With the usury protection bill in place and further corporate attempts to constrain and confiscate individual's income, it seems that corporations are employing their typical focus on short-term gains over long term health.
They don't seem to recognize how much they are at the mercy of actual citizens. If things continue in this vein they will soon learn a nasty lesson in demagoguery with the Cancellation of Individual Debt Amendment.
Now, we are a long ways from this point, but like the driver who accelerates when he sees a brick wall in front of him, corporations are doing their best to hasten this tipping point.
Suppose that one party (or an upstart 3rd party) proposed the following amendment
1. All individual debt owed to non-individuals is hereby declared null and void. 2. All transfers of debt from non-individuals to individuals or any public entity after [date of proposal] are voided. 3. All debts to any public (read: government) entity shall not be affected by this amendment.
We could even give it a Bush-esque name like the "Take Back Your Country Amendment"
Of course everyone's first reaction is - this would create total chaos. But would it really? Let's look a little closer. Right now we still have a pretty good stake in the status quo. But every year millions of citizens declare bankruptcy, and their numbers are increasing as we take on debt from everything from medical care and education to just getting by on the lean periods.
Now with bankruptcy reform and United welching on their pension funds even more of this allows us less money to contribute to 401(k)s and general stock investment. Suddenly the opportunity to have all of your income back and owning your house free and clear is a better benefit than savings accounts and corporate investments.
Even then this amendment would not void the corporation's debts to individuals but, to be honest, there would be a lot of corporate bankruptcies, especially among banks and retailers who work on credit (think the auto industry). But corporate assets like manufactories could be used to make new corporations doing the exact same thing. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be any short term pain. There would be quite a bit of it in fact, after all we're talking about a huge transfer of property (debt) from corporations to individuals. However those businesses that do business on a non-credit basis, like grocers and those companies that only owe debts to other corporations would continue as normal and would even see a boom in sales as people had more money to buy things.
Things might not even be that bad for banks that held a lot of corporate debt which would remain unaffected.
That is why the second part voids transfers of debt, to prevent corporations from taking advantage of the amendment by transferring their debt to individuals. As we citizens begin to have less and less of a stake in the current corporate structure the less its failure means to us.
Mob rule, you decry - well yes it is, despite all their money and influence corporations still can't vote and that is the Achilles heel. And as I mentioned we are still a ways off from the "Nuclear Amendment" I figure at least 10 years off before it even becomes a remote possibility. But a question for the economically-minded (my economic knowledge could be summed up on the back of a cocktail napkin): are there any repercussions for individuals that I am missing?