People Are Talking About ... Student Loan Forgiveness
It’s not an interesting topic in itself, but it is to the extent that it tells us a lot about the corruption of our system.
So, first of all, how corrupt is America? This corrupt—it’s a small example in and of itself, but thinking about it leads to considerations of bigger, even global, corruption that risks our very lives and existence. Two sample tweets—can America really afford to be run like this?
Yes, it’s oversimplified. After all, the parents have been groomed, too, to accept the inevitability of life long debt in any number of ways. But Murphy captures the essentially predatory nature of what’s been going on.
The problem is that what can’t go on ultimately collapses. Something needs to be done. What’s being done—besides launching new wars? Well, on the national political level we ignore real problems. Instead we have a new Ministry of Disinformation—which implicitly posits ordinary citizens as the problem. A few public officials, have made ritual sounds of opposition, but where is the major outcry, the major refusal? Those whose job it is to give voice to the concerns of We the People, it turns out, are in the pay of … the Wall St. groomers, the rent seeking class and their hangers on. And so, we end up with the bizarreness of American public life in any number of aspects:
The reality is, however, that the solution to the student loan problem is staring us in the face, and it would solve a number of societal problems. Karl Denninger outlines it—in some detail, if you follow the link—but others like Will Chamberlain have been advocating similar ideas for a long time, too. The language of grooming points toward the solution. In simple terms:
In more detail:
In a word: No.
...
Broadly the problem with college education cost today is two-fold:
It's too expensive. Its expensive because the government subsidized it and removed risk computation in lending. ...
Colleges do not care if they sell effectively-worthless educations. A college would care if it had to underwrite the loans and they were dischargeable in bankruptcy. …
If you want to solve the problem … the price has to come down and the lender has to take the risk of default and non-payment.
Thus you do the following:
College debt from this day forward is dischargeable in bankruptcy. Period. It's unsecured debt -- sort of.
If your college debt is discharged [i.e., in bankruptcy] your degree is void. That's the hook to prevent "strategic" defaults, ...
The Federal Government gets entirely out of the college financing business. …
That's it. Three simple steps, problem solved.
#1 and #2 are opt in for all current student debt. This is entirely legal as well and shuts up the whiners. If you have a "worthless degree" [say, in “gender studies”] then fine -- turn it in, file bankruptcy, take the credit hit and go on with your life.
Interestingly, the one politician in America who has been staking out tough, principled positions on issue after issue is out ahead on this one too. In simple terms he’s proposing what obscure pundits have proposed:
Ron DeSantis Absolutely Nails It on Student Debt 'Forgiveness'
Read DeSantis’ full statement. Notice what a winner it is in political terms, as well as how principled it is as public policy. He identifies that much of the problem arises from the predictable grifting of the children of the grooming, rent seeking class—it’s not the children of the working class who are the disproportionate problem:
I hafta say, DeSantis keeps getting things right. Are people paying attention? Look at it this way, the parent led grass roots rebellion against the government run indoctrination camps seems in major part to be a result of the lockdowns—parents suddenly had the time to get informed about the grooming their children were being subjected to in the government schools? Could this go further? There are possibilities that Bonchie points out in the just linked article. GOPers in the legislative branch won’t go here on there own. They need leadership:
What I really like about DeSantis’ reaction, though, is that he goes further than some other Republicans are willing to go, which has been a staple of his leadership. The right move here is not to tell those who fell prey to predatory student loans to pound sand. Yes, there’s ultimately a level of personal responsibility involved, but we can’t ignore the role the universities have played in this.
Those who benefited from these loans should have a part in footing the bill. That means universities that raked in gobs of cash to pay diversity officers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year should be holding the bag for those who can’t afford to pay their loans. The idea that we are going to make truck drivers pay the student loans of somebody with an MBA, while universities sit on hundreds of billions of dollars in tax-free endowments is insane. Any government program to relieve student debt should be completely dependent on taxing those endowments.
That’s where Republicans need to go when arguing against what the Democrats are doing. Counter their ridiculous vote-buying scheme by making changes to the student loan process, while also putting the universities on the hook for their predatory behavior. That will go much further than a temporary payoff that does nothing to solve the problem.
Ilya Shapiro
@ishapiro
My mortgage identifies as a student loan.
similar to the government getting into health care
I went for physical therapy..........they were charging me in increments of approx. $250 for 15 minutes....totaling about $1000 per hour........for doing exercises any 12 yr old knows
so medicaid, mediacare or some form of 0bamacare pays for it via your tax dollars
I went a few times and then refused to be a part of it