A world Jubilee year...the answer?

[zeemike]

The leaders of the world declare a Jubilee year and things would be made right again....at least that is my observation.

For those that may not know the Jubilee year is biblical and comes directly out of the Ten Commandments that are recognized by most religions in the world as valid. It comes from the forth commandment that says "Remember the Sabbath" and is the only commandment that is completely described in detail.

Remembering the Sabbath was two fold....the sabbath of man and the Sabbath of the earth. But it is the Sabbath of the earth that i am speaking about because every square of 7 or 7X7 was called the Jubilee and all property was returned to it's owner and all debts were forgiven.

Now imagine this....suddenly everyone was out of debt....what would be the positive and negative effects?
I am guessing that the negative effects would fall on those of the investor class, who rely on collecting money for having a lot of it....sudenly they would be out of "work". And sense our leaders are mostly in this class or work for them, it would be a fearful idea to consider for them.

But the positive should be obvious....on a national level countries with huge debts would suddenly have a lot of money to spend on themselves....and the same is true for the individual both here and there.
So what do you think...could you support it even if you make money from investment if it would solve many of the worlds problems and make for a brighter future?

[saltpoint]

1. I still am unable to accept that Noah got one male and one female hornet

onto that boat.

That had to be a tricky process. He would had to have done a pee-pee check on hornets, which seems like something the hornets might, you know, resist.

[zeemike]

2. I think it is a mistake to reject this idea on the grounds it is tied to the bible.

It is ether workable or not
And it ether solves the problem or not
And using it in no way makes you compromise your belief.

[saltpoint]

3. I got that. But still.

[zeemike]

5. If you want reasons it works I got em

And many ideas such as democracy, which we got from the Greeks we can use....and the Greeks believed in mythical gods.

[saltpoint]

6. The Greeks did have a full smorgasboard of gods and goddesses, and

god bless every one of 'em.

Your proposal is startling. It's pleasantly startling, more to the point. It would be a great thing, but bringing bitter money-driven capitalists to the table for the purpose of bettering the planet is tough work, akin to checking hornet genitalia.

[zeemike]

8. you such have this thing about Hornets.

you are not one of those hornet hugger are you?
And your point is well taken...

And by the way I was stung badly by a nest of hornets once but I still love em...there was nothing personal about the attack.

[saltpoint]

9. Exactly. The hornets sting us just because they are doing their

natural instinct thing.

[zeemike]

10. That hornet metaphor really works.

So got any ideas how to round up the hornets and confine them?

[saltpoint]

11. I'm drawing a blank. I am willing to help move your proposal to fruition

but expect fierce and stubborn resistance.

The arts might be an effective avenue.

One effective anti-war song from the 60s and 70s, for example, was as powerful as a march on Washington. In the age of the world wide web hearts and minds can be changed with the click of a mouse.

[zeemike]

12. Thanks.

And the Net actually has the capacity to reach the world fast.,,,much faster that Beatlemania ever was.

[dysfunctional press]

28. why would noah have to check hornet genitalia...?

wouldn't god have taken care of pairing off the animals? :shrug:

[saltpoint]

33. Well, one or the other of them was likely in the chain of command

someplace, which means SOMEBODY had to check hornet genitalia.

I demand accountability, dammit.

[coalition_unwilling]

37. LOL. Then there's that whole tricky business about the two

conflicting creation accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 3, almost like Yahweh couldn't make up its mind which order to create what in.

[sendero]

4. That is about as likely..

... to happen as I am to become president.

Please, there is no quarter when it comes to money, not now not ever.

[zeemike]

7. But it could if we wanted it to.

We as in the masses of the population of the earth....it would be a good thing for them....but not if you don't know about it, and consider the possibility of it.

[Craftsman]

13. I support it, but think it is highly unlikely.

[zeemike]

14. Me too, but every thing starts with a dream. n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Do you mean *all* debts, or just ones involving governments?

Would people who have leant money to the US government in the form of bonds lose it, for instance?

Are you including the idea of "all property was returned to it's owner" too?

[zeemike]

18. Well in my ideal situation yes....all debt would be forgiven.

Both public and private.
And I know that some people with little income and property would loose, but the vast majority would be those that have a lot of wealth and property, and so would feel little real hardship although I know to them hardship is having to buy a less expensive bottle of wine.

In my ultimate system it would be based on the financial system of the Nation of Israel as it was founded by Moses...In that system the land had a Sabbath every 7 years where nothing could be taken from it. and the Jubilee years came every 50 years and the farm land was returned to it's owner....land in the city was dealt with just as today...it was sold forever.
The effect of this was that poverty was confined to one generation, because if your father sold his land and pissed it all away his family would get it back.

If you really want to get into the details of it is is completely covered in the bible right down to how to price land that is sold....and I contend that it worked then and could work now.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. "if your father sold his land and pissed it all away his family would get it back"

But if he sold it, he's no longer the owner. So that's confused me.

I was more worried about how you would handle, say, a mortgage. Is the 'owner' the occupier, even if it is a 100% mortgage? If you say it is, then the banks lose all their money, which means anyone with a bank account or savings loses their money too.

The 'details' in the bible, written for a time at which lending money was more or less a sin clearly wouldn't cope with the present day.

As a matter of interest, is ther any evidence that it did 'work then'? Just because someone wrote in the bible that Moses said it ought to happen, a few hundred years before the bible was written down, that doesn't actually mean it ever did happen, or that it 'worked'.

For instance:

As in the case of the sabbatical year, we need to consider how far the jubilee year was in fact
observed regularly in ancient Israel. De Vaux (1961: pp. 175-77) is of the opinion that this is
an idealistic regulation which was never carried out in practice,
whereas van Selms (1976) believes the jubilee year was observed but only irregularly.
Westbrook (1991: pp. 38-52) concludes that the jubilee regulations reflect an institution
which was observed from time to time, as also was the case in ancient Mesopotamia, but not
regularly every fifty years.

It must be admitted that there is little evidence in the OT for the observance of the jubilee
year.17 In the historical books it is not mentioned, except perhaps in 2 Kings 19:29. In the
prophetic writings there are only three references: Isaiah 37:30 (= 2 Ki. 19:29), Ezekiel 46:17
(about the future, not Ezekiel’s own time) and Isaiah 61:1-218. On the other hand, as Hartley
points out (1992: p. 429), the jubilee was only to be celebrated every fifty years, and so there
would not be any reason to mention it unless a particular event took place during the jubilee
year (and only then if that fact was considered significant).

The Pseudepigrapha contains a book called ‘Jubilees’, written in the second century BC; but
the jubilee idea is only used in it to divide world history into periods of seven times seven
years, and the book contains no evidence that observance of the jubilee year was a current
reality at that time. Josephus refers to the jubilee year but does not make it clear if the
institution was actually observed (Fager 1993: p. 35). Jewish tradition, as preserved in the
Talmud, assumed that the sabbatical and jubilee years were observed regularly in Israel until
the Exile; but after that the jubilee year became irrelevant because the Judeans no longer lived
on their original family property as assigned when they first entered the promised land (Safrai
1972; Fager 1993: p. 36). The church fathers, on the other hand, tended to interpret the jubilee
allegorically or messianically (ibid.).

http://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/jubilee_baker.pdf

[zeemike]

25. Under the law of the Sabbath one could only sell farm land

for 50 years...and the pricing was covered under the law. That did not apply to a house or property in the city
And yes under our present system the banks would loose the money...but what would be gained would be a huge increase in spending as all that money that went to the banks would now be in circulation...most retail spending equals more money going into the banks....and so losses would be short and not that big for the vast majority.

As to whether Israel observed the Jubilee there IS evidence that they did if you study the creation and the first 300 years of so when it was ruled by Judges...In fact the prophets warned Israel that a King would be a very bad idea and they did not listen to them....and if you read the account of kings you will see that a common phrase was " And King ----- did not keep the Sabbath"....
And the evidence that it did work when they were using it is the fact that they went from 12 tribes to a powerful force and wealth by the time of Solomon.










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[muriel_volestrangler]

27. You're proposing a financial upheaval roughly equivalent to the Russian Revolution

All land goes to the current occupier (I assume this means anyone renting gets the ownership of whatever they're renting now, as well - a bit tough on them otherwise), companies that had borrowed money don't have to pay it back, the bonds that form the basis of most pensions are cancelled, so that will affect a lot of pensions (against that, if they had holdings in companies that are now debt-free, those might be worth a lot more, I suppose), and things like Certificates of Deposit become worthless. You say "all that money that went to the banks would now be in circulation"; the money in circulation has mostly been created by fractional reserve banking (the banks lend out more than they take in) - if all debts were cancelled, there'd be far less money around. We'd basically be starting all over again with a brand new currency, and a vastly different distribution of it. The change in distribution is what you want, but I think you actually have to work out fully how you want it to happen, and not base it on vague biblical ideas.

I don't think that the legendary time of Judges in Israel, a few hundred years before the bible was written down, counts as solid-enough evidence for whether this policy ever worked. Frankly, trying to apply a policy that may or may not ever have been tried for an agrarian population of well under a million some 3,000 years ago to a 300 million-plus modern country is quite funny. But not practical.

If I were you, I'd just take the name from the bible, and actually try to apply the concept to the modern world with some real ideas, rather than say "the bible has the details". The details in that bit of the bible also include a man killing a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, remember.

[zeemike]

29. What I meant was that the bible has the details of how they did it.

And the question is whether things like CDs are a debt or not....a bank holds money for you and in our system pays and charges interust....so it is hard to call that a debt.
and as implemented by Israel only the farm land was a part of this system...if one rents a house in the city they would still rent a house in the city.
And it was never my intention to implement a system exactly like they did, no more than you would expect to adopt the Greek system of democracy exactly as they did.

But don't ask me for details when you are sure that it will not work or cannot be done anyway....I could give you a lot of them but there is no need for me to waste our time.
I know well the impossibility of it, but not because it would not work or could not be done, but because those that think it somehow proves religion would oppose it as well as those of the investor class....who many are ironically, Religious leaders.
So neither the believers or non believers want it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. Some debt forgiveness could be possible

The international program, as suggested here for instance, could be implemented. But it's the poorest countries, whose debts are usually 'odious' (eg run up by some previous dictator) that would have their debts forgiven. A blanket "forgive all debts" decree would be the end of the entire financial system the western world has had for several hundred years, and would hurt many poor people as well as help others (and would help some lucky rich people too, who happened to have borrowed money).

There could be some program inside the US too, for individuals who are in need. But it needs to be targeted, not "cancel all debt". A thoroughly thought-through design is needed.

[zeemike]

32. Well the Pope suggested this limited Jubilee some years ago.

but noting was ever done....nothing is ever done.
And mostly it is through fear, like you have just expressed....fear of changing what has been around sense your grandfathers days.

And lack of faith and trust in people....we point to the poor and say that it is them we are worried about if they can't live off of credit, and worry that they will loose their job in this change....but I say the poor will then be free of the heavy burden of debt, and it is indeed a heavy burden when you make minimum wage. ot live in some back world country and just trying to scrape up enough to eat.
We must encourage trust that the poor will be fed and that the rich countries will see to it that they do not starve while this change is being made.

[TankLV]

16. I've called for that so many times I'm out of breath now...

TOTAL AND COMPLETE DEBT FORGIVENESS.

CANCEL ALL DEBTS FOR EVERYONE!

IMAGINE THAT!

but all of my posts sank like a rock...

[zeemike]

19. And this one will too, but that does not stop me from making it

It makes sense on many levels.

[Octafish]

17. Excellent Idea, Jubilee.

Half the homes are worth less than their mortgages in Michigan. Yeah, I can use a little Jubilee.

Great thinks mind alike:

We the People Need Jubilee: Lion's Share of the National Debt Incurred under GOP Pretzeldents

Since Pruneface, GOP S.O.P. is to run up the deficit and national debt through war and crony capitalism.
Then, when the DEMs get the White House, there's no money for jobs, schools, public transport, etc.
They -- as in "The Connected" -- profit both ways.

[zeemike]

20. Thanks for that Octafish

I had missed that post...it was a good one too.

[Brickbat]

21. It would certainly change our relationship with China -- we might actually be able to hold them

accountable for things like human rights, labor standards and environmental stewardship.

[zeemike]

22. But I wonder if China could not also see the value in it.

A stable world could be some comfort to them.

[Cid_B]

23. Pretty sure they'd rather have the X trillion dollars we owe them...

[zeemike]

26. You mean more than a stable world that they could trade with?

Right now there are two countries in the world that have the power to kill every man woman and child in their country.

[JVS]

34. For China, losing all that money would be very destabilizing.

I think they would also have a lot of problems accepting the fairness of a Jubilee year that makes a relatively poor country like them give up claims to debt owed by the governments of the richest countries in the world.

[zeemike]

35. I don't think it would be as destabilizing as you think.

And that things could be worked out among people of good faith.
Money is a medium of exchange and has no value of itself.
Stability is when people have enough to eat and a good life.

[Greyhound]

31. Excellent idea.

I'd support a ban on interest as well.

[mdmc]

36. --