Let's try a jubilee year. Ancient Israelis had a jubilee year every 7 years

[daninthemoon]

all Jewish debt is forgiven. Everyone gets a clean slate, a do-over. 7 years later, same thing. Doesn't that make more sense than propping up lenders, with the goal of creating more consumer credit debt? Our leaders, both dem and rethug, believe that ever deepening debt is the way out of our debt crisis. bass ackwards.

[timtom]

1. I thought it was every 50 years.

But I have always believed that we should have it here, now. And every 7 years makes more sense to me, as well.

[sandnsea]

4. The premise of our old bankruptcy laws

And why they only stay on your credit record for 7-10 years. They really screwed up when they changed the bankruptcy laws.

[davidinalameda]

5. it was 50 years

not 7

[daninthemoon]

9. oh, i see. Biblically it's every seven years, but those are Jewish

calendar years, that somehow equates to 50 years. That actually make it even better. I still say let.s just pick a date, and start over. Much better than continuing this crippling debt.

[99th_Monkey]

7. Correct: after every 49 years (7 x 7), then the entire 50th year is Jubilee

The 7 year thing is called the Sabbatical Year, just as every 7th day is 'the Sabbath', so
every 7th year was Sabbatical Year.

[Sebastian Doyle]

2. Didn't Bono try something like that back in 2000?

He even got some unexpected support from some religious right types, but I don't remember if it actually produced any results. Certainly not in this country.

[sandnsea]

3. Give every household a $10,000 debt credit

That they can apply directly to debt. I agree with you. We may as well get some benefit from this nightmare. A lot of people would be completely out of debt with $10,000, it would help so much. It would help the balance sheets of banks and credit card companies and car loan companies. They keep trickling down.

[aquart]

6. You're thinking of the seven-year itch.

And a few other things.

[99th_Monkey]

8. Actually every 7th year was called the "Sabbatical Year", and after every 49th year is Jubilee

... and I agree that it's an idea whose time has definitely come. Let's do it!!

*************************************
The Sabbatical Year & the Jubilee Year
by Richard A. Freund

The Sabbatical year and Jubilee year laws in the Bible demonstrate the nature of Israelite society as a communitarian, agricultural society. As the name suggests, the Sabbatical year is tied to the biblical concept of the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week and a time of rest. The Jubilee and Sabbatical years provided a form of regular debt release to stabilize social and economic gaps that naturally develop in society.

According to the Hebrew Bible, during the seventh year all land had to be left untilled and unplanted, and debts from close neighbors that had been unpaid during the previous six years were to be cancelled. These laws of land use and debt remission are not necessarily originally connected but appear to be grouped together under the single general category of the seventh/ Sabbatical year or Shemittah (Exodus 21:2-6, Exodus 23:10-11, Leviticus 25:1-7, 18-22, and Deuteronomy 15:1-11, 12-18) by the time the Bible was produced.

These laws demonstrate the biblical nature of societal obligations and a theocratic underpinning for the land and the society. They also represent the careful balance of social equality that is represented in economic terms.

In particular the laws can be divided into three different concerns. First, the laws address environmental concerns that overuse of the land would make it unusable. Second, some of the laws cover debt concerns. Because of drought and other cyclical crop failures, the poor needed to be allowed to start over and not languish in poverty. Third, land ownership and management concerns affected families in inter-generational settings.

Although ancient near-eastern texts from the laws of Hammurabi and Ras Shamra (Ugarit) suggest similar concerns about land control and management issues, none of the extra-biblical sources have formulations that resemble the advanced and specific laws of the Hebrew Bible.

These formulations continued to develop and rabbinic texts (written after the start of the Christian era) make a finer distinction between the “seventh” year (Shevi’it in Hebrew) that is limited to land ownership and release from the loss of land ownership and purely financial debt concerns or Shemittah that deals with release of debtors from debts owed. This distinction, however, may be an artificial one created as the economic history of the Jews changed or moved from an agrarian society to a commerce economy in the cities.

The Jubilee Year

The term “Jubilee” is derived from the Hebrew word Yovel meaning “ram’s horn” and apparently was associated with the fact that the new year of Jubilee was announced to the people through the blowing of the ram’s horn.

At the fiftieth year, following the seven cycles of the Sabbatical year (Leviticus 25:8-17, 23-55, 27:16-25, Numbers 36:4), a Jubilee year was declared. It is unclear in the Bible whether the 49th year or the 50th year, the year after the last Sabbatical year, was the Jubilee. Rabbinic literature is split on this issue. The majority of rabbinic literature, presumably written in a period after these laws were functioning in a historical context, held that the Jubilee followed the seventh cycle of seven years, making the fiftieth year the second of two successive fallow years. After this second successive fallow year, the next cycle of counting began.

The laws of the Jubilee were similar to those of the Sabbatical year but also contained the following additional provisions: (1) compulsory restoration of ancestral lands to families that may have lost control of the land, and redemption of land by other family members; (2) the emancipation of all Israelite indentured servants whose term of servitude was unexpired; (3) the emancipation of all Israelite indentured servants who had opted to become long-term “slaves” to their Israelite “masters” even when their original term of servitude had been completed (apparently an additional regulation to insure that servitude of one generation would not become multi-generational); (4) land allocations for Levites.

http://www.americancatholic.org/newsletters/sfs/an1005.asp

[stray cat]

10. I always like the idea of the year of Jubilee - thanks for a smart post