I’ve been following several discussions about the latest school loan forgiveness stuff, and we can partially blame Jill for embiggening the discussion even more with her thoughtful post, “Nobody Cares About My Political Opinions, part 1” Also “embiggening” is not a real word, but I like it. It means expanding the conversation, sparking some critical thinking.
I commented over there which pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter.
“I believe usury is a sin, one we’ve built our entire federal reserve around, and one our entire country is now entrenched in. The sin does not lie with those who borrow money, but with those who try to profit off their need. There’s a reason why we put check cashing places in poor neighborhoods and call it predatory lending. I also think we should have a jubilee every 7 years, set some slaves free and cancel some debts!”
I also said, “I’ve also noticed the conservative tendency to try to blame it all on the kids, “young people,” without ever taking any responsibility for having raised them, sent them to public school, encouraged them to go to college. They’re all just irresponsible and “don’t work as hard as we did”….back when a house cost ten grand and you could go to college for a few hundred bucks. This bickering benefits liberals and serves them well because now people are convinced conservatives are mean, selfish, and hateful. You’re not going to vote for a group that is so out of touch about the issues you face and seems to despise you.”
Let me clarify a wee bit more. I believe this school loan forgiveness thing is a totally political move, designed to try to create division and raise poll numbers. It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s well being or the well being of our economy. That said, if you can personally take advantage of it, more power to you! Let me restate once more that I believe usury is a sin, but not one that falls on those who borrow, but rather on those who charge interest and profit off of other people’s need. Exploiting the poor is not okay.
Never mind politics so much, I am curious why usury has faded into the background of Christian thought, and why we are now living in a country that practically revolves around accruing debt and paying high interest rates?
Any thoughts? Need to vent?
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Damn. And here I thought “embiggening” was the result of excessive use of Viagra. I sure do learn a lot here.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have no idea why we put up with you, Doug. 🙂
LikeLike
I oft wonder myself.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My rather serious offering here about IB’s post… wasn’t there some discussion in political circles about government paying for the first two years of college as it related to community college? The idea was that it gave high school grads a taste of college learning discipline and the possibility of at two-year degree or even a trade degree to carry forward if further college was not desired.
You see, a fair amount of initial college interest is often fed by parental expectations. Every parent wants their kids to succeed in college.. and somewhere along the line be the same or better at success than they were. That alone rather doesn’t support prior testing for college based on attributes because what parent wants to see their kid being told that their calling in life based on their “learning attributes” qualifies them to only be a security guard, sanitation collection, or advanced nose-picking. So a lot of college students are there from peer pressure, parental pressure, and social pressures rather than a sincere desire to learn and to achieve on some higher plane (been there, done that…). Then after a year or two or three a pressured student may simply just fail out or drop out for lack of interest, and what remains is the loan debt.
Seems to me.. pay for community college and if that stimulates no personal desire to continue… it’s much cheaper than paying off a student loan down the line after going to a pricey university.
The fact is… not every human being makes for a good fit for a college education leading to graduation.
Another pressure that pushes young people to attend college is that so many businesses require the degree.. when in fact the degree itself is not required to do the job. Rather it’s a way business wants a better pick of the “litter” of job applicants under the premise that college study presumes a career-motivated person who had to study under discipline.
I can go on and on with this.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yeah, write this day down in history, I think we’re in agreement here, Doug! I’ve been arguing in favor of trade schools and community college for some time now.
Many high schools do have alternative programs, higher learning that allows you to take college courses for high school credits, enabling one who is really diligent to graduate from high school with an AA, all paid for. You can in theory graduate from high school with two years of college already completed.
There are of course also pell grants and other programs for those with very low incomes that do not need to be paid back.
The whole student loan thing is kind of a socially engineered problem that has a great deal to do with societal pressure, parental expectations, and government manipulation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Embiggening kind of reminds me of Trump and his use of the word bigly. Maybe politicians are also guilty of creating new words for us. I bet some of them hav ever heard of the word “usury!”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good point about usury, it’s not even in our vocabulary anymore. I bet a great number of people don’t even know what it’s about.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The more I dig into this the more I think that Obama set up the system so that it will eventually be free college for all like in socialist countries with extremely high cost of living and much smaller populations. Obviously that’s not going to happen because Americans are too smart but he made the bad student loan system even worse .
LikeLiked by 1 person
The value of a ‘free’ education is next to worthless right? It’s free because it comes with the pathetic propaganda posed as ‘intellect’
Heck, kids in fourth grade can’t count to ten or spell brid, oops, I mean bird. Just wait til these same dunces get to college. Their brains will have already turned to mush.
LikeLiked by 3 people
That is the real problem, public education is awful. Kids should be learning real skills, not critical race theory. They might as well throw out the American history classes because no one teaches the truth anymore. Kids can learn the basics by 8th grade. After that they need job training.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It is interesting that usury is taken much more seriously and literally within Islam where even banking systems have been thought about and attempts made to structure them ‘Islamically’. Myself, I wonder what is it we mean by usury, I mean what precisely is the sin? Is it the borrowing or lending? Is it only when the concept of interest is applied? Only when the interest is above a certain level? I think in Biblical times, especially the OT, the relationship of people to finance and even to time passage was much more simple and direct. Exchange of goods and services were reconciled relatively quickly, or were understood to be deferred until the means presented themselves. Nowadays the economy cannot even function without promises of payment and more radically delayed settling of debt. So, are home loans, car loans, education loans, personal loans, Amazon purchases examples of usury or not?
I do not regard the current student loan forgiveness impulse to be particularly political. I mean, in a basic sense every action arising out of a branch of government is ‘political’ but the trivializes the word. Supporters of the previous president, for example, quickly label any decision or judgement to be political merely if it goes against their perceived interests… even when, as has happened often now, the decision makers have been Republican appointees. I think the primary motivation behind the student loan stuff is to provide an impulse to the economy and to prevent a great proportion of the younger generation from falling into economic irrelevancy — which would be close to a national security crisis as I see it. I wont even go into the enormous decline in the quality of higher education in my lifetime along with the ridiculous adjusted-for-inflation cost increases associated with it. Public schools suck too now compared to 50 years ago because the material profit mentality which has taken over everything refuses to regard the profession of teacher as one which deserves a living wage. Short-sighted societal suicide.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I agree, it’s all rather complicated on account of the fact that our whole modern world is built almost exclusively on usury. The Federal Reserve basically loans us our own money and charges us interest. To complicate things even more, money is not even real property, it is not a tangible thing like gold. This is especially true of digital currency. Half the time we aren’t even exchanging tangible paper anymore.
I don’t know what the precise numbers are, how much interest is too much, but I do know about predatory lending, check cashing places, high rate credit cards, and some school loan ponzi schemes that have gone on that allow people to become rich off of exploiting the poor.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thoughts? Yeah, I got a bunch. First funny one is that Leviticus somewhere says that we should pay an additional fifth (twenty percent) if we pay late tithes. That’s pretty high usury. I’m not arguing for or against. Just saying. I’m still saying… I think an honest banking system has a place in a well run economy. I know there were years when my dad had to borrow money to sew seed. Paid it back with a profit when the harvest came about.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hmmm. I’m laughing about an “honest banking” system. Is that a real thing? I honestly don’t know, it just seems like the little guy has been fighting against corrupt bankers since the very beginning of our country. I am not saying they are all corrupt, just that there is a long history of exploitation there.
Jesus took issue with some money lenders. The concept of usury as sin and the need to forgive debts are woven throughout the Bible. What does that look like in practical terms in the modern world? I really have no idea, I don’t have all the details.
LikeLike
I don’t think I have ever dealt with a bank that dealt with me dishonestly. But I admit all that OT stuff about setting slaves free, returning land to original owners every seven years is hard to conceive of working out in a capitalist system. I guess if one desired to do so, he could prove Jesus was a capitalist and he could prove Jesus was a socialist. I refer to two parables: The one about giving out talents and expecting a profit, and the one where everyone got the same wage no matter how many hours they worked.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wells Fargo. May their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the Lord pursuing them.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Some rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In my life, I’ve bought five or six houses, more cars than that, but I’ve never had a bank who did not deal honestly with me. Of course, they take my ten thousand and add it to their other ten thousands and lend at eight percent interest. They paid maybe two percent to me. I don’t see that as dishonest. I see it as a money making money. No problem with me. I kept my deal; they kept theirs.
LikeLiked by 2 people
There might be a difference between “dishonest” – certainly in the technical sense – and “predatory.” I personally once worked for a company that worked for a credit card company; and sat in a meeting where the account exec went through a presentation about how we wanted to encourage card holders to take cash advances more often; and how one possibility with a lot of upside potential would be to prompt use at cash stations in casinoes, because people who go to casinoes also take a lot of cash advances. True story.
That particular true story probably sounds a little different to people who have, and people who have not, had personal relationships with anyone with a gambling problem. It’s easy to say “well, that’s there problems.” As are all addictions. But there are folks who are happy to profit from all that misery. It may not be dishonest. But it’s evil.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Plus, sorry about all those typos in my earlier reply. This whole issue just pushes all my buttons.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hear you, Hat. It can be really challenging trying to work for any financial institution if you have any ethics. It’s not necessarily illegal or dishonest, but it’s still wrong to exploit the poor, the elderly, the vulnerable, the uniformed, and to make a huge profit off of them. I know people who had 200 in credit card debt and it quickly became 1200 with all the fees, penalties, charges, and interest. And so many people simply don’t understand, they have no idea.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just one concrete example: it is procedure, at least at some banks, to deduct all withdrawals made on a day and then add all deposits, to checking accounts. Is this BECAUSE that procedure will result in more revenue from nsf fees? Maybe not. Maybe there’s some other reason. But that procedure WILL likely maximize revenue from nsf fees, which are triggered the moment an account goes negative, regardless of whether about-to-be-deposited funds would cover the withdrawal in full.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely, Hat! That’s been a big issue in my neck of the woods, for sure. Many of us put our money in in the morning and pay our bills in the afternoon. You can’t do that anymore, because deposits are not credited to your account until the end of the day.
Also really hoky, if you buy gas at the pumps here with a debit card, it locks down an additional 150 dollars for 48 hours. If you aren’t aware of that and you don’t have a lot of money in your account, everything that tries to go through is going to be NSF. I didn’t even know about it until I saw my account balance as listed as “unavailable” That’s your money, it’s just got a 48 hour hold on it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly!! Not just there, here too, on that debit card held money thing. And not just gas, either. We’ve just stopped using our debit cards.
LikeLike
I hear you Oneta my grandpa had to do the same thing. They raised my mom and her sisters during the Depression and it was hard for them to raise three girls during those times. Eventually he ended up being a share farmer that lived on a man’s property and raised his cattle and took care of his crops for a share of the meat and crops at the end of the year. They had other needs though so my grandpa worked odd and end jobs to help fill the gaps. He borrowed when he had to and always paid it back without complaint because he knew he signed for that many and knew what the interest and all would be.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have to say I was given loan forgiveness back in 2010, but it was because I became completely unable to work. Part way through going to college for web design and graphic design I had a moderate stroke to the left side of my cerebellum which totally rocked my world. I ended up forgetting about half of what I had already learned and couldn’t continue the education I had wanted for so many years. When I say the stroke rocked my world it did just that because your cerebellum is your balance center I would stand up and just randomly lose control of my limbs and fall. I couldn’t sit up for months for longer than 15 minutes or I would fall over. Vertigo was horrible and my speech was messed up not slurred, but I would get stuck in the middle of words and even completely forget how to pronounce words I read. Also my face was partially paralyzed and even now it doesn’t move normally.
Had that stroke not happened I would have gladly paid back my loans for the education I was given because it was a choice I made to go there. I doubt seriously there is many people in this country that do not understand going to college is expensive and that eventually that money has to be paid back. It is a little late to call foul when the papers are signed and the money is used. You are shown how much each and every loan you take out will be before you sign those papers. I fully expected to pay back my loans at the end of my 4 year education and it burdens my heart that I cannot do that.
If you feel you do not want to pay thousands for an education there are trade schools that you can get training for some good paying jobs for a lot less than college, but don’t sign up to go to college seeing that price tag and then when you have received the service of an education you wanted whine about having to pay for it. Yes prices are high for that and probably to high at this point, but my thing is if you see the price in black and white and then sign on the dotted line that is consent to pay it back.
This may sound harsh to some, but I was taught growing up if you borrow and a agree to the terms you are obligated (barring tragedy or serious illness) to pay back that money. My advice is simple if you want that education pay for it and if you do not want to pay for it then do not get it.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I hear you! I don’t have any school loans. I’m also too poor to be in a tax bracket that has to pick up the tab. In some ways this issue doesn’t affect me at all.
However, we’re living in a world that sent people to public school and told them they had to get a higher education. Then the government stepped in with it’s student loan ideas that enabled some predatory lending and unworthy colleges hauling in big bucks. I don’t think we can just pretend that the whole problem is just a matter of people being irresponsible.
A bit tongue and cheek here, and said with all good humor, but my parents were some of the most irresponsible people ever and they both got degrees without accruing any debt at all because it only cost a few hundred bucks back in the day. So something changed dramatically and the environment is not the same. You can’t just blame individuals themselves.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh I agree as a matter of fact the college I went to was sued over those very things. It was The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online. My thing is people need to make very sure it is what they want and do their research on institutions before enrolling in them. There is blame on both sides really, but it is as I said to late to call foul when you have signed and spent the money.
LikeLike
Why was usury forbidden? Simply because, in pre-capitalist days, people didn’t borrow money in order to make more money, they borrowed because they were in desperate need, and it is wrong to take advantage of someone’s misfortune. This problem still exists in poorer countries, where the peasants are often under the thumb of the money lender. In India there is a pernicious custom called debt slavery. A person suddenly finds he has to borrow money, most often for medical care, and has to work for the lender to pay off the debt. The lender organizes things so that he never gets a chance to pay off the principal, and many Christian charities find their major work is paying off the principal of these poor victims. Mind you, it is not so long ago that we had debt peonage, and some of the payday lenders do their best to make the loan permanent.
For the same reason, usury was forbidden by the medieval church, but the system broke down during the Renaissance, when merchant adventurers borrowed money in order to finance trading expeditions with the possibility of high profits.
Although both Judaism and Islam forbid usury, both have found ways around it when borrowing is for investment rather than necessity. Indeed, our economic system would fall apart if lending for interest were not allowed.
This is not to say that the behaviour of all lenders is above board.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And the system based on finance capital falling apart would be a bad thing because … ?
LikeLike
It’s noteworthy that Islam prohibits Usury and Wall Street has been inciting western governments to get ‘regime change’ in the Middle East for decades (it’s not just about oil). It’s also interesting that a few others on our enemies list also engage in barter for international trade e.g. North Korea (China also does this with some markets, hardline Communists also frown on lending money at interest).
What we used to have in America were caps on how much interest could be charged: ‘predatory lenders’ used to be known as ‘loan sharks’ and could be charged legally with extortion. But heavy lobbying from the banking cartels and revolving-door regulatory capture took care of that for them.
As for student loans, they were always a scam and basically a pay-to-play scheme between the banking cartels and the academic mafia. That’s a system that should simply be abolished and we should do what Europe does and subsidize the best students to go the best schools and close down most of these institutions which are little more than diploma mills, farm-clubs for pro sports, and think-tank/paid science fronts for the Corporate Elites.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pingback: THE BIBLE, USURY, AND DEBT FORGIVENESS – Citizen Tom
Governments devalue your money via inflation and then use it to repay the loans they used to finance spending … usury on a grand scale?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yep, absolutely! Usury on a grand scale.
LikeLike