Student loans

 

People are screaming because of student loan forgiveness. They don't want to pay for someone else. 

Never mind all the subsidies and weapons their tax dollars pay for.

Never mind the tax breaks given prosperous companies. Too many of the breaks went to stock buy backs and higher CEO salaries of companies that could have paid people more and lowered not raised their prices and still come out making lots of money. That might even have slowed inflation.

No one is mentioning that in the non U.S. industrialized world higher education can be free or at a low cost. Some countries have paid students to go to school, while others still subsidize rent and books. These young people come out of uni ready to work, to contribute to society and the tax base without punishing debts.

The countries doing this will have an advantage over the United States. Americans who can't afford university will not be put into jobs that does live up to their full potential.

I am NOT putting down non-university degree requirement jobs. Many of the same countries that support an educated populace have apprentice programs that produce electricians, plumbers, personal assistants, sales people, etc.. They are equally valued members of the work force.

Think, if your toilet is stopped up what would you prefer: a plumber or an economist? We need every skilled person possible from flipping hamburgers to operating on a tumor.

The cost of university has become absurd, especially for those institutions that have large endowments. These universities also have relied more on adjunct professors whose salaries are much smaller than tenured professors. High level administrators seem not to have suffered.

Then there are those that say, "I paid my loan, why should others get a free lunch?" There's also saying two wrongs don't make a right. Think: You were abused as a child by your father. The girl next door is being abuse by her father. Under the why should I do anything to help someone else philosophy, you would shrug your shoulder and ignore her cries at night.

And there are those loans where the interest charges mean that a person pays the loan back not once but several times over.

There was a point when I worked for a credit union and we believed that if a person reneged on a student loan, they should be denied a loan. At that period interest rates were normal and money paid back went to other student loans. That is no longer the case. It was people helping people.

The system is broken. The fact that Americans carry about $105 trillion in student debt certainly does not benefit the American economy. Other countries don't have that problem. Again the U.S. is exceptional, but in a very bad way.