Debt (Quotes)

David Graeber said a few significant things about debt  that somewhat changed my perspective on lending, owing, and paying debts.


"Surely, one has to pay one's debts." (pg. 4)

This seemed obvious to me before.  I knew about the immorality of some debt lenders and how unfair interest rates are, but this fact still seemed fairly obvious: if you owe a debt, it is only right to repay that debt to the lender.  I might still partially think this- after all, this is how the world works.  But I never thought to pick apart the actual practice of paying back debts itself and the morality that I have unintentionally attached to it.  So sure, it is typical practice to pay back debts.  However, is it "morally right"?  In some cases, it may be.  In others, (such as in specific situations that Graeber described) not so much.


"One might think it would be hard to make a case that the
loss  of  ten  thousand  human  lives  is  really  justified  in  order  to  ensure
that Citibank  wouldn't  have to  cut its  losses on one  irresponsible  loan
that  wasn't  particularly  important  to  its  balance  sheet anyway. But
here was  a perfectly decent woman-one who worked for  a  charitable
organization,  no  less-who took it as self-evident that it was.  After all,
they owed the money,  and  surely one has to pay one's debts." (pg. 4)

Graeber makes this remark about a certain situation in Madagascar.  Madagascar owed money to IMF-imposed programs and consequently, they had to cut spending to the monitoring of mosquitos and malaria, which caused more than ten thousand people to die.  This is one of those specific cases that I was talking about.  Here, we can compare two moral facts and determine immediately which seems less ethical.  First, it is immoral for Madagascar to not pay back their debt to IMF-imposed programs.  Secondly, it is immoral for IMF to continue to impose these debts on Madagascar even though they are in a tight financial situation that prevents them from saving thousands of lives due to the obligation of paying back these debts.  When viewing the situation in this light, it seems blatant that the former moral fact does not come close to expressing a situation as immoral as the latter.

"The crucial element would still seem to be the gun." (pg. 7)

And all of this is partially due to power; who is in charge?  A war debt, Graeber claims, would surely be looked at differently if the country paying the debt suddenly gained more world power than the debtor country.  The "gun" (the power- more specifically, a power than instills fear) is in the debtor's hands.  As soon as the subject in debt gets a bigger gun of his own, the dynamic changes.  No longer is the debt a problem that the subject fears- it is now more of a liability.

Connections between the arguments of Wolff and Currie

Okay- I’ve been writing and reading all day.  It is late and I am tired.  So we’ll see how coherent this post turns out to be…

Richard Wolff and Elliot Currie both deal with different specific issues that are caused by practically the same exact thing. 

Currie discusses drug abuse in the United States and how some believe that this crisis was detached from a social context.  In other words, many falsely believe that drug abuse is an individual problem- the individual person who uses drugs must be immoral, irrational, or unintelligent.  In actuality, Currie argues, drug problems in the US are due to a larger systematic structure in society that has changed over time and widened the gap between the deprived and the wealthy.  He calls it the “strategy of inequality” which has reshaped American society and culture since the 1970s.  First, job opportunities have declined greatly since the seventies because more and more employers began looking for workers who are educated.  Blue collar jobs were suddenly disappearing and low-wage jobs were on the rise.  For example, between 1979 and 1987, more than four out of five new jobs for men in the American economy paid poverty-level wages or below.  This causes workers to work harder, earn less pay, and struggle more to provide for themselves and their families.  Ultimately, this relates to drugs because social and economic deprivation and “a sense of exclusion from the ‘good life’ breed drug abuse”- and yet America has chosen policies that cause the depravity.

Wolff deals with the overall economic crisis of the United States.  He also talks about the economic changes in the 1970s and points out that wages have not risen since that decade- but profits have risen enormously.  As a result, people worked more to make more money and also borrowed money from the big companies.  However, this creates another problem and widening of the gap between the deprived and the wealthy because the workers have to pay back these loans with high interests.  These policies of the 1970s have completely changed the American economy and have consequently caused the economic recession America entered at the turn of the century.

Rather than attributing drug abuse and economic recession to individual problems as many Americans do, Wolff and Currie point out that it is a policy problem- a systematic problem that began in the 1970s- that has contributed greatly to these issues we face today.

Capitalism.

This is not my blog for the weekend.  I just wanted to share that I am only 20 minutes into the Capitalism Hits the Fan video and I am already extremely angry and depressed!  The system is so blatantly unfair I can't even believe it exists!

.... Okay I'm finished venting.  Anyone else share my thoughts?

Mantsios "Media Magic"

                After reading Media Magic, I started to youtube and google search shows and movies that might support his ideas of class and the media.  I was specifically interested in stories that portrayed the poor in a certain way, rather than those that deny their existence altogether (as Mantsios argued the media often does).  I found a particular pattern of plots in the media that portray the upper class “taking in” a member of the lower class and how this changed everyone’s life.  These stories demonstrate a number of Mantsios’s points on the lower class and the media.

First I’ll describe the shows/movies and then I will make connections…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83luogMA61c

                The television show, The O.C. begins with two boys stealing a car and driving away from the police (an act in which they don’t succeed).  Somehow, one of the two boys ends up in the hands of a wealthy, defense attorney and ultimately lives with the attorney and his family.  The boy gets a chance to live in the primarily upper class community of Orange County- a living situation that enables him to work hard and succeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA8H4sshwS0

The movie, The Blind Side portrays a story about a poor boy that lives in a lower class neighborhood.  The boy is taken in by a white upper-class family and has the chance to go to school and play football and becomes a professional football player.  Sure, this is based on a true story.  But it is significant that the media portrayed this particular football player’s story instead of the stories of the other men on his team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xftx7GnVJcU

The movie, Step Up has a similar plot.  A group of three boys who are members of the lower class get in trouble with the police for breaking into a school.  One of the boys is assigned 200 hours of community service cleaning at a local arts school.  While cleaning the dance studio one day, the boy volunteers to be a girl’s dance partner.  He ends up dancing with her and creating something better from himself through the white upper-class realm of the private arts school.

Okay… now some connections…

One of Mantsios’s first arguments is that the media portrays the poor as undeserving and blameworthy for their situation.  In The O.C., the show begins with two boys stealing a car in a low class neighborhood.  Now, I watched this show a long, long time ago (perhaps, before I came to my senses about what is important in life).  However, I think I remember clearly several times where this upper-class family had to return to Chino (the town the boy was from) for one reason or another.  This experience was always a negative one including guns, drugs, and abusive relationships.  Since this is how the lower class is portrayed, everyone can say, “Wow no wonder they’re poor! Look at the way they conduct themselves!”  In The Blind Side, men sit in groups on the street corners doing drugs and gambling.  These men represent the lower class in this movie.  Thus, it appears as though this is what poor people do- sit around smoking and wasting their money.  Where are the people of that community that work hard to try to support themselves?  They hardly exist in the media.  Step Up depicts a similar image- a group of boys who commit crimes and get busted by the police.  All of these negative lower-class images make poor people look careless, lazy, and undeserving of anything better.  But these images are hardly an entire representation of the lower class.

Mantsios also argued that the media portrays the poor as an inconvenience and irritation.  In all three of these media plots, the lower class boys are burdens to the upper class.  The wealthy family in the O.C. took the boy into their house and had many discussions surrounding whether or not they should “take the responsibility” for him.  [side-note: in the trailer I think you can hear one of these conversations].  In The Blind Side trailer, the father of the wealthy family turns to his wife and asks, “He IS only staying for one night, right?”  In the trailer for Step Up, a boy warns his friend (the female dancer) “You know that low life (lower class boy) isn’t going anywhere, right?”  In other words, why are you even bothering with him and taking responsibility for him?  These types of conversations heavily imply that the lower class is simply an inconvenience for these people.

Mantsios mentions that normally during Christmas time, the media paints the image that the poor is “down on their luck”.  These types of stories are often linked to charitable activities and contributions.  Most importantly, these media images paint a false picture about society: they “tell us that the affluent in our society are a kind, understanding, giving people- which we are not.”  The show and movies I have used here do just that- they show how understanding the white, upper class community can be.  They are the good guys and once in a while, one of them will even be good enough to take in a bad guy and make him good.

These media images also support Mantsios’s argument that the media makes it seem like there are two classes in society: the underclass and everyone else.  We, the viewers, are everyone else.  The boys that are taken from the lower class neighborhoods are the underclass.  This leads to Mantsios’s similar point that WE are the wealthy.  Viewers envision themselves as the good guys, rather than the men out on the street gambling or the boys getting arrested by the cops.  My examples of the media were made to appeal to people like us.

Lastly, all three of my examples provide contrasting ideas about two classes.  These boys had nothing except the ghettos of their lower class neighborhoods until they were taken in by wealthier people.  This shines a completely positive light on the caring, selfless upper class that provided an opportunity for success to members of the negative lower class.

And why does any of this matter?  Because the media is extremely influential on the ideals and values of society in general.  When society views these images in the media, people begin to actually believe that the lower class is a small group who only has themselves to blame for their poverty.

Kozol "Amazing Grace"

Okay.  Does anyone else feel guilty?  I feel guilty.  I feel horrible that I was fortunate enough to not be born in the South Bronx.  Why should I be so lucky as to be born in a town like Smithfield, Rhode Island while Cliffie walks the streets of the Bronx witnessing murders and ingesting harmful toxins?  Why am I in college at age 20 simply beginning my life while Cliffie might not even make it until age 20?  These are the questions that rolled through my head as I read Kozol's Amazing Grace.

One thing is certain; and Kozol makes this argument very clear.  I am not more fortunate than Cliffie or David and Alice Washington simply because I am more rational than them.  I might not even be smarter, kinder, stronger, or more determined than them but here I am at Rhode Island College; and there they are in South Bronx fighting to survive (that is, if none of them have passed away yet- which I doubt having read about Alice's condition).  Surely, I have just astounded professors and social scientists like Lawrence Mead who apparently cannot find any other causal factor of poverty other than some sort of personality defection.  I'm going to go ahead and assume that Lawrence Mead was not born in the South Bronx.

"And if I was born in the South Bronx," says Mr. Lawrence OMG America is the amazing land of opportunity Mead, "then I would have studied hard in school, gotten myself a decent job, and rose above the destruction of the South Bronx and made a better life for myself!"

Oh, Mr. Mead, if it were only that simple...

With his stories, Kozol demonstrates how low class people are naturally disadvantaged socially, economically, and politically.  I use the term “naturally” because the situation of low class members cannot be attributed to anything that they have done.  They are not lazy, careless, or irrational- they are just unlucky and then treated unfairly by their government and society.

For example, Kozol discusses the health care situation in the South Bronx with Alice Washington.  If she or her son falls ill, they are forced to visit an unaccredited hospital that is understaffed and makes patients wait for days to be seen by a doctor.  Many people avoid going to the hospital if they are sick because they are afraid they will catch an additional illness while waiting with other patients.  Many patients who do go, wait for days, and get a room in the hospital end up having to clean up after a previous patient because the hospital is understaffed.

We can compare this situation to health care in higher income areas.  For example, Kent Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital are accredited health care facilities where the most a patient is going to wait is several hours before they are seen by a doctor.  Once they are seen, they surely do not have to clean up after the previous occupant of their assigned room.

As for the individualistic suggestion that low income people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get ahead through school and hard work: I’m sure it is incredibly difficult to focus and rise above your situation when you are concerned about your health.

This is all demonstrative of Kozol’s argument about low income groups being disadvantaged despite their actions.  If an unaccredited hospital was the only health care available to a middle class community, the community members would find a way for that to change and their voice would be heard.  The people of the South Bronx do not have any voice and have to live the way they do- due to bad luck and disadvantage- but not due to their ability or inability to think rationally.