Photo/ fb.com/OccupyRogersPark
OAKLAND, CA—Debtors Assemblies are rising across the country. People come together in public spaces to discuss how we all are ensnared in debt. The natural question always comes up: how are we going to deal with this?
The complicated concept of debt is clarified by a few simple yet profound facts:
* The average person owes more in debt than they do in taxes.
* You must pay your debts (every month) before you pay taxes (once or twice a year). The Law massively favors lenders over debtors.
* You pay debts to the financial industry, which has already been bailed-out.
Consequently, personal debt is one of the main engines of Wall Street profit.
In 2008, Taxpayers bought corporate debt by bailing out Wall Street with at least $16 trillion dollars. This is far more than all individual and government debt. Since we still pay debt to these corporations, we are in fact paying twice!
Now it becomes clear why we are constantly barraged with the idea that we should reduce taxes for “Big Government” — i.e., government that helps people, not corporations.
Obviously, if taxes are reduced, we could pay more in debt for the same privatized services. Attacking government “of, by and for the people” is a good marketing strategy for Wall Street.
In the 1920s, real estate tax, mostly on corporations, accounted for 2/3 of urban revenue. Today it is 1/6 for the US as a whole. Taxes have been shifted from property to labor to make up the difference.
Individual debt takes many forms: student debt, mortgage debt, medical debt, consumer debt, credit card debt. We are also forced to collectively pay off municipal debt, state debt, federal debt and pension debt.
There can be no debt if there is no collateral. Your house is your collateral for mortgage debt. When you can’t pay the mortgage, the state seizes your house and turns it over to the bank. Collateral for student debt is your capacity to work in the future. This is one reason why it is illegal to go bankrupt for student debt.
Financial corporations have used “Credit Default Swaps” and “Interest Rate Swaps” to force most local governments closer to bankruptcy. Municipal debt is guaranteed by collateral in public property: city buildings, water and sewers, roads, parking meters, port and airport property.
Wall Street demands privatization of public property when cities cannot pay their debts. People can occupy the public collateral and refuse to turn it over to the banks.
, every level is supposed to benefit the public. Today city and state officials are trying to abandon their accountability to real people in order to service corporations. We cannot allow them to take this step. Debt in all forms is rampant criminality.
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People must force our elected officials to stand with the public and refuse to sacrifice public resources for debts that we have already paid off. They asked to be elected to defend the interests of the public. That’s what we must make them do.
A system that can’t go on, won’t go on. Instead of exhausting ourselves to win one, single reform that gives the public a tiny amount of relief, we need to begin the only conversation that is worth having today: how can we transform society to benefit human cooperation, not human expoitation?
