There's a reason ancient Judaism included a "Year of Jubilee", where all debts were forgiven every 50 years.
I suppose that is why it doesnt exist anymore.
Is important to note that the jubilee was a measure against the worst case scenarios: Persons that sell themselves as slaves (or sons of slaves), people that lost the hereditary land and things like that.
This also means the society was based around this expectations.
Why? Why has the ability for debt-free self-sustaining decreased?
If you live in a rural area, even today, you will see that is normal and easy to share and get food free or very cheap (in fact, a lot of food will not get in the supermarket for lack of ways to fully utilize the capacity!).
Is kind of simply to maintain a live if your are friendly in the community.
89K per person - means we could buy them all an iPhone with 88.5K left over. Corporations and Governments have a huge role to play in this.
Sometimes, that debt would be higher than what could reasonably be paid back and so the debt would accumulate.
In other words, they'd rig the game from the start and then loosen the thumbscrews along the way.
The rationale of the jubilee-rule was probably to avoid multi-generational debt-slavery.
It's obvious this law would restrict economic development, but the Hebrews made that tradeoff for social stability.
The main feature of the Jubilee law was that land could not be permanently sold, it could only be leased for up to 50 years. This together with their inheritance laws guaranteed that each clan or family group would have an economic base in perpetuity.
What you are suggesting is all debt is zeroed out 50 years after it’s issued? Then why would any borrower pay off any principle at all?
This whole jubilee thing makes no sense, may be a little bit if the jubilee happens unexpectedly so that people can’t just plan around it. But that kind of sort of happens after a war.