spendthrift

Look up spendthrift or profligate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A spendthrift (also called profligate) is someone who spends money prodigiously and who is extravagant and recklessly wasteful, often to a point where the spending climbs well beyond his or her means. The origin of the word is someone who is able to spend money acquired by the thrift of predecessors or ancestors.^{[citation needed]}

Historical examples of spendthrifts include George IV, Ludwig II, Marie Antoinette and Karl Marx.^[1] The term is often used by the press as an adjective applied to governments who are thought to be wasting public money. William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress displays in graphical form the downwardly spiralling fortunes of a wealthy but spendthrift son and heir who loses his money, and who as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bedlam.

Legal issues

The modern legal remedy for spendthrifts is usually bankruptcy. However, during the 19th and 20th centuries, a few jurisdictions, such as the U.S. states of Oregon and Massachusetts, experimented with laws under which the family of such a person could have him legally declared a "spendthrift" by a court of law.^[2] In turn, such persons were considered to lack the legal capacity to enter into binding contracts.^[3][4] Even though such laws made life harder for creditors (who now had the burden of ensuring that any prospective debtor had not been judicially declared a spendthrift), they were thought to be justified by the public policy of keeping a spendthrift's family from ending up in the poorhouse or on welfare.^[5]

Such laws have since been abolished —in some countries— in favour of modern bankruptcy, which is more favourable to creditors.

References

1. ^ "Engels was always sending Marx money; when he finally retired from the family firm, he made Marx an annuity of £350—several times more than the average family lived on but not enough for Marx, who always adjusted his spending to a level above what his benefactors supplied." Roger Kimball, "The Death of Socialism," New Criterion, April 2002
2. ^ William Herbert Page, The Law of Contracts, 2nd ed. (Cincinnati: W.H. Anderson Co., 1920), 2848-2849.
3. ^ See ORS 126.335 (repealed Or. Stat. 1961, ch. 344, § 109). Oregon's unusual law resulted in a famous conflict-of-laws opinion: Lilienthal v. Kaufman, 239 Ore. 1, 395 P.2d 543 (1964).
4. ^ Chandler v. Simmons, 97 Mass. 508, 514 (1867).
5. ^ Olshen v. Kaufman, 235 Or. 423, 385 P.2d 161 (1963). This case involved the same defendant and was relied upon by the majority in Lilienthal. Both cases involved joint ventures for the sale of binoculars.

External links

• how thrift applied to spend can end up being someone who is not thrifty (from http://www.worldwidewords.org)
• A Rakes Progress