How wealth is stolen: A short story about national debt

in thirdworlddebt •  7 years ago 

You inherit a new house from a distant relative that comes with credit card from the bank. Problem is the credit card you got has a huge debt already loaded on it that the bank says comes with the property and you now have to pay off. Interesting fact is that the monthly interest bill on the debt is a sizeable portion of what the property can produce each month.

The banker offers you "aid" and further loans to pay the interest (never the principal), but only if you sell everything you own at discount prices to some guy he just happens to know. He suggests you take your kids out of school and send them to a workhouse down the road owned by his mates where they can earn a dollar a day making luxury goods sold for more than they can earn in a year.

After a while, your kids get a bit rebellious and start to question your ability to lead the family. You cannot change the situation, so hit them a few times to get them in line. While this stern discipline works for a while, a couple of them decide to leave home and live in poverty in the banker's back yard. Some of the other kids get their own sticks and start to hit back. The banker gets worried you might not be able to keep paying the interest bills each month and offers to sell you bigger sticks (on the credit card of course) and offers for his security company to set up an office in the corner of your lounge.

One day you realise you realise that you cannot ever hope to repay this debt and you try to negotiate a better deal for the family by having some of it forgiven or written off. The banker gets upset at the prospect of losing his capital (although this risk is already priced into the huge interest rate you are being charged) and decides your eldest son would be easier to deal with. He helps the eldest son to push you out of the house (the son is trained and given sticks by the security guard in the corner of the lounge) and gives him your credit card—yes, the same one with the same debt—plus what he has lent the son to help push you out of the house.

Now, the house has been a bit wrecked during this fight between you and the son. So, the banker offers the son aid and loans to fix it up, but only if the son uses his mates at "Hire a Jobbie" to do all of the work. None of the aid or loan money is given to your remaining children to help out with this work, but they can get a job as employees of Hire a Jobbie at $0.50 a day. Although Hire a Jobbie gets paid $1,200 a day for the job, not much actually gets fixed and the credit card is billed for the full cost anyway.

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