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Thread: Bankruptcy - John Oliver video

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Bankruptcy - John Oliver video



    First off, as I've said before, Oliver needs to lose the cringey comedy bits when he's trying to cover a serious topic, as it's just brutal. This is especially true when he lacks an audience to play off.

    But getting to the content, this piece is garbage, and I did watch it with an open mind.

    Among his points:

    - Bankruptcy is racist (lol)

    - Somehow Chapter 13 (reorganization) is terrible because attorneys charge more for it, and because the whole thing is rescinded if you miss one payment. Ooooooooookay? So we should give someone the benefit of a Chapter 13 reorg and just let them miss payments with no consequence? Why would anyone file Chapter 7 then?

    - Most people who file bankruptcy are there due to totally uncontrollable and unforeseeable life circumstances, and not primarily due to their own irresponsible behavior. While this is true for some personal bankruptcy filers, the vast majority got there due to bad decision making.

    - It's really bad and awful that bankruptcy affects your ability to get credit going forward. You know, because banks should just ignore the creditworthiness of people they lend to.

    - Bankruptcy is totally unfair because it costs $1,000 to file chapter 7, and some people "can't afford $1,000". He demonstrated this by showing a video of a couple who claimed they were $50k in debt but "can't afford the $1,000 to declare chapter 7". In the meantime, they were sitting in a well-appointed home where simply selling some of their shit could easily raise $1,000 many times over.


    The above idiotic points drowned out some of the good points he made earlier in the video, essentially that credit card companies are incentivized by the current structure to keep people in an endless cycle of minimum payments, high interest, and late fees. Oliver is actually correct there, and I'd love to see some reform regarding predatory credit card practices. (On a side note, I'd also like to see super-high-interest payday loans made illegal, or heavily reformed.)

    As you guys have seen over the years, while I'm a conservative, I also have a consumer advocacy streak in me, and am by no means an apologist for the big banks. So I watched this video hopeful that Oliver would bring up key flaws in our credit/bankruptcy system which are deserving of reform.

    Instead, we got, "BANKRUPTCY IS RACIST Y'ALL" and "LEAVE BANKRUPTCY FILERS ALONE!! EVEYRONE DESERVES A 2ND, 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, AND 6TH CHANCE!!!!11"

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    Gold MrTickle's Avatar
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    and he's an american now. you can keep him.

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    I know this is anecdotal, but being near 50 years old, obviously I've known people throughout my life who declared bankruptcy.

    Without exception, every single one of them caused their own fate for the most part.

    If you give these people $50,000 credit, they will spend $50,000. If you give them $100,000 credit, they will spend $100,000. If you give them $500,000 credit, they will spend $500,000. They live life in the manner of, "What purchasing power do I have in the immediate present?", not, "Will I be able to afford to pay my credit card bills?"

    Then, when an unexpected large expense or job loss hits them, they go into a panic and scream, "OMG WHY DO BAD UNFAIR THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO MEEEEEEEEEEE????"

    So yeah, losing your job may be beyond your control, but getting yourself into tremendous debt BEFORE that job loss -- when you were constantly teetering on financial ruin -- is indeed your own doing. So honestly people in this spot need to take responsibility and endure whatever unpleasantry results from their bankruptcy.

    I've tried to gently advise these people not to let this happen when I see an unhealthy spending pattern, but I always get either "none of your business, leave me alone" or "yeah, you're right, I'll change" followed by no action. So now I don't even bother with that, unless the person is really close to me.

    There's no question that the banks are predatory and try to get these type of people in an endless loop of debt, and that indeed needs reform. But as usual, lefties like Oliver are high on identity politics and misleading sob stories, and low on reality and personal responsibility.

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    My dad was a financial advisor after retiring from the army...he said very very few people will change their behavior.

    People would be in their 40s with no retirement....he’d give them advice on how to get where they wanted to be and they’d have to sacrifice...they’d all say...yes you’re right, I’m going to do it!

    Virtually no one would change a thing, when he contacted them again and asked how they wanted to move forward, they didn’t want to sacrifice and would say, “God will provide for us”

    He eventually sold his business.

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    Diamond Walter Sobchak's Avatar
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    The exception is bankruptcy from healthcare-related debt which accounts for a good chunk of bankruptcies and can't really be helped.

    1 in 5 Americans is currently being pursued by a collections agency due to health care expenses.

    SOBCHAK SECURITY 213-799-7798

    PRESIDENT JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Walter Sobchak View Post
    The exception is bankruptcy from healthcare-related debt which accounts for a good chunk of bankruptcies and can't really be helped.

    1 in 5 Americans is currently being pursued by a collections agency due to health care expenses.
    Sort of true, but people aren't as powerless here as many think.

    Since 2014, all healthcare plans have a yearly out-of-pocket maximum ranging between $4k and $10k. The healthcare debt is largely due to people who either are so much in other debt that the unexpected healthcare expense pushes them over the brink, or they incur a large bill going to out-of-network doctors/hospitals, and don't bother to think about it until the bill comes in the mail. Half of this is due to the confusing and opaque medical billing system in the US, which definitely needs reform. The other half involves lack of personal responsibility, including those who decide to just take the chance and carry no health insurance.

    I actually know someone who just declared a healthcare-expense-related bankruptcy. This person is my age, yet didn't have a healthcare plan because they "didn't have any health problems", and felt they didn't need it. This person would have qualified for some subsidies, too! They just didn't bother to get it. Then a health problem came up, and they ended up with huge bills because of not having insurance.

    I felt bad for them on a personal level, but I also felt like saying, "This is your own fault." I didn't say it, but I sure wanted to.

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    Gold Cerveza Fria's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Walter Sobchak View Post
    The exception is bankruptcy from healthcare-related debt which accounts for a good chunk of bankruptcies and can't really be helped.

    1 in 5 Americans is currently being pursued by a collections agency due to health care expenses.

    Source for this statistic? I only question it, because it doesn't seem accurate, and the undeniable fact that 83.56% of all statistics are inflated, manipulated or simply made up. (including this one).

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    Those collection agencies on healthcare debt can do two things...Jack and Shit, other than harass you....offer them a token payment to go away which sometimes works.

    Everyone has a story about a disputed claim etc....most lenders don’t even take healthcare debt into much account if you can explain what the hell happened.

    “I was told it was in network, then the anesthesia bill shows up as out of network”....screw them.

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    That girls degree is a MS in Global Affairs....she should be able to pay that off.

    The fact that she just assumed she could declare bankruptcy to get rid of the debt makes you think she never intended to pay it off in the first place.

    If she just had a decent part time job in her 6 years of college that debt would be cut in half.

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Texter View Post
    Those collection agencies on healthcare debt can do two things...Jack and Shit, other than harass you....offer them a token payment to go away which sometimes works.

    Everyone has a story about a disputed claim etc....most lenders don’t even take healthcare debt into much account if you can explain what the hell happened.

    “I was told it was in network, then the anesthesia bill shows up as out of network”....screw them.


    Also.. the anesthesiologist bill being out-of-network is so tilting. You can usually get your insurance to cover it with enough bitching, btw.

    But you're right. If your credit is clean aside from healthcare bills, then often the healthcare debt is overlooked, since it's seen as something you couldn't control.

    Oliver's piece is just all over the place, and he drowns out the few good points about needed credit reform with a bunch of identity politicking and naivete. He actually spent time making points that bankruptcy is racist (lol) and that it's a bad thing bankruptcy affects your future creditworthiness (double lol).

    In general the left has a very hard time with analysis of action/consequence situations, as they frequently seem baffled by the concept that irresponsible/bad actions result in bad consequences. I can understand wanting to give people a shot at redemption, but you don't just get freebies to royally fuck up and try again as if it never happened. That's not how life works.

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