact) just begging for money they're not owed, and hoping you'll give it to them. But if they ask you (the aggrieved, in the middle of hosting family and trying to plan a funeral and figuring out how to pay all the bills you actually do need to, as a result of all this) to accept this debt and you say you do, and then they help you work out a very convenient and gracious payment plan for this debt you unthinkingly accepted because you're not a damn lawyer and you're kinda stressed out and debt collectors are scary and now it's on auto-draft for the next 18 months, well, that's above-board.

I've known people who've been on the receiving end of those calls, so they definitely happen, and must be profitable, one way or another.

If it isn't fraud, it should be. The lack of liability or any requirements for due diligence for debt collectors is a utter travesty that primarily harms the most vulnerable and underrepresented people in our society.

Fillial responsibility laws exist in about half of the US. I believe only some types of debts can be passed on (like nursing home costs), but it varies by state.

I was curious and found this Wikipedia article [1] providing the list of states with filial responsibility laws.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws

One thing to point out is that those states are where the impoverished person must reside. The relative can reside anywhere and the state (depends on the one) can sue you or issue a warrant even if you live in another state.

It's funny how everything fucked up in USA goes back to their idiotic healthcare system.

A wonderful read on Russian literature, unfortunately tarnished by one unsupported, hard-to-believe claim:

> There are endless articles on why America has failed to curb the pandemic. The truth is simple. People profit from our death. Foreclosure companies, debt collectors, real estate agents, news corporations, health care tycoons, senators, and presidents, to name a few.

So, the American society collectively willingly let people die to make more money? (because they profit from the deaths of others.) Senators make more money if more people die?

I understand that the author is angry at the circumstances around the author's mother's death. However, I don't see what this kind of unsubstantiated claims accomplishes besides detracting from her otherwise well written piece.

Edit: clarifying sentence.

Senators and Presidents are more likely to be re-elected by a certain segment of the population if they oppose COVID restrictions of various kinds, yes. And news networks always profit in ratings from a crisis. Both political and ratings success translate pretty directly into financial success.

For the other examples, I have no idea if any of those professions disproportionately oppose scientifically accepted COVID rules. However, if you just relate them to the "profit from ... death" line and not COVID, I think they're all factually correct, those professions do profit from the process of death or its aftermath.

> So, the American society collectively willingly let people die to make more money?

Yes, quite explicitly? Many people publicly made the argument that it was worth more people dying to keep the economy open, though they generally paired that with denying any significant death toll.

I agree the specific association to COVID seems to only serve to anchor the article to current events; it stands on its own without that line. But I don't really think these are unsubstantiated claims in any major way.

I appreciate your civil tone. However, I do think you are defending a much weaker interpretation, though. My interpretation of the OP's claim of "profiting from death" is far stronger than yours.

> Yes, quite explicitly? Many people publicly made the argument that it was worth more people dying to keep the economy open,

Yes, in the same sense that having high ways open (or having them at all) will cause more automobile-related deaths but will improve economic output and general quality of living of its citizens. So, in this sense, a driving commuter benefits from having high ways, but does he profit from deaths from automobile-related accidents? I see that as a far stronger statement/question.

Edit: minor edits on words

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