We need a time of Jubilee
Mike Allen
Former Councillor , People Specialist, Business Specialist and Environmentalist
In ancient Israel the Law commanded that every 7 years all debts were to be wiped out. Today we need the same help to save our society:
1. A nationwide moratorium for non-payment on Personal and Business rents, mortgages and utilities, including cell phone service to be uniform across the country with no interest added
2. Banks and Credit bureaus should be instructed to restrict negative entries to credit reports to recover only seriously delinquent unsecured credit, not delinquencies of mortgages and other secured credit. This should be a lesson we learned from the way consumers were penalized for the economic crash during the Great Recession. Payday lenders should be prohibited from adding interest to delinquent loans. They should be restricted in their ability to charge such outrageous rates in future.
3. Moratoriums on evictions, vehicle repossessions, and a long grace period before Banks can recover any current debts. Any one of these events can spell a lifetime of disaster for small businesses, Gig workers and poor or low-income families, 50% of whom who have no emergency savings.
4. Internet providers should be encouraged to provide free basic internet to those who have lost jobs, contracts and poor and low-income households. This is especially important now public libraries cafes and schools remain closed for months.
5. Food Banks and new plans to distribute free breakfast and lunches to low income students at school buildings should be augmented financially by Local Councils and helped logistically to distribute food and or provide for family breakfasts and lunches. As we saw during the Great Recession a decade ago, when unemployment increases rapidly, there are lots of families whose food needs are not served by the social security safety net.
6. Plans should increase for mobile food distribution, especially for rural communities and those urban areas where public transit is much more limited