Sunday, May 24, 2009

Reintroduce the Poor House!

When I was young, my grandmother, who was a head of the Socialist Party in New York, and ran for US Senate in 1916, a rather strong move for a woman at the time, had me read Dickens in toto as a young child. I confess that I hate Dickens, really hate Dickens. Dickens showed the evil in the Poor Houses in England and the evils in the English class society. But when I read the self sorrow on the New York Times Economics reporter in the paper last week and then his appearance with his second wife on PBS last Friday I thought that it may be wise to reintroduce the Poor House.

You see what the Poor House does is take those who get credit and then cannot repay it and place them in the Poor House, where they are housed and fed and they work for the state until such time as their family repays their debts. No bailout, just work and the creditors get their money back. Simple plan, we the good payers of our debts are charged nothing and the dead beats get to work off their debt with the help of their family. The family learns a valuable lesson, gets shamed, and society has established a good teaching exercise for everyone else. We also get to employs lots of Poor House help thus adding to the employment base.

Now this reporter, for the New York Times, is supposed to report on economics. It is like a avowed atheist being the reporter for the Vatican, but alas it is the New York Times, all the news that is fit to print and such. This may explain why they report the way they do on all other such items of interest. It is like having a CFO of your company having declared personal bankruptcy! I had one of those once, he never told us, just as we were trying to go public. I was a board member and the shock sent us all slightly swinging! Integrity says you cannot not do that. You can say you can swim if you cant's as long as you never go near the water! If you are on a ship and your life and others depend upon that representation then you have a problem, of ethics, to say the least. People have a reliance on your representations. Thus the erstwhile economics reporter, and perhaps many others at the old grey lady may want to recheck their bona fides!

But seriously, the Poor House is a great idea! One could imagine Bernie Madoff going there after prison!