In England in Charles Dickens's day, people who could not pay their bills went to prison. They stayed until they raised the money to get out, either by selling property, inheritance or through the efforts of friends and relatives. Prison furnished very little and prisoners were required to pay for any extras like clothing, more food or a better cell location.
Now we don't use debtors prisons; our debtors are allowed to roam the country so that they can work to repay their debt. As an experiment, I suggest that you add up all the interest that you pay per month including mortgage interest. You'll be surprised at the total; I was. Mortgage interest is deductible on your income tax, a subsidy to the home buyer, but also to the lender who can thus charge more, Lenders don't really provide much of a service for the exorbitant amounts they charge, If too big to fail, the risk is minimal. And it is our money they are lending, not theirs. For more on this I suggest a nearly century old classic, Other People's Money by Louis Brandeis. A slender book as true now as it was when it was written.
In Dickens's day before TV, people used to visit debtors prisons and insane asylums for entertainment. Now we can be entertained without leaving home by watching home videos of people falling down. A small improvement. Instead of finding other's problems entertaining, we should be doing all that we can to help solve their problems. With the debt problem, that means insisting on lower bank fees and interest rates.
