Forgive the Debt of The 99 Percent?

By on October 16, 2011 in News 42

“So my immodest proposal is simply this,” as posed by Alex Pareene on Salon.com:

Individuals and households in the bottom 99 percent who owe debt to any large financial institution that received federal government support during and after the 2008 crisis should see their debt forgiven. That would certainly stimulate the economy, as most people would suddenly find themselves with a great deal more money to spend on iPads (and food, and clothing, and housing, and healthcare). The debt can be forgiven by decree or if the government really wants to it can step in to pay it itself; I don’t much care either way. (Though it’d be nice to see it just wiped off the books, to enrage the banks.)

Let’s wipe the debt of the 99 percent off the books, tell the financial sector to eat it, and get on with our lives.

I’m by no means the first person to come up with this demand. David Graeber, author of “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” proposed the idea on “Democracy Now” last month …

More from Alex Pareene on Salon.com

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=641708060 John Grunwell

    This is *ENTIRELY* too awesome and helpful to the average American to ever be accepted by the puppet masters and hegemons.  

  • Anonymous

    Forgive the debt of the 99%, forgive the debt any Europea allies happen to owe us, and tell China to fuck off.

    Preferably with our Military back home so angry Chinese bill collectors can’t get to them so easily.

  • HonestAbe

    You people really don’t have a clue as to the way an economy work, do you?
    Do you have a savings? That is debt owed to you by the bank – the bank has then lent that money out to the “99 percent” to finance homes, credit cards, etc, – if you forgive that debt, you are destroying everyone’s savings.

    Anyone ever see “It’s a Wonderful Life” – perhaps you should and take note of the stiuation the bank is in. Granted that was in simpler times of banking, but the fundamental principle is the same. We are all holders of each others’ debts. Fogive the debts, and you abolish our investments in each other.

    Let me know when this is going down, so I can go take all my money out of the bank, stuff it in shoeboxes, and then run up all my cards.

    Remember millions of people and all those big unions have huge pensions tied up in debt instruments – forgive those debts and you are destroying the future pensions of almost everyone with a retirement fund. Real nice.

  • Hadrian999

    sounds nice bit it’s a recipe for instant 3rd world country, we make almost nothing of real value anymore, without foreign buyers for our bonds the dollar would collapse and so would any kind of order. it wouldn’t really hurt the elite,  but as a nation the USA would be done for, the armed forces would either dry up because the pay is worthless scrip or they would turn into warlords. it would be almost impossible to afford the fuel we buy from foreign nations and the economy would pretty much end. we as a nation have allowed our greed to take us from the most powerful nation in the world to a nation with no real strength because we abandoned our manufacturing strength in favor of corporate profits and a service based economy.

  • Joseph

    Not enough. that will help to stimulate the economy but it does nothing to solve the underlying problem. We must also hold the banks and financial corps responsible and prosecute those who broke laws, and we also need to prohibit all campaign contributions.

  • Anonymous

    But war!

  • Anonymous

    How about the government pays off the debts at 50 cents on the dollar, then institutes a 2% sales tax on non-essential goods and services to help pay it back.

  • Anonymous

    How about the government pays off the debts at 50 cents on the dollar, then institutes a 2% sales tax on non-essential goods and services to help pay it back.

  • Anonymous

    How about the government pays off the debts at 50 cents on the dollar, then institutes a 2% sales tax on non-essential goods and services to help pay it back.

  • GBSS

    They already destroyed those pensions. sure, they’ll get their money but it wont be worth anything. And that money in the shoe boxes will come in handy when you need to heat your house.

  • Simiantongue

    Fine don’t forgive the debt. Just forgive much of the interest on loans.  Give people an almost 0% interest bailout like they’ve done for corporations. That way a 200,000 /30 year mortgage for instance,  would only cost someone between six and seven thousand $ a year. Never mind the fact that this would stop nearly all home foreclosure, people could even pay that working at McDonalds. It would give people cash liquidity to invigorate the economy.

    This could be accomplished by opening a publicly owned bank. Cut out the middleman. Privately owned banks are just a way to redistribute wealth to an opulent minority anyway. We’d be better off putting all that money to work for us instead. There is no reason we need a for profit banking system any more than we need a for profit road system or school system.

    The forefathers of this country were not completely dim. They warned of private banks and the corporations that would rise around them and the dangers inherent. So we didn’t listen, we went with that system anyway, we screwed up, they were right. Now we know better. It’s time to consider alternatives.

  • Anonymous

    No bandages, fix the cause of the economic injury to the majority. First step, make sure the corporate funded stooges lose in the primaries, both the Republicans and the Democrat primaries.
    Once you have better lawmakers, you will have better laws. laws that ensure lies are not put up as news.
    Laws that ensure corporate executives are legally and financially liable for the actions of the corporations they control and that means when corporations kill those executives are charged with murder.
    Laws that limit the size of corporations and as it is all becoming to readily apparent, laws that make multi-national corporations illegal as they are loyal to know one except the greed of their corporate executives.
    Laws that ensure politicians undergo testing just like any other employee, health, mental and intellectual (we have a right to know).
    Proportional penalties, all fines should be a percentage of income to ensure the same impact.
    Fair trade laws, not free trade laws, all competition should be upon a equal basis, ensuring the safety of the population, the safety of the environment and safe and reasonable working conditions.
    Ban all trade with tax havens, fiscal transactions or products, bankrupt those countries and the tax cheats that use them.
    Full criminal investigation of the 911, Iraq War and corrupt no bid contracts, let’s see those corporate stooges doing real time in a federal pen.

  • Anonymous

    Yes, but the vast majority of Americans simply aren’t ready to see people being shot on every corner every day. What I propose is a simple, but effective plan.

    I will murder 312,437,959 Americans.

    There will be no dissent, and I can get on with killing everyone else on the planet.

  • Alex

    As somebody who proudly doesn’t take on debt and have struggled because of it, I’m appalled by the suggestion that I should help pay for your plasma TV. This shit makes me turn libertarian. And I hate libertarians.

  • Mark

    Acually that isnt true. Banks create loans out of nothing. If they used your savings to loan out then you wouldn’t beable to withdrawl your money from the bank. It’s called fractional reserve banking. There is a good video about it on youtube. Also you should check out some of the other videos on youtube about banking so you can understand why people are mad at the banks and how they have destroyed the world. People are not mad for no reason. They steal plain and simple and are going to ruin the world.

  • TheGuest

    I agree.

    Douglas Adams wrote something like, “If we ever completely figure out all the mysteries of the universe, it will immediately vanish and be replaced by something even more complex.”
    I think the same would apply here. If all private debts were forgiven, an even more horrible system of economic slavery would take its place. 

  • KREET-n SLAVE

    i F$$KING love this idea

  • DeepCough

    Hey, if America is a Christian nation, than the debts of the 99% should be forgiven.

  • GlobalDebtRealignment

    This is a good start, but should be taken one step further: http://www.thedebtrealignmentinitiative.com/Home_Page.html

  • Vi0let_femme

    Forgive?  America can’t forgive

  • Andrew

    “An” economy?  You mean this economy.  One of the problems is that way too many think money is something organic and immutable with objective value.  It’s the cart we’ve put before the horse of human production and human need.  Economies are games we humans make up to decide who gets what, and as such the rules can be changed.

  • Robert Pinkerton

    In my opinion, any God who does not D A M N the very institution/idea of consumer credit, deserves himself to be damned — ponder the damnation of a God.

    Decades ago, I took the radical decision that simply I would not rent another person’s money. I have never ever believed other than that being in debt was simply a tragedy. I took this decision after hearing an aunt of mine complain about the extra paperwork she had to do when her boss’s laborers got garnisheed; I could not then understand how any adult could face such humiliation without suicide. Everything I have learnt since then, has confirmed me in the rightness of my decision.

  • Cocomaan

    Anyone who hasn’t should read David Graeber’s Debt: the First 5000 Years. He cites it in his article.

  • Anonymous

    “You people really don’t have a clue as to the way an economy work, do you?” It would be helpful if you could define the word “work(s)” in this sentence. In case it hasn’t become obvious to you yet, the economy isn’t working. If it was working we wouldn’t bother to discuss it.

    We all long for simpler days when the banks actually paid us to keep our money in their bank. Those days past when there was actually a point to having money in a bank, ya know back when interest rates were above 1%?
    Back when banks didn’t nickle and dime you to death with service fees etc. Now we only pay for the “convenience”
    of having an account. In other words, we have bank accounts now because it has been made very inconvenient to NOT have an account. The use of cash in this world is all too often frowned upon. 

    “”It’s a Wonderful Life” -good old movie that it is, full of the simpler times and practices mentioned in the last paragraph, but it is a very poor comparison to banks of today. You mention some very compelling arguments that would have been valid back in the day of “ ”It’s a Wonderful Life”.  But JImmy Stewart is dead and so are those times. 

    As Mark mentioned below, fractional reserve banking pumped far too much “fake” money into the system.
    How can the economy work, when the value of money has become so wildly abstract? How can the economy work if it is controlled by a central source that only cares for its own interests? 

    Debt instruments are peoples savings? What kind of world is this where the debt and slavery of others is the stepping stone to the personal security of a few? 

    I get that you care, we all do. The economic system we have is already a failure. It doesn’t work. Maybe if things were simpler like in older days, it would work and all that wood pulp you stuff into shoe boxes may actually be worth something. 

    It’s hard to say exactly what might happen if the debts of the 99% were forgiven. Likely it would great for some and a source envy for others.

  • http://www.facebook.com/kyle.weller Kyle Weller

    All this protesting about the banks gets me thinking…. All that we do in our normal lives are actually enabling them to destroy themselves and the economy. Right now everyone is depositing money into these banks that are all profiting off of the interest of our accounts. Each dollar you deposit is loaned out to other bank members in forms of mortgages and car loans that many people are defaulting on, causing interest rates to lower and banks to lose more money. I have a simple solution for all the protesters, I think all people whom have bank accounts that were bailed out by the government to close their accounts, cancel their credit cards and lines, and for people to live in their means. Also the government needs to set the loan guidelines more stricter for each bank to get credit lines. By doing these things, we’ll not support these failing banks, by not letting them use our funds in our accounts to pay off their own debt, and they will be forced to give out fewer loans because they have fewer accounts to collect interest in, and invest. At the very least, switching over to a credit union seems smarter. I refuse to have a bank account and support a corporation twice. We are already paying off all the banks debt since our taxes bailed them out.

  • raychil

    There are a lot of things we have ALL messed up since the US has been founded. There are a lot of ideas and ways to clean it up. One thing that is without argument is: we have to stop it. It involves sacrifice, it involves hard work, and it involves seeing it through. I am not convinced that the conveniences that have saturated our economy in daily life, people are ready (or ever going to be) to change. I would truely love it. Regardless of what steps they take to fix all the boo-boos that have been badly bandaged up, swept under the rug….. we have to live within our means. Yes, a booming economy is essential, but if we are not paying what we are buying off because we can’t afford to, it isn’t helping anyone (except the 1%). The debt is hurting us; the plain everyday people. Even at a cut to the 1%, it still wouldn’t effect them. If you have 5 million and lose 5 thousand dollars in one year, who cares. If you make 10 thousand a year and you lose 5 thousand, it does matter.  It means buying the cheap brand, not going to the movies, reading books (i know right… what is that?), walking (I don’t think some people know what that is anymore), not owning a credit card… pay everything cash), turning the heat down low, extended family’s living together. Living simply makes a lot of things go wrong on the surface, but give it a little time and underneath; how could you argue with no debt both government and personal? Anything you do and change takes time to see the long term effects. People give up at first sign of ‘this is hard’. What is long term is sometimes worth the short term sacrifice.

  • raychil

    I’m not saying there is any comparison between the cause, but it took people’s lives to be able to change slavery, women’s rights, founding the US. And the thing is, abolishing slavery and the women’s suffrage movement only directly effected 1/2 the population (as far as either women/male, black/other not saying it wasn’t important to others). This effects 99%. This effects quality of life. If nothing changes, we are just allowing this to happen to ourselves. 99 is so much greater than one. How easily everything could be overthrown. All it takes is caring. 

  • V.

    as long as they dont want debt forgiveness to get more credit. I hate credit housing and such things should be done by grants overlooked by a capable government agency because in america that shit is fucking basic. Luxury takes a new meaning here.

  • MasyoMystic

    I agree fully people like honsest abe can only view a society or a system within the paradigm he or she is in. Like raychil says, we need complete change. we need to view our society and our system in a whole new manner. Abolish the system that created this mess. We need to take care of our elderly and that involves HUMAN INVOLVEMENT, not some stupid pension. Money is not the means to material something out of nothing, it is a means to control that which materializes something out of nothing, or in simpler terms, us, human beings.

    I feel sorry for the children who are being born into todays world. i feel sorry for people like honest abe who can only understand a system that has been fed to him. The problem is pensions you slily person, its human interaction and human kindness and human priority. We dont need pensions to take care of our elderly, what we need is a whole new system where people come first not money.

  • Maso

    The problem is not pensions rather but our lack of care for our fellow human beings. we are the middle men who are being manipulated by paper to do the work for the few, so the few in turn can live a  comfortable life.

    I dont wanna hear which system works which doesn’t, because frankly they are all a tool and can be used for great or for evil. What we need is to go back to community values and respect the different types of people it takes to make a society great. to make sure they can live a comfortable life without having to worry about pensions or money or anything so goddamn meaningless.

    It should be as simple as this. If you contribute to your community and to the society your involved with you should be guaranteed by that society to take care of your needs, ie your housing, food, utilities, however that society funtions, a fter all isnt this the point of working together in a society s owe can work together to ensure that we are safe and have the least amount of worries as possible..

    Somerthing surely went wrong.

  • Anti-Citizen1

    Debt forgiveness without the elimination of the mechanisms that drive its creation will just lead full circle.

  • Anti-Citizen1

    Death? Is that you? I didn’t recognize you without your cloak.

  • Satan’s Grin

    Where is your mind? Your idols won’t save you.

  • Anonymous

    No, not forgive it entirely, but let’s cut back on these loan shark interest rates. (Chase bank, I’m looking at you.)
    Personally I’d like to see more regulation and standards for giving out the loans in the first place.
    We know there was a problem with these home owner loans giving out too much money to people who could not afford them…. and now we are doing the exact same thing with student loans. The student loan bubble will crush us. We need to regulate.. .now.

  • Anonymous

    I predict we’ll see a massive return to cash transactions when the debit card fees go into effect next year.

    Unless enough people flock to the banks that aren’t charging for them. But the fact is there’s a fee for the store owner either way, so they may actually prefer that any in-store transactions return to cash.

  • Jim

    Your debt is weighing down the entire world btw.

  • Dog

    Base money on something real, like it was before the league of nations, and it will work.

  • Dog

    Base money on something real, like it was before the league of nations, and it will work.

  • Dog

    Base money on something real, like it was before the league of nations, and it will work.

  • Dog

    Base money on something real, like it was before the league of nations, and it will work.

  • Anonymous

    I’m looking into this right now, you’re right.

  • Anonymous

    I’m looking into this right now, you’re right.