Payment Collection Quotes

You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come. No payment is required; he says, “I will give you rest.” His rest is gift, not transaction. Whether you are actively working hard to crowbar your life into smoothness (“labor”) or passively finding yourself weighed down by something outside your control (“heavy laden”), Jesus Christ’s desire that you find rest, that you come in out of the storm, outstrips even your own.

When reconciling great hatred there will some remain. How can it be made good? Therefore the wise man accepts the debit side of the account and does not have to enforce payment from others.

Always remember that you’re a business, not a bank (unless your business involves Loans)—collect any outstanding payments as quickly as possible.

If you have seen your teacher only in school, it feels strange to come across them in a market. If you have seen your milkman or newspaper boy only at sunrise, it feels strange to see them in broad daylight when they come to collect payment. When a friend or loved one breaks away from your circle, it feels strange to see them in their new circle. It is not jealously. It is a spontaneous and neutral feeling. It turns into jealousy when it gets mixed with our fears and insecurities. Accept this feeling as-it-is before it turns into jealousy.

Pay-Pal.” People wrote down “payments.” He said “Google.” People wrote down “search.” He said “eBay” and they wrote “auctions.” After a few more companies, he said “Yahoo.” He collected the thirty pieces of paper on Yahoo. Everybody had a different word. What was Yahoo trying to be? No one inside the company knew anymore.

For every taxpayer, no matter who he is, establish a single tax, not too great, which is known in advance and collectable immediately from all payments, deliveries, transactions, and income. And this tribute must not exceed one tenth part, because the holy church has tested this since ancient times and learned from its own rich experience that a man will agree to pay a tenth part of his wealth, but no more, not even out of fear of our Father in Heaven. And this means that there is no point in tempting him.

A country running deficits under the gold exchange standard could find itself like a tenant whose landlord does not collect rent payments for a year and then suddenly demands immediate payment of twelve months’ back rent. Some tenants would have saved for the inevitable rainy day, but many others would not be able to resist the easy credit and would find themselves short of funds and facing eviction.

There was also more practical inquiry. How should I make a living? How do I get my relatives out of my house? Could you help me postpone payment of this loan? The dervishes had jobs in the workday world: mason, weaver, bookbinder, grocer, hatmaker, tailor, carpenter. They were craftsmen and -women, not renunciates of everyday life, but affirmative makers and ecstatics. Some people call them sufis, or mystics. I say they're on the way of the heart.

Finally, is it fair that the pollution caused, in China for example, by the production of goods exported to the United States and Europe be counted as Chinese pollution, and be covered by the system of permits to which all countries, including China, would be subject? The answer is that Chinese firms that emit GHGs when they produce exported goods will pass the price of carbon through to American and European importers so that rich country consumers will pay for the pollution their consumption induces. International trade does not alter the principle that payment should be collected where emissions are produced.

But the coffeehouse was still the best place to keep up with everything new. In order to understand this, it must be said that the Viennese coffeehouse is a particular institution which is not comparable to any other in the world. As a matter of fact, it is a sort of democratic club to which admission costs the small price of a cup of coffee. Upon payment of this mite every guest can sit for hours on end, discuss, write, play cards, receive his mail, and, above all, can go through an unlimited number of newspapers and magazines. Perhaps nothing has contributed as much to the intellectual mobility and the international orientation of the Austrian as that he could keep abreast of all world events in the coffeehouse, and at the same time discuss them in the circle of his friends. For, thanks to the collectivity of our interests, we followed the orbis pictus of artistic events not with two, but with twenty and forty eyes. What one of us had overlooked was noticed by another, and since in our constant childish, boastful, and almost sporting ambition we wished to outdo each other in our knowledge of the very latest thing, we found ourselves actually in a sort of constant rivalry for the sensational.

Those involved in mental as opposed to physical effort or who carry the responsibilities of management are presumed to require a higher payment for their submission to the purposes of organization than those who render only physical or manual service, however adept or talented that may be. This is because there is profound difference in the nature and extent of the submission that is made. The person on the shop floor or its equivalent gives more or less diligent and deft physical effort for a specified number of hours a day. Beyond that nothing in principle--not thought, certainly not conformity of speech or behavior--is expected. Of the high corporate executive a more complete submission to the purposes of the organization is usually required. He (or she) must speak and also think well of the aims of the enterprise; he may never in public and not wisely in private raise doubt as to the depth and sincerity of his own commitment. Many factors determine his large, often very large, compensation, including the need to pay for the years of preparation, for the considerable intelligence that is requires, for the responsibility that is carried, and for the alleged risks of high position. As a practical matter, his rate of pay is also influenced by the significant and highly convenient role the executive plays in establishing it; much that accrues to the senior corporate executive is in response to his own inspired generosity. But there is also payment for the comprehensive submission of his individual personality to that of the corporation. It is no slight thing to give up one's self and self-expression to the collective personality of one's employer.

The FairTax takes current individual taxpayers out of the tax collection and payment business altogether. Just how many people would that be? Try 165 million. That’s 165 million people who at present need to be watched, and perhaps audited, by the IRS to ensure compliance. With the FairTax, we’ll have about 25 million businesses to watch instead of 165 million taxpayers… Further, the states and the feds—at least in the forty-five states that have sales taxes—will be looking at the same companies.

A nice idea, but here’s how it worked out in practice: a bank arm that specialized in mortgage lending started the homeowner on lower payments; an arm of the same bank that specialized in foreclosures then noticed that the homeowner was suddenly paying less, declared them in default, and seized the home. “No one imagined silos like that inside banks,” a government adviser said later. Overspecialization can lead to collective tragedy even when every individual separately takes the most reasonable course of action.

Very funny,” Ian said, unamused. It had been the hardest thing to communicate to Nina five years ago when he proposed marriage—that he expected nothing from her, that he was honoring a debt and not looking to collect payment in return. The mere idea of pressing physical attentions on an illness-weakened, war-ravaged woman made him feel like a debaucher out of a Dickens novel. Nina had spent her wedding night in a hospital cot, and he’d spent his filling out paperwork in the name of Nina Graham so she could get to England as soon as she was released

But yet the solemn days of payment, are the sabbaths of the Lord, and the place of this payment, is the house of the Lord, where, as Tertullian expresses it, Agmine facto [forming a line of battle], we muster our forces together, and besiege God; that is, not taking up every tattered fellow, every sudden rag or fragment of speech, that rises from our tongue, or our affections, but mustering up those words, which the Church hath levied for that service, in the confessions, and absolutions, and collects, and litanies of the Church, we pay this debt, and we receive our acquittance. (323)

You may well ask: when the bubble finally burst, why did we not let the bankers crash and burn? Why weren't they held accountable for their absurd debts? For two reasons. First because the payment system - the simple means of transferring money from one account to another and on which every transaction relies - is monopolised by the very same bankers who were making the bets. Imagine having gifted your arteries and veins to a gambler. The moment he loses big at the casino, he can blackmail you for anything you have simply by threatening to cut off your circulation. Second, because the financiers' gambles contained deep inside the title deeds to the houses of the majority. A full-scale financial market collapse could therefore lead to mass homelessness and a complete breakdown in the social contract. Don't be surprised that the high and mighty financiers of Wall Street would bother financialising the modest homes of poor people. Having borrowed as much as they could off banks and rich clients in order to place their crazy bets, they craved more since the more they bet, the more they made. So they created more debt from scratch to use as raw materials for more bets. How? By lending to impecunious blue collar worker who dreamed of the security of one day owning their own home. What if these little people could not actually afford their mortgage in the medium term? In contrast to bankers of old, the Jills and the Jacks who actually leant them the money did not care if the repayments were made because they never intended to collect. Instead, having granted the mortgage, they put it into their computerised grinder, chopped it up literally into tiny pieces of debt and repackaged them into one of their labyrinthine derivatives which they would then sell at a profit. By the time the poor homeowner had defaulted and their home was repossessed, the financier who granted the loan in the first place had long since moved on.

(1) The church-state issue. If parents could use their vouchers to pay tuition at parochial schools, would that violate the First Amendment? Whether it does or not, is it desirable to adopt a policy that might strengthen the role of religious institutions in schooling? The Supreme Court has generally ruled against state laws providing assistance to parents who send their children to parochial schools, although it has never had occasion to rule on a full-fledged voucher plan covering both public and nonpublic schools. However it might rule on such a plan, it seems clear that the Court would accept a plan that excluded church-connected schools but applied to all other private and public schools. Such a restricted plan would be far superior to the present system, and might not be much inferior to a wholly unrestricted plan. Schools now connected with churches could qualify by subdividing themselves into two parts: a secular part reorganized as an independent school eligible for vouchers, and a religious part reorganized as an after-school or Sunday activity paid for directly by parents or church funds. The constitutional issue will have to be settled by the courts. But it is worth emphasizing that vouchers would go to parents, not to schools. Under the GI bills, veterans have been free to attend Catholic or other colleges and, so far as we know, no First Amendment issue has ever been raised. Recipients of Social Security and welfare payments are free to buy food at church bazaars and even to contribute to the collection plate from their government subsidies, with no First Amendment question being asked. Indeed, we believe that the penalty that is now imposed on parents who do not send their children to public schools violates the spirit of the First Amendment, whatever lawyers and judges may decide about the letter. Public schools teach religion, too—not a formal, theistic religion, but a set of values and beliefs that constitute a religion in all but name. The present arrangements abridge the religious freedom of parents who do not accept the religion taught by the public schools yet are forced to pay to have their children indoctrinated with it, and to pay still more to have their children escape indoctrination.

Although 'debtor's prison' is illegal in all states, many states use the threat of probation or parole revocation as a debt-collection tool. In fact, in some jurisdictions, individuals may 'choose' to go to jail as a way to reduce their debt burdens, a practice that has been challenged as unconstitutional. Adding to the insanity, many states suspend driving privileges for missed debt payments, a practice that often causes people to lose employment (if they had it) and creates yet another opportunity for jail time: driving with a suspended license. In this regime, many people are thrown back in prison simply because they have been unable - with no place to live, and no decent job - to pay back thousands of dollars of prison-related fees, fines, and child support.

A classic LBO works this way: An investor decides to buy a company by putting up equity, similar to the down payment on a house, and borrowing the rest, the leverage. Once acquired, the company, if public, is delisted, and its shares are taken private, the “private” in the term “private equity.” The company pays the interest on its debt from its own cash flow while the investor improves various areas of a business’s operations in an attempt to grow the company. The investor collects a management fee and eventually a share of the profits earned whenever the investment in monetized. The operational improvements that are implemented can range from greater efficiencies in manufacturing, energy utilization, and procurement; to new product lines and expansion into new markets; to upgraded technology; and even leadership development of the company’s management team.

Many countries have a long history of spying on foreign corporations for their own military and commercial advantage. The US claims that it does not engage in commercial espionage, meaning that it does not hack foreign corporate networks and pass that information on to US competitors for commercial advantage. But it does engage in economic espionage, by hacking into foreign corporate networks and using that information in government trade negotiations that directly benefit US corporate interests. Recent examples are the Brazilian oil company Petrobras and the European SWIFT international bank payment system. In fact, a 1996 government report boasted that the NSA claimed that the economic benefits of one of its programs to US industry “totaled tens of billions of dollars over the last several years.” You may or may not see a substantive difference between the two types of espionage. China, without so clean a separation between its government and its industries, does not.

So, these competitors . . . What do they hope to gain by interfering with your journey?” The instant the question left his mouth, he knew it was too direct. Nicole dropped her gaze and removed her hand from his arm. “With all due respect, Mr. Thornton . . .” Drat. They were back to Mr. Thornton again. “ . . . the details of the business I’m conducting for my father are not your concern.” “They are if they put you in danger. And what of the rest of my staff?” Darius snatched the napkin from his lap and threw it onto the table before lurching to his feet and pacing behind his chair. “I have a right to know if having you here is putting them at risk.” “No greater risk than they face from your exploding boilers!” Nicole shot from her seat, color running high in her cheeks. The audacity of the chit. “I take every precaution—” “As do I.” She glared at him. “The Wellborns are in no peril, especially if they keep my presence here a secret. It’s doubtful that Jenkins’s sons will find me, anyway. Heaven knows they aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer.” “As master of this house, it’s my duty to know the business of those under my roof.” He didn’t know what nonsense he was spouting now. He didn’t care. Nicole had let a vital piece of information slip in her anger, and he wasn’t about to let the argument cool long enough for her to notice her lapse. “Well, perhaps it’s time I collect the pay I’ve earned and leave you and your roof to your own devices.” Not on her life. The woman would be unprotected. Vulnerable. Easy prey for that Jenkins scum. But he couldn’t let her know his refusal was out of concern for her. She’d simply assure him she’d be fine and walk out the door. Darius crossed his arms over his chest and looked down his nose at her. “You agreed to accept payment after a term of two weeks. I’ll not pay a cent before then. You owe me ten more days, Miss Greyson. Or do you plan to renege on our agreement?” Her hands fisted at her sides. “I never go back on my word.

In other words, money isn’t a material reality – it is a psychological construct. It works by converting matter into mind. But why does it succeed? Why should anyone be willing to exchange a fertile rice paddy for a handful of useless cowry shells? Why are you willing to flip hamburgers, sell health insurance or babysit three obnoxious brats when all you get for your exertions is a few pieces of coloured paper? People are willing to do such things when they trust the figments of their collective imagination. Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted. When a wealthy farmer sold his possessions for a sack of cowry shells and travelled with them to another province, he trusted that upon reaching his destination other people would be willing to sell him rice, houses and fields in exchange for the shells. Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised. What created this trust was a very complex and long-term network of political, social and economic relations. Why do I believe in the cowry shell or gold coin or dollar bill? Because my neighbours believe in them. And my neighbours believe in them because I believe in them. And we all believe in them because our king believes in them and demands them in taxes, and because our priest believes in them and demands them in tithes. Take a dollar bill and look at it carefully. You will see that it is simply a colourful piece of paper with the signature of the US secretary of the treasury on one side, and the slogan ‘In God We Trust’ on the other. We accept the dollar in payment, because we trust in God and the US secretary of the treasury. The crucial role of trust explains why our financial systems are so tightly bound up with our political, social and ideological systems, why financial crises are often triggered by political developments, and why the stock market can rise or fall depending on the way traders feel on a particular morning.

Shareholders have a residual claim on a firm’s assets and earnings, meaning they get what’s left after all other claimants—employees and their pension funds, suppliers, tax-collecting governments, debt holders, and preferred shareholders (if any exist)—are paid. The value of their shares, therefore, is the discounted value of all future cash flows minus those payments. Since the future is unknowable, potential shareholders must estimate what that cash flow will be; their collective expectations about the future determine the stock price. Any shareholders who expect that the discounted value of future equity earnings of the company will be less than the current price will sell their stock. Any potential shareholders who expect that the discounted future value will exceed the current price will buy stock. This means that shareholder value has almost nothing to do with the present. Indeed, present earnings tend to be a small fraction of the value of common shares. Over the past decade, the average yearly price-earnings multiple for the S&P 500 has been 22x, meaning that current earnings represent less than 5 percent of stock prices.

Templates for Protest Letters 1. TO TACKLE A SURPRISE OUT-OF-NETWORK BILL Dear Sir or Madam: The bills enclosed were for out-of-network services performed on __________ during my admission to __________ Medical Center, a hospital that is in my insurance network. I went to __________ Medical Center precisely because it was in my network. I was not informed of these providers’ out-of-network status and did not consent to being treated by any out-of-network providers. Since I did not give informed consent for treatment beyond the terms and network of my insurance policy, I suggest you contact my insurer to work out payment; I will pay only that portion of the bill that I would have paid for in-network services. Please stop this effort to collect a bill I do not owe for a service I was never informed would be out-of-network. If I get another notice, I will report this collection effort to the __________ State Department of Insurance and __________ State Department of Consumer Affairs. Sincerely, 2. TO OBTAIN MEDICAL RECORDS AND ITEMIZED BILLS Dear Sirs or Madam: I have now requested my medical records/itemized bill __________ times and have yet to receive the material. It is my right to receive these

4. “National Debts Shall Not Be Contracted with a View to the External Friction of States”; This expedient of seeking aid within or without the state is above suspicion when the purpose is domestic economy (e.g., the improvement of roads, new settlements, establishment of stores against unfruitful years, etc.). But as an opposing machine in the antagonism of powers, a credit system which grows beyond sight and which is yet a safe debt for the present requirements — because all the creditors do not require payment at one time — constitutes a dangerous money power. This ingenious invention of a commercial people [England] in this century is dangerous because it is a war treasure which exceeds the treasures of all other states; it cannot be exhausted except by default of taxes (which is inevitable), though it can be long delayed by the stimulus to trade which occurs through the reaction of credit on industry and commerce. This facility in making war, together with the inclination to do so on the part of rulers—an inclination which seems inborn in human nature — is thus a great hindrance to perpetual peace. Therefore, to forbid this credit system must be a preliminary article of perpetual peace all the more because it must eventually entangle many innocent states in the inevitable bankruptcy and openly harm them. They are therefore justified in allying themselves against such a state and its measures.

Today, such studies are illegal. Medical scientists cannot offer inducements like pardons to persuade prisoners to take part in their studies. Although they can award small cash payments to research subjects, they are forbidden from giving anyone so much money or such tempting favors that their compensations might constitute what ethicists term an inappropriate inducement, an irresistible temptation to join the study. Now, more than eighty years after the 1918 flu, people enter studies for several reasons—to get free medical care, to get an experimental drug that, they hope, might cure them of a disease like cancer or AIDS, or to help further scientific knowledge. In theory at least, study participants are supposed to be true volunteers, taking part in research of their own free will. But in 1918, such ethical arguments were rarely considered. Instead, the justification for a risky study with human beings was that it was better to subject a few to a great danger in order to save the many. Prisoners were thought to be the ideal study subjects. They could offer up their bodies for science and, if they survived, their pardons could be justified because they gave something back to society. The Navy inmates were perfect for another reason. Thirty-nine of them had never had influenza, as far as anyone knew. So they might be uniquely susceptible to the disease. If the doctors wanted to deliberately transmit the 1918 flu, what better subjects? Was influenza really so easily transmitted? the doctors asked. Why did some people get it and others not? Why did it kill the young and healthy? Could the wartime disruptions and movements of troops explain the spread of the flu? If it was as contagious as it seemed, how was it being spread? What kind of microorganism was causing the illness? The normal way to try to answer such questions would be to study the spread of the disease in animals. Give the disease to a few cages of laboratory rats, or perhaps to some white rabbits. Isolate whatever was causing the illness. Show how it spread and test ways to protect animals—and people—against the disease. But influenza, it seemed, was a uniquely human disease. No animal was known to be susceptible to it. Medical researchers felt they had no choice but to study influenza in people. Either the Navy doctors were uncommonly persuasive or the enticement of a pardon was overwhelmingly compelling. For whatever reason, the sixty-two men agreed to be subjects in the medical experiment. And so the study began. First the sailors were transferred to a quarantine station on Gallops Island in Boston Harbor. Then the Navy doctors did their best to give the men the flu. Influenza is a respiratory disease—it is spread from person to person, presumably carried on droplets of mucus sprayed in the air when sick people cough or sneeze, or carried on their hands and spread when the sick touch the healthy. Whatever was causing the flu should be present in mucus taken from the ill. The experiments, then, were straightforward. The Navy doctors collected mucus from men who were desperately ill with the flu, gathering thick viscous secretions from their noses and throats. They sprayed mucus from flu patients into the noses and throats of some men, and dropped it into other men’s eyes. In one attempt, they swabbed mucus from the back of the nose of a man with the flu and then directly swabbed that mucus into the back of a volunteer’s nose.

Since a slaver’s insurance covered the mortality of slaves at a predetermined percentage rate of anywhere between 5 to 25 percent, it was not uncommon for captains to throw overboard a mortally ill or deceased slave to protect the rest of the human cargo and crew from infection. Insurance policies written for slaving vessels stated that payment for the mortality of “black cargo” would not be honored unless the loss of a predetermined percentage of slaves had been documented.40 For example, an insurance policy established that a captain could collect on a policy if 25 percent of his cargo died. If a captain lost a small number of slaves to disease, it would not be cost effective for him to throw additional slaves overboard in order to file an insurance claim. Instead, the captain would take every precaution to maintain the health of the remainder of his cargo, as the sale of the slaves yielded a higher profit margin than the payment from an insurance policy unless the entire vessel was lost.

And everyone knows the job market is crap, so you probably won't be able to find another job." "Actually, I'm really good at what I--" "And then you'll start missing your rent payments, and the collection agencies will start calling, and you'll start robbing check-cashing places to get money for drugs, and the next thing you know, you're wearing a set of gold fang dentures.

Goodwill has 2,900 stores. The shops collect and sell donated clothing and household goods and use the proceeds for work training, job placement services and other community-based programs. If the breach at Goodwill is confirmed, it will be the sixth major retail chain - after Target, P.F. Chang's, Neiman Marcus, Michaels and Sally Beauty - to acknowledge that its systems were recently compromised. In those cases, criminals installed malware on retailers' systems, which fed customers' payment details back to their computer servers.

Around the same time that index was released, Nicholas Kristof (again, a hero to many liberals), wrote a column that addressed the dependency on government programs.5 He focused on Kentucky’s Appalachian area, where people have yanked their kids out of literacy classes because if those kids learn to read, the parents will be less likely to qualify for a monthly SSI check for having kids with intellectual disabilities. We are not even making this up. Apparently, many of these people receive nearly $700 each month from Supplemental Security Income for those “disabled” children, and they receive those payments until their kids turn eighteen. And when the kids do turn eighteen, they are illiterate and unproductive because of their parents, and they collect SSI income as adults, many of them never holding a job in their entire lives. This is how our entitlement programs “help.” Nice, huh? Kristof wrote, “This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.

IN BRAZIL, where the state collects a hefty 36% of GDP in taxes and offers mediocre public services in return, tax-dodging is a national sport. The latest scam unearthed by police, treasury and finance-ministry sleuths sets a record. On March 26th they revealed that over the past ten years the government had been cheated of at least 5.7 billion reais ($1.8 billion) in back taxes and fines from firms, and perhaps as much as 19 billion reais. That would be enough to pay three-quarters of the bill for last year’s football World Cup. It is nearly twice the suspicious payments in a separate corruption scheme involving Petrobras, a state-controlled oil company. Unlike the petrolão, the tax imbroglio does not implicate top politicians. It centres instead on the Administrative Council of Fiscal Resources (CARF), part of the finance ministry, which hears appeals by firms that feel wronged by the tax collectors. Some of its 216 councillors, who decide cases in teams of six, allegedly promised to slash companies’ bills for various taxes, including sales and industrial tax, or make them disappear altogether. In exchange they apparently received 1-10% of the value of the forgone revenue. The bribes were paid in the form of bogus consulting contracts with law firms. To deflect suspicion, the conspirators used firms that do not specialise in tax law. The identity of the suspects remains secret for now. But leaks published in the press suggest that some of Brazil’s biggest firms, in industries ranging from banking to manufacturing, are involved. So, apparently, are a handful of multinationals. There is also much speculation that the dimensions of the scandal will grow: CARF has 105,000 cases pending, with a total value of 520 billion reais.

Coins are viewed as evidence of increasing levels of contact between Britain and Gaul between around 125 BC and 50 BC. They are often discovered as hoards, whole collections buried in the ground either for safekeeping or as offerings to the gods. The earliest of them were Gallo-Belgic ‘staters’ – coins minted in northern France or Belgium – and crossed the English Channel either as payment for trade goods or as gifts exchanged between chieftains. It has even been suggested by some numismatists that the Gallo-Belgic staters of mid-first-century date arrived in Britain as payment for mercenaries and other supplies sent to Gaul to support the struggle against Rome.

And indeed today as it struggles with its financial crisis, the central issue in Greek politics remains resentment of the influence of Brussels, Germany, the International Monetary Fund, and other external actors, which are seen as pulling strings behind the back of a weak Greek government. Although there is considerable distrust of government in American political culture, by contrast, the basic legitimacy of democratic institutions runs very deep. Distrust of government is related to the Greek inability to collect taxes. Americans loudly proclaim their dislike of taxes, but when Congress mandates a tax, the government is energetic in enforcement. Moreover, international surveys suggest that levels of tax compliance are reasonably high in the United States; higher, certainly, than most European countries on the Mediterranean. Tax evasion in Greece is widespread, with restaurants requiring cash payments, doctors declaring poverty-line salaries, and unreported swimming pools owned by asset-hiding citizens dotting the Athenian landscape. By one account, Greece’s shadow economy—unreported income hidden from the tax authorities—constitutes 29.6 percent of total GDP.24 A second factor has to do with the late arrival of capitalism in Greece. The United States was an early industrializer; the private sector and entrepreneurship remained the main occupations of most Americans. Greece urbanized and took on other trappings of a modern society early on, but it failed to build a strong base of industrial employment. In the absence of entrepreneurial opportunities, Greeks sought jobs in the state sector, and politicians seeking to mobilize votes were happy to oblige. Moreover, the Greek pattern of urbanization in which whole villages moved from the countryside preserved intact rural patronage networks, networks that industry-based development tended to dissolve.

Social money and payments: iZettle, Payatrader, mPowa, SumUp, payleven, Inuit GoPayment, Square •   Social lending and saving: Zopa, RateSetter, smava, Prosper, Lending Club, Cashare •   Social insurance: Friendsurance •   Social investing and trading: StockTwits, eToro, Myfxbook, Fxstat, MetaTrader Trade Signals, Collective2, Tradeo, ZuluTrade, Nutmeg •   Social trade financing: MarketInvoice, Platform Black, the Receivables Exchange, Urica •   Payday Lending: Wonga, Cash America, Advance America •   Goal setting and gamification: SmartyPig, Moven, Simple •   Crowdfunding: Funding Circle, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, crowdrise, Razoo

A long, fruitful retirement is a concept that’s only a few generations old. If you recall from our discussion earlier, when President Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security in 1935, the average life expectancy was just 62. And the payments wouldn’t kick in until age 65, so only a small percentage would actually receive Social Security benefits to begin with. At the time, the Social Security system made financial sense because there were 40 workers (contributors) for every retiree collecting benefits. That means there were 40 people pulling the wagon, with only 1 sitting in the back. By 2010, the ratio had dropped to only 2.9 wagon pullers for every retiree. The math doesn’t pencil out, but since when has that stopped Washington?

As he wrote the memo, Garlinghouse thought about a game he’d played with his coworkers at a management retreat the prior summer. There were thirty people in the room, and he told them to write down one word in response to what he said. He said “PayPal.” People wrote down “payments.” He said “Google.” People wrote down “search.” He said “eBay” and they wrote “auctions.” After a few more companies, he said “Yahoo.” He collected the thirty pieces of paper on Yahoo. Everybody had a different word. What was Yahoo trying to be? No one inside the company knew anymore.

At this point, it’s important to clarify the difference between bonds and stocks. A bond is simply a loan. Most often, bonds have a sharply limited upside: the best that you can do is collect your interest payments and principal at maturity. A share of stock, on the other hand, represents a claim on all of the future earnings of the company. As such, its upside is potentially unlimited. It

The most comprehensive survey yet of research into the impacts of payments to promote ecological conservation—whether to collect more litter and plant more trees or harvest less timber and catch fewer fish—finds that most of the schemes studied were unintentionally crowding out, rather than crowding in, people’s intrinsic motivation to act.57 Instead of engaging existing intrinsic commitments, such as pride in cultural heritage, respect for the living world, and trust in the community, some schemes inadvertently serve to erode those very values and replace them with financial motivation. ‘Using money to motivate people can throw up surprising results,’ says Erik Gómez-Baggethun, one of the study’s authors. ‘We often don’t understand the complex interplay of human values and motivations well enough to anticipate what will happen, and so that calls for caution’.

The Bank of International Settlements was originally established in May 1930 by bankers and diplomats of Europe and the United States to collect and disburse Germany's World War I reparation payments.

Platoons of sepoys were marched out into the countryside to enforce payment, where they erected gibbets in prominent places to hang those who resisted the tax collection.19 Even starving families were expected to pay up; there were no remissions authorised on humanitarian grounds. Richard Becher in Murshidabad was appalled by what he saw and wrote to Calcutta for instructions: ‘Am I really quietly to stand by and see them commit the vilest acts of oppression, without being able to render the aggrieved redress?

Silver guards come here every week to collect the blood of the people and to drop off their payment in precious coins. They’re all used to it.

Western countries are rarely in budget surplus and thus end up building debt over the cycle.The increase of the debt-to-GDP ratio is a fundamentally negative development for the lower and middle classes. The debt acts as a transfer of wealth from average taxpayers to the better off. The mechanism of this wealth transfer is relatively simple, as the interest paid to finance payment to the bond holders is funded by the general budget. Thus, bondholders, by definition people with savings, receive payments financed by the tax collected from the general population. Effectively, the debt sucks in a percentage of income revenues and spits it back out to wealthy savers in the form of interest payments.

The few remaining sons of King Abdulaziz are paid directly by the Royal Diwan, and each receives several million dollars a year. The vast majority of princes and princesses collect their stipends from a special agency known, oddly, as the Office of Decisions and Adjustments. Within each category payments can vary significantly, but in general a grandson of King Abdulaziz receives roughly $200,000 a year and a great grandson $100,000. There are very few of Abdulaziz’s nephews still alive; their sons, however, receive roughly $50,000 a year. The descendants of King Abdulaziz’s cousins receive less. Distant branches of the family, such as the Farhan or Thunayyan, may receive nothing at all.

Since people can only be paid for their goods and services or extract rent from society, less income is available to service the payment of goods and services when proportionally more income is used to pay monopolized rent for land. Essentially, whenever property owners collect rent from rising land values, fewer financial resources are left over for wages and capital investments, and this dynamic can effectively put society on the fast track toward social decline and wealth inequality.

build you your own training grounds, then. As for payment, Steve has access to the treasury, so he can help you with that.”   Shadow

We cry out against the feudal barons who did not permit anyone to settle on the land otherwise than on payment of one quarter of the crops to the lord of the manor; but we continue to do as they did―we extend their system. The forms have changed, but the essence has remained the same. And the workman is compelled to accept the feudal conditions which we call "free contract," because nowhere will he find better conditions. Everything has been appropriated by somebody; he must accept the bargain, or starve.

However, that publisher did nothing with the book but allow dust to collect, and when she applied to have the rights revert to her, she was told that she must return the original ten-pound payment. At that time, she did not undertake the loss. How remarkable that two hundred years after her death, her likeness would appear on the ten-pound note!

As we’ll discuss in more detail in chapter 6, a platform’s ability to monetize the value of the exchanges it facilitates is directly related to the types of currency exchange it can capture and internalize. A platform that can internalize the flow of money may be well placed to charge a transaction cut—for example, the fee of 10 percent of the sale price typically charged by eBay after a successful auction. A platform that can capture only attention may monetize its business by collecting payments from a third party that considers the attention valuable—for example, an advertiser willing to pay Facebook for “eyeballs” attracted by posts related to a particular topic. The platform’s goal, then, is to bring together producers and consumers and enable them to engage in these three forms of exchange: of information, of goods or services, and of currency. The platform provides an infrastructure that participants plug in to, which provides tools and rules to make exchanges easy and mutually rewarding.

Large retail banks that take in deposits from everyday folks have to pay interest on those deposits, especially if they are held in savings accounts that yield some amount of interest. Often times these banks would fund these payments through the interest revenue that they collect on mortgages, credit cards, and small business loans that they make to customers.

PayVida's innovative technology is designed with flexibility in mind and allows users to turn their computers into payment processing terminals with its web-based payment processing software and simple invoicing system that automates payment collection and processing.

Can I pay my deposit in installments?” The landlord should always collect all of the move-in funds in full prior to letting the tenant obtain occupancy. If they can’t afford the security deposit, they probably aren’t very good at handling their money. This is a good indication you’ll have trouble later. Early in our career, we used to allow tenants to do this until we realized that it never worked, not even once. Unless you enjoy chasing down security deposit payments on your weekends and evenings, simply respond to this question with a firm, “Our policy states the security deposit must be paid in full prior to getting the keys.

If you sell someone a prime-rate, 5 percent annual percentage rate (APR) thirty-year mortgage in the amount of $200,000, they’ll pay you back an additional $186,512—93 percent of what they borrowed—for the privilege of spreading payments out over thirty years. If you can manage to sell that same person a subprime loan with a 9 percent interest rate, you can collect $379,328 on top of the $200,000 repayment, nearly twice over what they borrowed. The public policy justification for allowing subprime loans was that they made the American Dream of homeownership possible for people who did not meet the credit standards to get a cheaper prime mortgage. But the subprime loans we started to see in the early 2000s were primarily marketed to existing homeowners, not people looking to buy—and they usually left the borrower worse off than before the loan. Instead of getting striving people into homeownership, the loans often wound up pushing existing homeowners out. The refinance loans stripped homeowners of equity they had built up over years of mortgage payments. That’s why these diseased loans were tested first on the segment of Americans least respected by the financial sector and least protected by lawmakers: Black and brown families.

Dr. Fauci had a personal financial interest in the drug being tested! He was listed as a co-owner on the patent for Proleukin, and stood to earn royalties from it!” According to little-known HHS rules at that time, NIH employees could collect unlimited royalty payments from drugs they worked on during their agency tenures.51

Ideally, pursue all three ways of varying the market, with the target customers in mind: ★ increasing the benefits that really matter to the target market; ★ creating new benefits that will appeal strongly to the target market; and ★ subtracting benefits that are unimportant to the target market. Betfair ★ dramatically increased value for money in the betting market; ★ provided the new benefits of being able to bet against outcomes, being able to trade bets and guaranteeing that winning accounts would not be closed; and ★ subtracted the ability to bet in retail premises or at the track, or to bet and collect winnings in cash. Betfair’s target market is big gamblers: professionals and serious enthusiasts. The change in profile between what betting exchanges offered and what the main market offered was ideally suited to the target market. ★ Getting great value is essential if a gambler is to win. It is very difficult to win if the bookmaker takes out 20 per cent on each event. If a betting exchange takes out only 1 per cent, a serious gambler has to be only slightly more than 1 per cent more accurate than the market and he will win. ★ It is much easier to bet against an outcome and win than it is to specify the winner. (If there are eight horses in a race and the gambler has a strong view against the favourite, he can back against that horse without knowing which of the other seven will win.) Big gamblers are much more likely to bet against events than small gamblers. Big gamblers are also skilful in trading bets, which can be a risk-free way of making money. Finally, big gamblers are the only people whose accounts are regularly closed down by bookmakers. ★ Big gamblers do not frequent off-track betting shops and are more than happy to bet online and by phone, and to receive payment by bank transfer.

With Bitcoin’s network of independent computers verifying everything collectively, transactions could now be instituted peer to peer, that is, from person to person. That’s a big change from our convoluted credit and debit card payments system, for example, which routes transactions through a long sequence of intermediaries—at least two banks, one or two payment processors, a card network manager (such as Visa or Mastercard), and a variety of other institutions, depending on where the transaction takes place. Each entity in that system maintains its own separate ledger, which it later must reconcile with every other entity’s independent records, a process that takes time, incurs costs, and carries risks. Whereas you might think that money is being instantly transferred when you swipe your card at a clothing store, in reality the whole process takes several days for the funds to make all those hops and finally settle in the storeowner’s account, a delay that creates risks and costs. With Bitcoin, the idea is that your transaction should take only ten to sixty minutes to fully clear (notwithstanding some current capacity bottlenecks that Bitcoin developers are working to resolve). You don’t have to rely on all those separate, trusted third parties to process it on your behalf.

Consider one scenario that some envisage in an IoT world, where a self-driving car that needs to get somewhere in a hurry can make a small payment to another self-driving car to let it pass. As discussed, you’ll need a distributed trust system to verify the integrity of the transaction, which may involve a lot more information than just that of the money transfer before it can be processed—for example, you may need to know whether the overtaking car is certified as safe to drive at the faster speed, or whether one car’s software can be trusted not to infect the other with malware. These kinds of verifications, as well as that of the fund balance in the paying car’s wallet, could be run through a blockchain log to check the validity of each side’s claims, giving each the assurances they need without having to rely on some certifying central authority. The question, though, is: would this transaction be easily processed if it were based on a private blockchain? What are the chances, in a country of more than 230 million cars, that both vehicles would belong to the same closed network run by a group of permissioned validating computers? If they weren’t part of the same network, the payment couldn’t go through as the respective software would not be interoperable. Other car manufacturers might not want to use a permissioned verification system for which, say, GM, or Ford, is the gatekeeper. And if they instead formed a consortium of carmakers to run the system, would their collective control over this all-important data network create a barrier to entry for newer, startup carmakers? Would it effectively become a competition-killing oligopoly? A truly decentralized, permissionless system could be a way around this “walled-garden” problem of siloed technology. A decentralized, permissionless system means any device can participate in the network yet still give everyone confidence in the integrity of the data, of the devices, and of the value being transacted. A permissionless system would create a much more fluid, expansive Internet of Things network that’s not beholden to the say-so and fees of powerful gatekeepers.

Doing a break-even analysis: The payoff from different retirement dates A break-even analysis compares what you get in your lifetime if you pick different dates to collect Social Security. It’s a way to estimate your total payoff from retiring at an earlier date (with reduced monthly payments) and retiring at a later date (with higher monthly payments). This approach gets some criticism, because it can lead to a costly decision if you end up living longer than expected. Factors such as your health and other financial resources also should be weighed in deciding when it makes the most sense to claim retirement benefits. But I also know that many people care — understandably! — how much Social Security they may get in a lifetime. In general, if you die before reaching the break-even age, and you started collecting benefits at the earlier date, you come out ahead. If you live beyond your break-even age but started benefits at the later date, you also come out ahead, because those bigger payments add up over time. Where you lose out is if you die before reaching the break-even age (and you started collecting larger benefits at the later date) or if you die after your break-even age (and you started smaller benefits at the earlier date). The break-even approach is a common tool recommended by financial planners, and it can provide perspective. But it’s just one consideration. The more you care about how your benefits add up over a lifetime, the greater weight you may give a break-even calculation. The more you care about ending up with the biggest monthly benefit, the greater weight you may give to delaying your claim for Social Security.

shall have a twofold recompense.” The word recompense means “reward,” or “payment for past hurts.” Recompense reminds me of the word compensation. When I think of workman’s compensation, I think of payment made to a person who has been injured on a job. Likewise, if we get hurt while working for God, He takes care of us. If someone comes against us, hurts us, rejects us, or wounds us, we need to keep serving God and doing right, and He will make sure we get due compensation in the end. Realizing that I did not have to collect from people who hurt me was life-changing for me. The truth is, they couldn’t pay me. They could not give me back what they took from me, but God can always give you more than people take from you. We find another promise of reward in Joel: “And I will restore or replace for you the years that the locust has eaten… And you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord, your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you. And My people shall never be put to shame” (Joel 2:25–26, emphasis added). Note the words you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied. This part of the promise means so much to me because I spent many years dissatisfied and discontent. No matter what I had, I wasn’t satisfied. No matter what anybody did for me, I wasn’t satisfied. No matter what I accomplished, I was not satisfied. Why? Because I was looking for people to satisfy me, but only God can satisfy. Whatever you have lost in your life, He will restore. That’s a promise. As you trust Him, He will make sure you “shall eat in plenty and be satisfied.

Ea-nasir and other long-distance maritime traders played a vital role in the economy of Ur. Without copper there is no bronze. Without bronze there are no weapons. Without weapons there is no empire. Silver, however, is a different story. It is a beautiful, malleable metal, but it has little practical use. Yet in Mesopotamia it was borrowed, lent, invested, used in payment, and collected as taxes. The ancient Mesopotamians regarded it as vital as any other good that they consumed or used in manufacture; however, silver’s value was abstract. It was valuable because it was valuable.

As theaters were the first point of revenue collection for the entire industry, this side of the business often had insights on how to keep the halls full every weekend and therefore needed some control of the product, the films themselves. Unlike a producer, who usually hired people one movie at a time and could scale down expenditures, a theater owner had substantial leases or mortgage payments on his real estate and faced ongoing pressure. Further, theater owners suddenly had to spend large amounts of capital to upgrade their facilities for a new technology.

Tiana thought about the money stored in coffee cans in her chifforobe. Years of tips she'd collected while waiting tables at Duke's Cafe and working the night shift at Cal's Restaurant. As of now, she had enough for a down payment, but she would need more than that to buy kitchen equipment, tableware, provisions, etc., not to mention start making rent.

In the first place, Coase specified three crucial conditions for his conclusion to hold. These were: a legal framework establishing liability for actions, presumably supported by governmental authority; perfect information; and zero transaction costs (including organization costs and the costs of making side-payments). It is absolutely clear that none of these conditions is met in world politics. World government does not exist, making property rights and rules of legal liability fragile; information is extremely costly and often held unequally by different actors; transaction costs, including costs of organization and side-payments, are often very high. Thus an inversion of the Coase theorem would seem more appropriate to our subject. In the absence of the conditions that Coase specified, coordination will often be thwarted by dilemmas of collective action.

TRAILHEAD/ACCESS POINTS Kenosha Pass Trailhead: From Denver, drive southwest on US Hwy 285 for about 58 miles to Kenosha Pass. Kenosha Pass Campground is on the right and the Kenosha Pass Picnic Area can be seen on the left side of the highway, back in the trees. Both are fee areas. You may park alongside the highway, however, without paying the fee. The beginning of Segment 6 is on the righthand (northwest) side of the highway, just past the turn-in to the campground. The CT is visible from the highway, proceeding into the forest in a northwesterly direction. Water is available in the campground from a hand pump, after payment of the fee. Jefferson Lake Road Access: This access requires a fee payment. From Kenosha Pass, continue southwest on US Hwy 285 for 4.5 miles to the town of Jefferson. Turn right on Jefferson Lake Road. Drive 2.1 miles to an intersection. Turn right and proceed about a mile to the fee collection point. Continue 2.1 miles to where the CT crosses the road. A small parking area is 0.1 mile farther on the left. Another larger parking area is 0.6 mile down the road, near the Jefferson Lake Campground. Georgia Pass Trail Access: Using the driving instructions for the aforementioned Jefferson Lake Road access, turn right on Jefferson Lake Road, which is also known as the Michigan Creek Road. After 2.1 miles, where Jefferson Lake Road turns right, continue straight on Michigan Creek Road for 10 miles to Georgia Pass where there’s a parking area. The last 2 miles are a little rough, but most vehicles with reasonable ground clearance can make it. From the pass and parking area, find the CT to the northeast and up a very rough jeep road 0.4 mile. North Fork of the Swan River Access: From Denver, travel west on I-70 for about 75 miles to exit 203 (Frisco/Breckenridge). Proceed south on CO Hwy 9 for 7 miles to a traffic light at Tiger Road. Turn left on Tiger Road and drive 7 miles to an intersection with the drainage of the North Fork of the Swan River. Turn left on a single-lane road for 0.5 mile to a nice open area, suitable for camping, just before the road enters the forest. The CT comes out of the forest about 100 yards up a drainage on the left side of the road and proceeds north out of the valley up a closed logging road.

John Law was, increasingly, the French economy. He collected taxes for the government and received the government’s payment on the national debt. He had a monopoly on all of France’s trade outside Europe. And he could literally print money. The Mississippi Company stock kept rising.

Market for Non-Fungible-Tokens (NFTs) has grown significantly and enabled several ways to earn through them. However, with the rise of NFT scams, main problem has arisen in determining the value of an NFT. Knowing the value of an NFT can be helpful in many ways. Here is what you should know about investing in NFTs, determining their worth, and considering several factors that will help you make a profit from NFTs. Understand the pricing of an NFT There is no defined model to evaluate the value of an NFT. In a basic sense, you cannot assess NFTs using the same parameters used to evaluate properties or traditional investment vehicles like shares. Last buyer's payment often provides some indication of the worth. However, with NFTs, it can be challenging to predict what the next buyer will pay based on their predictions. Most buyers depend on guesswork in their bids because they lack the expertise required to estimate the value of NFTs logically. The value of NFTs is influenced over time by a judgment over which both buyers and sellers may have no control. For instance, a piece of NFT art could be in great demand for a period because purchasers believe it to be unique and that its value will rise shortly. Then, suddenly, they may discover that the digital image is publicly available on the Internet and that the NFT would no longer have any clients. So, to avoid these scams, investors should consider these factors to determine the price of an NFT they want to buy or sell. Factors influencing the value of NFTs Artist’s Fame The reputation of the artist who created an NFT is the first element that affects its worth. NFTs produced by well-known or particularly well-liked up-and-coming artists will be valued higher than those produced by lesser-known artists. For example, the value of an old painting by Pablo Picasso will differ by miles from the value of even an impressionist painting by a contemporary street artist. That's just how the art business operates. And with context to NFTs, nothing has changed. Ownership History An NFT's value is highly influenced by the issuer's and past owners' identities. The historical value of tokens created by well-known individuals or businesses is significant. By collaborating with individuals or businesses having a high brand value to issue the NFTs, you can improve the value proposition of the NFT. Another way to get popularity is to resell NFTs already owned by prominent individuals. With the use of a straightforward tracking interface, marketplaces and sellers can assist buyers in learning more about prior NFT owners. Buyers will benefit from seeing the names of investors who profited significantly from NFT trading. Rarity The price of an NFT is strongly correlated with how scarce it is considered to be and how rare it is. Famous artists' original works of art and high-calibre celebrities' tokens are qualified as rare NFTs. NFTs have a significant amount of worth due to their rarity. Any asset with a limited supply has a higher intrinsic value and gives its owner a sense of true uniqueness. In the NFT art market, sellers can demand top pay for this feeling. Liquidity If an asset can be sold when needed without suffering a significant loss in value, it is considered to be liquid. If you view NFT art as an investment rather than a long-term digital collectable, liquidity is a top concern. High liquidity increases an NFT's value, especially for these types of investments. Liquidity can be unpredictable since it is determined by attractiveness and what a buyer is prepared to pay and the characteristics that change as the market does. Look at its recent trading volume to get an indication of what you might expect in terms of NFT liquidity. Systems will be established to maintain asset liquidity as the NFT market expands.

Israel quickly suspended payments to the PA of the customs taxes it collected on the Palestinians’ behalf, a punishment it has employed frequently over the years and continues to this day.

Over Europe as a whole, alterations in state control of capital and of coercion between AD 900 and the present have followed two parallel arcs. At first, during the age of patrimonialism, European monarchs generally extracted what capital they needed as tribute or rent from lands and populations that lay under their immediate control - often within stringent contractual limits on the amounts they could demand. In the time of brokerage (especially between 1400 and 1700 or so), they relied heavily on formally independent capitalists for loans, for management of revenue-producing enterprises, and for collection of taxes. By the eighteenth century, however, the time of nationalization had come; many sovereigns were incorporating the fiscal apparatus directly into the state structure, and drastically curtailing the involvement of independent contractors. The last century or so, the age of specialization, has brought a sharper separation of fiscal from military organization and an increasing involvement of states in the oversight of fixed capital. On the side of coercion, a similar evolution took place. During the period of patrimonialism, monarchs drew armed force from retainers, vassals, and militias who owed them personal service - but again within significant contractual limits. In the age of brokerage (again especially between 1400 and 1700) they turned increasingly to mercenary forces supplied to them by contractors who retained considerable freedom of action. Next, during nationalization, sovereigns absorbed armies and navies directly into the state's administrative structure, eventually turning away from foreign mercenaries and hiring or conscripting the bulk of their troops from their own citizenries. Since the mid-nineteenth century, in a phase of specialization, European states have consolidated the system of citizen militaries backed by large civilian bureaucracies, and split off police forces specialized in the use of coercion outside of war. By the nineteenth century, most European states had internalized both armed forces and fiscal mechanisms; they thus reduced the governmental roles of tax farmers, military contractors, and other independent middlemen. Their rulers then continued to bargain with capitalists and other classes for credit, revenues, manpower, and the necessities of war. Bargaining, in its turn, created numerous new claims on the state: pensions, payments to the poor, public education, city planning, and much more. In the process, states changed from magnified war machines into multiple-purpose organizations. Their efforts to control coercion and capital continued, but in the company of a wide variety of regulatory, compensatory, distributive, and protective activities.

Now she volunteered to open an account in her name at Yandex Money, the largest online payment service in Russia, in order to collect donations to support the protests. The organizing committee agreed. With Romanova in charge, it meant that nobody would question where the money went, given her unblemished reputation for integrity. The money would be safe from government pressure too; any attempt to intimidate Romanova would clearly be futile. The account at Yandex Money became known as Romanova’s Purse.11 On December 20 Yandex published on Facebook a new application that facilitated crowdfunding through Facebook for Yandex Money. Previously Yandex Money had become a common way for Moscow’s middle class to carry out e-commerce online; people trusted Yandex with their credit cards and used it to make purchases. Now the crowdsourcing application took it to a new level. Protesters were quickly able to utilize a transparent way to collect money for the demonstrations, and it was all done thanks to Internet technology. Romanova was a fearless overseer. Yandex said it was pure coincidence that the new crowdsourcing app was rolled out at the same time that protesters were raising money for the next rally. The next big protest rally was scheduled for December 24 on Prospect Sakharova. Ilya Klishin renamed the main protest event page on Facebook, with the cover photo depicting a wide image of the Bolotnaya crowd and the slogan, “We Were on Bolotnaya and We Are Coming Back,” and on the side carried a picture with the words, “We Are for Fair Elections.” Organizers announced they needed 3 million rubles, about $100,000. Romanova soon collected more than 4 million rubles online and immediately posted a detailed report of how the money would be spent.

English in that area was the language of money, domination. Six-foot Mexicans would wither when its sounds were spoken by a five-foot-tall white man, make them hunch their shoulders, lower their heads, and move in the direction opposite of the English. Even my father, who understood its themes and suggestions, spoke it reasonably well for the area-even he would send me to collect payment from white people because he was frightened to get into conversations. English was power. And

Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." Revelation 22:17 Jesus says, "take freely." He wants no payment or preparation. He seeks no recommendation from our virtuous emotions. If you have no good feelings, if you be but willing, you are invited; therefore come! You have no belief and no repentance,--come to him, and he will give them to you. Come just as you are, and take "Freely," without money and without price. He gives himself to needy ones.

That month, the state announced a new tax, the Suhneleistung, or “atonement payment,” designed to tax Jews for the damages of the Kristallnacht pogroms that the Nazis had themselves instigated. The collection of this new payment was reported to have been administered by the Deutsche Bank.

Collectively, THEY BUILD HOUSES WITH SHITTY MATERIALS, FAULTY STRUCTURES, TEMPORARY ARRANGEMENTS AND DEFAULT CLOSINGS, WHERE THEY THEN USE FALSE MARKETING AND ADVERTISEMENT TO SELL IT; ALL WHILE ENTERTAINING DECEPTIVE TRADE PRACTICES. STILL, I AM PERPLEXED. I AM PERPLEXED, BECAUSE THIS IS ABOUT AS BAD AS A BALLON LOAN, WITH A PRE PAYMENT PENALTY CLAUSE. WHO DOES THAT?

Anything acquired without effort, and without cost is generally unappreciated, often discredited; perhaps this is why we get so little from our marvelous opportunity in public schools. The SELF-DISCIPLINE one receives from a definite programme of specialized study makes up to some extent, for the wasted opportunity when knowledge was available without cost. Correspondence schools are highly organized business institutions. Their tuition fees are so low that they are forced to insist upon prompt payments. Being asked to pay, whether the student makes good grades or poor, has the effect of causing one to follow through with the course when he would otherwise drop it. The correspondence schools have not stressed this point sufficiently, for the truth is that their collection departments constitute the very finest sort of training on DECISION, PROMPTNESS, ACTION and THE HABIT OF FINISHING THAT WHICH ONE BEGINS. I learned this from experience, more than twenty-five years ago. I enrolled for a home study course in Advertising. After completing eight or ten lessons I stopped studying, but the school did not stop sending me bills. Moreover, it insisted upon payment, whether I kept up my studies or not. I decided that if I had to pay for the course (which I had legally obligated myself to do), I should complete the lessons and get my money's worth. I felt, at the time, that the collection system of the school was somewhat too well organized, but I learned later in life that it was a valuable part of my training for which no charge had been made. Being forced to pay, I went ahead and completed the course. Later in life I discovered that the efficient collection system of that school had been worth much in the form of money earned, because of the training in advertising I had so reluctantly taken. We have in this country what is said to be the greatest public school system in the world. We have invested fabulous sums for fine buildings, we have provided convenient transportation for children living in the rural districts, so they may attend the best schools, but there is one astounding weakness to this marvelous system-IT IS FREE! One of the strange things about human beings is that they value only that which has a price. The free schools of America, and the free public libraries, do not impress people because they are free. This is the

Anything acquired without effort, and without cost is generally unappreciated, often discredited; perhaps this is why we get so little from our marvelous opportunity in public schools. The SELF-DISCIPLINE one receives from a definite programme of specialized study makes up to some extent, for the wasted opportunity when knowledge was available without cost. Correspondence schools are highly organized business institutions. Their tuition fees are so low that they are forced to insist upon prompt payments. Being asked to pay, whether the student makes good grades or poor, has the effect of causing one to follow through with the course when he would otherwise drop it. The correspondence schools have not stressed this point sufficiently, for the truth is that their collection departments constitute the very finest sort of training on DECISION, PROMPTNESS, ACTION and THE HABIT OF FINISHING THAT WHICH ONE BEGINS. I learned this from experience, more than twenty-five years ago. I enrolled for a home study course in Advertising. After completing eight or ten lessons I stopped studying, but the school did not stop sending me bills. Moreover, it insisted upon payment, whether I kept up my studies or not. I decided that if I had to pay for the course (which I had legally obligated myself to do), I should complete the lessons and get my money's worth. I felt, at the time, that the collection system of the school was somewhat too well organized, but I learned later in life that it was a valuable part of my training for which no charge had been made. Being forced to pay, I went ahead and completed the course. Later in life I discovered that the efficient collection system of that school had been worth much in the form of money earned, because of the training in advertising I had so reluctantly taken.

New Deal legislation undoubtedly saved thousands of lives and prevented destitution for millions. New labor laws led to a flourishing of unions and built a strong white middle class. The Social Security Act of 1935 established the principle of cash payments in cases of unemployment, old age, or loss of a family breadwinner, and it did so as a matter of right, not on the basis of individual moral character. But the New Deal also created racial, gender, and class divisions that continue to produce inequities in our society today. Roosevelt’s administration capitulated to white supremacy in ways that still bear bitter fruit. The Civilian Conservation Corps capped Black participation in federally supported work relief at 10 percent of available jobs, though African Americans experienced 80 percent unemployment in northern cities. The National Housing Act of 1934 redoubled the burden on Black neighborhoods by promoting residential segregation and encouraging mortgage redlining. The Wagner Act granted workers the right to organize, but allowed segregated trade unions. Most importantly, in response to threats that southern states would not support the Social Security Act, both agricultural and domestic workers were explicitly excluded from its employment protections. The “southern compromise” left the great majority of African American workers—and a not-insignificant number of poor white tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and domestics—with no minimum wage, unemployment protection, old-age insurance, or right to collective bargaining.

How to Bulletproof Your Association’s Biggest Asset: The Money The 35-Point Financial Procedures Manual If you are elected treasurer of your community association and accept the challenge, there are many policies and procedures you will need to learn before you start planning budgets, collecting assessments, and signing checks. Board members and officers of all community associations in America should read the following 35-point list of financial procedures and consider it a survival manual. It is divided into four segments: •​Inheriting Old Books •​Guarding and Vigilance •​Cyberbanking Procedures •​Efficiency Maximization and Return The Takeover: Inheriting Old Books 1.​Incoming treasurers or accounting managers should never accept the recording of financial books or accounts of a previous money manager. In order to be sure there is a clear line between the actions of the prior money manager and the current, a new bank account should be opened and the funds transferred to the new account. The new account helps to draw the line of accountability. Liability is also reduced by the new account, since any old checks that may be lying around will then be invalid. 2.​Immediately notify the bank when officers change. Bank signature cards must always be brought current immediately following the annual election. All officers should go to the bank together to provide identification and verify signatures. 3.​For incoming treasurers or accounting managers, a “transition document” stating all association account balances—including a statement as to the purpose of the reserve account, all contracts (including the vendors’ names and the expiration dates), and any outstanding payments due for services rendered or received—should be provided to the new money manager. 4.​Destroy all old checks and deposit slips. Use a cross shredder or a document destruction company. 5.​Keep new checks under lock and guard the keys. 6.​If a board treasurer or management company refuses to give up the bank accounts (it has happened), send the person or company a certified letter demanding the rightful return

I learned to suppress my shock at traumatic things. I learned to tell a real crisis from mere poverty. I learned that behavior that looks lazy or withdrawn to someone perched far above the poverty line can actually be a pacing technique. People like Crystal or Larraine cannot afford to give all their energy to today’s emergency only to have none left over for tomorrow’s. I saw in the trailer park and inner city resilience and spunk and brilliance. I heard a lot of laughter. But I also saw a lot of pain. Toward the end of my fieldwork, I wrote in my journal, “I feel dirty, collecting these stories and hardships like so many trophies.” The guilt I felt during my fieldwork only intensified after I left. I felt like a phony and like a traitor, ready to confess to some unnamed accusation. I couldn’t help but translate a bottle of wine placed in front of me at a university function or my monthly day-care bill into rent payments or bail money back in Milwaukee. It leaves an impression, this kind of work. Now imagine it’s your life.

At the beginning of every month, homeowners send mortgage payments to their bank or mortgage servicing agent. Many of these mortgage payments are either securitized or guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Ginnie Mae, or Freddie Mac – the GSEs, or Government Sponsored Enterprises. That means billions of dollars of mortgage principal and interest payments are being collected by the GSEs at the beginning of the month and paid to bondholders later in the month. During the period of the time between payments, the GSEs invest a substantial amount of cash straight into the Repo market.

For John Tyson, the lesson wasn’t in the crops or the soil. It was in the financing. Cash-poor farmers rented land, and their landowners arranged a credit system that financed crops up front for the farmers who were broke. So the landowner provided the money, the farmer provided the labor, and they split the money when the crop came to fruition. The system spread throughout the South, carried on the back of poverty, allowing wealthy landowners and bankers to raise crops without working the land, while forcing farmers to grow crops they would never truly own. In shorthand, it was called tenant farming. The method slowly migrated to Springdale, where John Tyson and other feed dealers were trying to ensure a steady supply of chicken. The feed dealers started providing their product up front for farmers, collecting their payment when the chickens were sold. Then they started fronting the money to buy chickens as well. John Tyson took it a step further. He bought the chickens himself from a hatchery, then he essentially loaned them to farmers who agreed to raise the birds and get paid a fixed price on delivery. The farmer didn’t take any risk on prices because he never owned the birds, and Tyson got his steady flow of chickens to deliver to customers up north.