There is a vested interest among some to keep large amounts of people in a perpetual state of indebtedness and poverty. After all, there is money to be made from that state of being, and there is power to be extracted from that state of being.
Earlier this week at a reading group, I sat around a table and considered an essay from David Bentley Hart, entitled, “A Prayer for the Poor.” He writes,
“… in many ways, the difference between the poor and the rich is simply the difference between debtors and creditors, and that systems of credit are, for the most part, designed to exploit this difference… one man’s poverty is another’s source of wealth…”
and
“… all at once, the poverty of the unfortunate becomes a wellspring of revenues for the wealthy. Especially profitable for such creditors are the catastrophic medical emergencies that so frequently reduce the poor to virtual slavery, and that the American system especially — with a Darwinian prudence almost majestic in its stern, barbaric indifference to the appeals of pity or morality alike — refuses to alleviate… the poor too — like everything else — can become a commodity.”
Important truth-telling.
—Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 