{"id":36704,"date":"2018-08-16T06:44:03","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T11:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36704"},"modified":"2018-08-16T06:44:03","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T11:44:03","slug":"is-bankruptcy-in-your-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36704","title":{"rendered":"Is Bankruptcy in Your Future?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/08\/15\/is-bankruptcy-in-your-future\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Is Bankruptcy in Your Future?<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>Older Americans are going bankrupt in record numbers.\u00a0Under a front page headline, \u201cBankruptcy Booms among Older Americans as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/05\/business\/bankruptcy-older-americans.html\">Safety Net Frays<\/a>,\u201d the August 6 New York <em>Times<\/em>relates how the rate at which Americans 65 and older file for personal bankruptcy has tripled since 1991.\u00a0This data comes from a new study by the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, \u201cGraying of U.S. Bankruptcy: Fallout from Life in a Risk Society.\u201d\u00a0<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Without a Net<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The headline of the Web version of the story (\u201cToo Little Too Late\u201d: Bankruptcy Booms Among Older Americans\u201d) drops the reference to the social safety net.\u00a0 And, in fact, the US safety net hasn\u2019t <em>frayed<\/em>\u2014it\u2019s been hacked to pieces, coolly and maliciously.\u00a0 The Consumer Bankruptcy Project study found that as the conservative ethos of \u201cresponsibility\u201d has gained ground over the past three decades, financial risk has shifted from government and employers to individuals.\u00a0 \u201cGraying of U.S. Bankruptcy\u201d exaggerates only slightly when it calls bankruptcy the little that is left of the social safety net.<\/p>\n<p>The shift of financial risk onto the individual is no accident.\u00a0 Government policies deliberately favor the rich over the poor and middle class.\u00a0 These policies are primarily the work of the Republican Party, acting on behalf of the richest 1% of Americans, but the Democratic Party, which has also latched onto the neoliberal agenda, is also to the blame.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the <em>Times\u00a0<\/em>nowhere mentions Republicans or Democrats.\u00a0 Or \u201ccapitalism\u201d or \u201cneoliberalism.\u201d\u00a0 As we will see, the factors the <em>Times\u00a0<\/em>blames for the gray bankruptcy crisis are real, but they don\u2019t get at the heart of the problem:\u00a0 capitalism.\u00a0 It\u2019s as though someone tried to explain the American Civil War without mentioning slavery, or tried to answer the question \u201cWhy are people poor?\u201d by responding \u201cBecause they have no money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is Bankruptcy in Your Future? Older Americans are going bankrupt in record numbers.\u00a0Under a front page headline, \u201cBankruptcy Booms among Older Americans as Safety Net Frays,\u201d the August 6 New York Timesrelates how the rate at which Americans 65 and older file for personal bankruptcy has tripled since 1991.\u00a0This data comes from a new study [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1361,18874,5493,21254,827],"class_list":["post-36704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bankruptcy","tag-charles-pierson","tag-counterpunch","tag-social-safety-net","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36705,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36704\/revisions\/36705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}