White-collar workers claiming bankruptcy should get off their butts and start doing manual labour, says a Nova Scotia adjudicator..Blacklock’s Reporter said the adjudicator quoted American writer Ayn Rand who said “there is no such thing as a lousy job, only lousy men who don’t care to do it.”.“I am too often faced with underemployed individuals who consider a particular vocation ‘beneath’ them, or in which they see little or no work incentive,” wrote Raffi Balmanoukian, a register and Small Claims Court adjudicator in New Glasgow, N.S..The remarks came in the case of a $120,000-a year unemployed geologist who filed for bankruptcy while working as a $48,000 truck driver..“He deserves full credit for a trait too often lacking in those before this Court, a willingness to take a job outside of his core expertise, at a lower wage, pending positive developments in his career,” wrote Balmanoukian..“I expect Ayn Rand is not commonly cited in Bankruptcy Court, especially if speaking of tax debt.”.Balmanoukian is renowned for colourful court rulings in which he has quoted Yogi Berra, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Prussian Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke..“The word ‘bankrupt’ is derived from the Italian ‘banca rotta,’” he explained in a 2020 hearing..“In times of yore an insolvent merchant’s place of business would be trashed by irate creditors. The result was a ‘broken bench.’ In Nova Scotia the bench will not break.”.“‘I was sloppy’ or ‘I don’t know anything about that stuff’ may be relevant to a bankrupt’s bona fides but it is not a full answer or defence to a high tax debt bankruptcy analysis,” Balmanoukian wrote in one case..“This is not a flea market,” he said in another: “To use a good Nova Scotian expression, it is not rocket surgery.”.In other judgments Balmanoukian wrote:.“Hatfields, McCoys, honey badgers, amateurs all compared to the parties in this appeal”;“Everyone who has undertaken a renovation project has a ‘contractor story’”;“When life’s road takes a Nova Scotian to bankruptcy does she get to keep her car?”;“Coffee is a stimulant. When one has the prospect of opening a Starbucks location, it may be especially so.”.Balmanoukian described one defendant as a “knave,” and observed another “appears to have a battle with truth.” He wrote on the 2018 passing of a friend, “When an old man dies a library is lost.”.“Some 2,500 years ago Aesop warned of the dangers of wanting too much, too soon, by killing the goose that lays golden eggs,” Balmanoukian wrote in a 2018 bankruptcy application..“I am not sure the student loan authorities got the memo.”.He wrote in a separate case: “A renaissance scholar, an enlightenment scholar and an insolvency scholar are each instructed to write an essay about the elephant. In due course each turn in their works. The Renaissance scholar’s effort is entitled, ‘Art and the Elephant.’ The Enlightenment scholar, ‘The Elephant and Reason.’ The insolvency scholar submits, ‘The elephant: Is it property or income?’ This case begs the same question.”.Dave Naylor is the News Editor of the Western Standard.,dnaylor@westernstandardonline.com,.Twitter.com/nobby7694
