Bankruptcy, Prisons and Work
by Seth Sandronsky
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 2, 2005



 

The bankruptcy reform bill that President Bush just signed into law will do more than discipline those who live riotously on loans without paying them back in full. Think for a moment about new prisons to house the indebted. This trend will expand investment opportunities. Surely, Wall Street is salivating at the thought of housing incarcerated debtors. Bonds, some of them tax-exempt, will need to be issued to fund such construction projects, with many fees to be paid from the public purse. Some of this cash will get invested in Congress. Honest graft. Profits and punishment are the mother’s milk of American politics.

Jobs come with growth. Thus in the 2005 slow/no jobs “recovery,” debtors prisons will expand payrolls.  Construction workers will be needed to build these facilities.  Service workers will be hired to staff them. This is “economic development” that creates growth with employment. Where are you when we need you most, Mr. Dickens?

We know that the American people believe in work and wages.  Some are such believers in this dynamic duo that they have multiple jobs. There are about 7.6 million of these Americans now. You may be one of them. I was and could be again depending on what the future holds, financially speaking.

Yes, even in California, home to 36 million people.  Courageously, state leaders from both parties and their business brethren have contributed to the growth of the national prison-industrial complex. But there’s still room for more building in the Golden State. Debtors, beware.

Which brings me to a special shout-out to one of California’s heavyweight political groups that will surely back getting tough on debtors by locking them up. I refer you to the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, a labor union whose time has come in more ways than one. The CCPOA’s legendary influence-peddling in the Capitol helped to fuel the state’s prison-building boom, itself sparked by the War on Drugs, the sustained campaign to lock up the black and brown population.

Prisons for debtors won’t just increase the U.S. inmate population of 2.1 million mostly nonwhite folks held in jails and prisons about a year ago. Incarcerating bankrupt working people, half of whom have gone bust from being unable to pay for corporate health care, will lower the jobless rate. What could be better than that, I ask you? Here’s the thing: these debtors will be uncounted in the Labor Department jobs reports, thus invisible as prisoners are in official-speak. Wall Street will cheer as more of the unemployed are pencil-whipped from sight on government spreadsheets.

Cut to politicians with sturdy shovels and simian grins as they break ground on new prisons for debtors. Later, they boast before media cameras about how this “economic development” will make us safe, add jobs and fuel growth.

Such a penal building boom could go on for quite some time, given the record debt levels of U.S. households, Main Street’s weakness and Wall Street’s clout.

Unless, of course, regular people increasingly work together to forge a united front against their class foes. The outlines of this popular movement have emerged in struggles against the U.S. wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, and Bush’s aggression against our welfare state. Many more opportunities for grassroots change are before us as the creditor class shifts into high gear through its GOP representatives to wreck Social Security, a 70-year itch that Wall Street wants to scratch, badly. You don’t have to be a Marxist to see that the U.S. ruling class wants and will take everything from everybody who labors for a living here if we remain disunited.

Seth Sandronsky is a member of Peace Action and co-editor with Because People Matter, Sacramento’s progressive paper. He can be reached at: ssandron@hotmail.com. 

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