Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/25/equifax-america.html
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Sooooo… similar to what China is doing with it’s social score? We are living inside a @doctorow novel now, aren’t we, with more dystopia.
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Trump commissions a new poem for the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your successful, your wealthy,
Your monied classes yearning to profit freely,
The financially sound of your teeming shore.
Send these, the well-heeled, preferably of northern European descent to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden toilet.”
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And I thought being buried under crushing, soul-destroying consumer & student debt was the hallmark of a good American Citizen! Isn’t bankruptcy and/or creative debt delinquency about as American as Apple Pie? cf President Trump…
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Kith and kin of these fucking folks are in the process of citizenship requirements ?
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Yes, but more explicitly capitalist, as suits our values. This dovetails nicely with the American idea that a person’s highest duty to society at large is to be a consumer. I hear various expressions of that as pushback when I try to tell my friends that we have an ethical obligation to live frugally and avoid waste.
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My wife and I are in a similar situation. But in our case, we don’t have enough credit histories to generate credit scores at all, which meant we didn’t qualify for a FHA (government) backed home loan despite our good incomes and large down payment. Really ticked me off that a government agency relied on a 3rd party’s secret proprietary algorithm to determine who gets a government benefit, and I’m really disturbed to see that they’re planning on extending that practice to other even more important areas.
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So, say, hypothetically, that I’ve bankrupted 4 businesses, and I have a history of not paying my creditors…
I wouldn’t be allowed to vote?
But I could still be president, at least, right?
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Don’t think for a minute that once they start on this path that they won’t start using this to de-naturalise citizens who aren’t adequate consumers/human resources before moving on to making life miserable for existing citizens who don’t conform.
Not only Equifax but Facebook will be a part of this dopey “Nosedive” future. Smile!
I am allergic to debt, and with the exception of my mortgage have no debts at all; because of this I have a fairly low credit-score
Same here. I have one credit card and use it as a debit card with a 30-day float. Since I’m not carrying a balance and letting the interest charges rack up the ratings agencies keep my score low. Not making payments on a car doesn’t help my score either.
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I don’t have a credit score. Am I disqualified by default? 
Not that I want to live in the US right now, no offense.
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None taken; I’m a natural born USAian, and I still often wish like hell that I had just stayed abroad when I had the freakin’ chance.
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Take care of our own citizens first. Including those who fell for these con men.
Best way to do that? Make any loans granted above some small percentage of the borrower’s last 5 years income uncollectable. Loans above that limit get you the booby prize.
Loans should be a tiny, tiny part of the economy. Wages should be dominant.
We should never coddle lenders, nor non-citizens.
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Im confused how this would work. If your not in the U.S. how do you have a credit score?
Unless U.S. major credit scoring companies are worldwide and that still makes me wonder how that applies to countires that dont report to credit companies?
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I don’t step out a lot to defend this administration but, Canada uses a similar system (I know because I’m trying to get a green card).
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Ditto. I went to buy a car this year and discovered that my credit score was negatively affected by the fact that I haven’t had an “installment loan” in about 15 years. My own bank, where I’ve been a customer for almost 20 years, offered me an outrageously high interest rate of 12 percent.
All my bills are paid on time and we have a household income in 6 figures. But I didn’t have enough debt. So I put 50% down and financed the rest instead of paying with cash, just to boost my score a bit.
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Since corporations are people now, and their spending money is constitutionally protected free speech, the next logical step is to make bank accounts people. Then once that settles down, we can say people are just 3/5 of a bank account.
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Really, this isn’t too different from how it’s always been. Most of our migration-related laws and policies were built around the idea that it’s preferable if only the affluent travel, not just in the US, but around the world. Poor migrants, like refugees and opportunity-seekers, are judged and labeled undesirables, while the wealthy can often literally buy citizenship or permanent residency. Travelers from certain nations tend to get a bad international reputation right after a middle-class income boom that enables “commoners” to travel more widely. Generally you’ll find most places around the world are quite welcoming to foreigners as long as it’s only the rich foreigners.
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You’re not going to become a citizen unless you’re already living here, I don’t think
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Why? This has nothing to do with them at all here.
The entire point of the measure is to expand the disqualifier for a visa known as “potential for being a public charge” which is written into the Immigration and Naturalization Act. So our white supremacist president is looking for new excuses for pretending normally qualified visa applicants should be denied, using an unreliable, arbitrary and doxx heavy system.
This is just more of following the white supremacist line on immigration, which is to limit all legal immigration to a ridiculous degree, lest it allow the population of people of color to increase. Much like the use of the term “chain migration” or “visa lottery” to describe and demonize perfectly functional effective and beneficial programs such of family-based immigration and the diversity visa.
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