Actor Michael Sheen has bought £1 million (C$1.86 million) of his neighbours’ debts and written them off using £100,000 (C$186,000) of his own money.
Sheen, best known for his roles in “The Queen,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Masters of Sex” and “Good Omens,” first embarked on his “debt heist” two years ago, with the twin aims of helping 900 people in his native South Wales and spotlighting the perils of a debt industry that demands sky-high interest rates on short-term loans.
“People’s debts get put into bundles and then debt-buying companies can buy those bundles and then they can sell it on to another debt-buying company at a lower price so … the people who own the debt can sell it for less and less money,” he explained in an interview on BBC TV’s “The One Show” last week.
“I was able to set up a company and for £100,000 of my own money, buy £1 million of debt because it had come down in value like that.”
You are completely missing the fact that poverty is a relative concept. Using global parameters to decide that poor people in rich countries are rich is so out of touch that I cannot even describe it.
There are whole studies made on the effect of relative poverty, in case you want to expand your horizons.
Saving lives isn’t a “relative concept.” I said nobody will be brought out of poverty from this, which is true. I also said no lives would be saved from this, which is also true.
You only focused on the poverty aspect of my argument because it was easier to argue against, and you still failed to debunk it because nobody was brought out of poverty from this.
What are you going to say next to defend passing a bunch of money around at the top? Anything to avoid admitting you’re supporting the problem.
No it’s not.
The fact that you keep denying it, doesn’t mean I need to debunk jack. You are saying “you can’t be brought out of poverty, because in a global perspective if you earn more than 3$ a day, you are not poor”, or at least, I am paraphrasing. I am saying that’s bullshit, because poverty is a relative concept and you can absolutely be poor even if you are above what is globally considered the threshold of poverty.
I am focusing on this part because it is the basis of your argument. Also:
Calling poor people in the first world rich is again, dumb. Deal with this, no organization that focuses on poverty does it, and nobody would consider - say - a welfare check “keeping money on the top”.
I don’t know if you genuinely don’t get class divisions or if you just search for conflict online (I have seen you around…).