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Comment by shiggerino | Hacker News Reader

>If he can’t earn close to $150,000/year he won’t be able to pay this order, in which case he will join the roughly 1 in 7 child support payors who are imprisoned at some point for nonpayment (for not paying the court-ordered amount, Massachusetts offers the pilot a felony conviction, which means he won’t have an ATP certificate anymore and therefore won’t be able to work again, plus up to 10 years in prison).

It doesn't help that the United States still has such medieval instruments as debtor's jail.

While more civilized countries have programs in place to help debtor's with counselling, restructuring and suicide prevention, the United States debtor's jail system makes sure you'll never get out of debt, and that you'll die in debt. Never mind that the creditor won't get what they are owed under this system. Never mind whether the creditor even exists: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/02/15/woman-jailed-l...

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I have no idea if the USA has a debtors jail or not, but I don't think this is about going to jail for being in debt, it is about going to jail for breaking a court imposed order.

The court order could have been about a restraining order, in which case you go to jail for breaking a restraining order. This does not mean that the USA has a jail specifically for any possible violation of a court imposed order.

Which is for non-payment of debt, which is debtors prison.

It's a distinction without a difference if the court is ordering you to pay money that don't have and can't get.

The US doesn't have debtor's prison per se. Only certain kinds of obligations, which are already associated with "jailable" offenses can result in something that looks a lot like debtor's prison. In some cases not being able to pay a debt really should carry a jail sentence, for example in case of clearly fraudulent behavior.

John Oliver talks about a particular kind of "debtor's jail" in a recent episode of "Last Week Tonight". It seems though that appeal courts don't look favorably on such jail terms.

I love how a mentally ill European kills loads of people because the EU didn't mandate proper cockpit control and the top comment is about how bad the US is. As Europe unravels they hold on to their smugness ever tighter, but the thing is, aside from being a drag on the world economy, no one really cares what happens in Europe as long as they keep electing leaders who do the US's bidding.

And I love how you use every chance you get to harp on 'Europe disintegrating' and other bull-shit. The comment was in reference to a segment in the article which related to the situation in the US.

Why don't you just show us the FAR that mandates proper cockpit control next to the supposedly inadequate equivalent JAR?

Please don't post comments baiting political opponents (or continents). That isn't what HN is for. When a comment is wrong, either refute it substantively or downvote it and move on.

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