We need to do a better job of protecting the vulnerable from predation. This story is Kafkaesque: a teenager goes into debt to take a job providing a critical service for businesses and hospitals,...
We need to do a better job of protecting the vulnerable from predation. This story is Kafkaesque: a teenager goes into debt to take a job providing a critical service for businesses and hospitals, he earns a negative amount of money while his bosses profit, he is fined and then fined again for not having enough money to pay his fines, he is harassed by collection agents who stop him from earning money until he pays them, he takes on debt with impossible interest rates to pay off enough of his other debts to start earning money again, and seeing no way out he kills himself after a final visit from a collection agent.
The system that allows this to happen needs to change. Some ideas: You should not be fined for being unable to pay a fine. Fines should scale based on your ability to pay them. The ability to demand and enforce repayment of a loan is important but should not be held sacrosanct, especially for small high-risk loans. There should be strict laws that are enforced zealously on how collection agencies can operate beyond what already exist. We should do more to ensure that works who are de facto employees have the protection of employees. And, finally, we should seriously study the idea of basic income as a way to fight poverty.
Here's a more radical idea: we should provide everyone with their basics means of survival and have those basic means untouchable by debt collectors. As a result, the minimum wage can be...
Here's a more radical idea: we should provide everyone with their basics means of survival and have those basic means untouchable by debt collectors. As a result, the minimum wage can be substantially reduced (since its entire purpose was to ensure workers could make livable earnings), people won't have to take on crushing debt in an effort to obtain those basic life needs, and the worst-case scenario of having debt you can't pay off is "I'm stuck with only the basic necessities for survival and will have a very tough time regaining access to small luxuries" rather than "I'm not even able to feed myself, so I may as well end my life before starvation does me in first".
The root of the problem is this perverse worship of capitalism and the abject rejection of anything that isn't a free market solution, even for problems that the free market fails spectacularly at solving. Healthcare being among them, due to its nature of being a highly price-inelastic service and the ability of healthcare providers to pick and choose which insurance plans they accept with strong favorability toward the ones that will pay them better (and thus will have higher premiums). We as a society need to accept that some things don't belong in the free market and should be socialized, namely the basic needs for survival. Everything else, the various goods and services we enjoy but don't actually need per se, can remain under the thumb of capitalism where the pressure of competition matters.
We need to do a better job of protecting the vulnerable from predation. This story is Kafkaesque: a teenager goes into debt to take a job providing a critical service for businesses and hospitals, he earns a negative amount of money while his bosses profit, he is fined and then fined again for not having enough money to pay his fines, he is harassed by collection agents who stop him from earning money until he pays them, he takes on debt with impossible interest rates to pay off enough of his other debts to start earning money again, and seeing no way out he kills himself after a final visit from a collection agent.
The system that allows this to happen needs to change. Some ideas: You should not be fined for being unable to pay a fine. Fines should scale based on your ability to pay them. The ability to demand and enforce repayment of a loan is important but should not be held sacrosanct, especially for small high-risk loans. There should be strict laws that are enforced zealously on how collection agencies can operate beyond what already exist. We should do more to ensure that works who are de facto employees have the protection of employees. And, finally, we should seriously study the idea of basic income as a way to fight poverty.
Here's a more radical idea: we should provide everyone with their basics means of survival and have those basic means untouchable by debt collectors. As a result, the minimum wage can be substantially reduced (since its entire purpose was to ensure workers could make livable earnings), people won't have to take on crushing debt in an effort to obtain those basic life needs, and the worst-case scenario of having debt you can't pay off is "I'm stuck with only the basic necessities for survival and will have a very tough time regaining access to small luxuries" rather than "I'm not even able to feed myself, so I may as well end my life before starvation does me in first".
The root of the problem is this perverse worship of capitalism and the abject rejection of anything that isn't a free market solution, even for problems that the free market fails spectacularly at solving. Healthcare being among them, due to its nature of being a highly price-inelastic service and the ability of healthcare providers to pick and choose which insurance plans they accept with strong favorability toward the ones that will pay them better (and thus will have higher premiums). We as a society need to accept that some things don't belong in the free market and should be socialized, namely the basic needs for survival. Everything else, the various goods and services we enjoy but don't actually need per se, can remain under the thumb of capitalism where the pressure of competition matters.