Rolling Jubilee

[redfox]

A national effort to purchase defaulted debt with donor dollars & forgive it. They have just sent out their first debt forgiveness letters!

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/12/the_rolling_jub.php

[iris lily]

That's an interesting concept on several levels. I never would have thought of the IRS angle in this kind of thing and that's a problem. But buying off the debt using pennies on the dollar--great idea!

[ApatheticNoMore]

I threw them some money last month. I was and am somewhat skeptical of it actually working on the economic level but I'm happy to give small amounts just for experimentation. Economic experimentation at worst doesn't acheive results (ends up encouraging more of this debt) and the experiment is interesting enough to be worth a try ....

However the IRS thing OTOH is a real and guniune sticky point, IRS rules are pretty much so complex that the average person just can not understand them, you need several tax experts (and maybe tax lawyers) on exactly this type of thing. They really need to tax lawyer up if they are serious, otherwise the tax consequences could more than backfire.

[cattledog]

I think it's an interesting idea, something I never would have thought of! It sounds like they got the tax stuff squared away already too. The only thing I'm critical of is the lottery aspect of programs like this. You can't possibly help everyone, so how are the lucky recipients decided? I guess that's the way most things are these days anyway.