Here we have a more or less standard explanation of the fact that sometimes employers run credit checks on prospective employees. I second what Chicagosmith said in the second comment; that the practice amounts to social exclusion, no more, no less. And commenter John Laster, apparently in the “no credit” category, is probably at a disadvantage. Since “no credit” includes the debt-shy as well as the young, I’ve always assumed that the real motive for discrimination against unindebted people is based not on the idea that they are irresponsible, but that they are relatively less indenturable. After all, the more debt you have to service, the more married you are to your income. In the movie On the Waterfront it’s stated explicitly. “No loan, no job.” The same principle may apply to nations as well as individuals. Consider the following:
As with the United States and indeed nearly all countries, EU “aid” is largely self-serving – a combination of export promotion and bailouts for debtor economies to pay banks in Europe’s main creditor nations: Germany, France and the Netherlands.
More export markets=more income opportunities, and these opportunities are being opened precisely because the nations in question are debtor nations. Basically nations are being “hired” precisely because they’re not “free and clear.” It seems plausible that no-credit individuals might be discriminated against based on similar motives. But how would one go about testing this hypothesis? I’ve been giving that one some thought. The methodology might start with that of studies on race discrimination (e. g. this) that feature paired applicants (one black, one white, for example) with basically matched resumes. Here we field applicants paired by credit characteristics; perhaps testing good credit against bad credit, good credit vs. no credit and bad credit vs. no credit. I suspect that “no credit” would turn out to be the most disadvantaged category. Conventional wisdom would expect “good credit” applicants to fare better in the employment game than “bad credit” applicants, but I suspect there may be exceptions to the rule. If the alleged business model of Eurozone bailouts is accurate, perhaps there is a sort of “sweet spot” in which the wages on offer are barely (or even intermittently) sufficient for solvency, given the worker’s particular debt load. This would be plausible as a weapon against turnover—well, employee-initiated turnover.
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