This story of a man thrown in jail for attempting to cash a perfectly valid check is quite the illustration of how rotten life can be when you have low status and thus, indirectly, of how vicious the struggle for status will be.
By purchasing a home, Njoku qualified for a first time home buyer rebate on his tax return. The IRS directly deposited his rebate into his Chase Bank account. Chase had previously closed Njoku’s account due to overdrawn checks, so it first deducted $600 to recoup its expenses and then mailed a $8,463.21 check to him.
But when he showed up at Chase Bank to cash his check, the teller refused to believe that it was legitimate. He returned later and found the police waiting for him. He was immediately arrested. Within a day, the bank realized it had made a mistake, but because the local detective was off work, Njoku was unable to get out of jail for three days.
By then, he had been fired from his job and his car had been towed. He ended up having to sell the car because he couldn’t afford to get it out of the pound. And after all this, Chase still hasn’t apologized in the year since these events occured.
Hat-tip to The New Republic‘s Jonathan Chait, who also provides us with this more general account at Cracked.com of some of the lesser-known indignities and miseries of being poor even in a rich society “5 Things Nobody Tells You about Being Poor.”
And Cracked.com even gives us a neat antinatalist list: “6 Terrifying Things They Don’t Tell You about Childbirth.”
One Response to “Friday no-fun links”
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I’ve been reading Cracked for years, and “5 Things Nobody Tells You about Being Poor” has got to be the most depressing article I’ve ever read. Look at the comments too – the people there are absolutely despairing about things. Maybe there’s some hope that people will tweak onto this antinatalism thing after all? If you can’t feel bad for your potential children living in this mess, then you can’t feel bad for anyone at all.