I have $235,000 of student debt. The first $120,000 came with a bachelor’s degree from my state school. Another $70,000 or so came with my master’s degree. The remainder is accrued interest.
The suggested minimum monthly payment on my private debt alone is approximately $1,200. For reference: that’s nearly rent for the 600-square-foot apartment where I live with my partner in New Jersey.
Without income driven repayment, the minimum payment amount for my federal student debt would be around $1,000.
I would have to begin devoting half of my income to debt payment if I cared to pay it off by 2042. I can’t do that because I make just under $4,000 per month. And that income is a fairly new development in my life. Why would I choose to pay down my debt if it meant I wouldn’t be able to afford basic living expenses?
Because YOU BORROWED THE MONEY, and then YOU SPENT THE MONEY ON A WORTHLESS EDUCATION.
How much you want to bet his degree is in something like "African History" or "Gender Studies" or something even more worthless, like Journalism Studies.
There's no way in hell that anybody's tax dollars should go to pay off this guy's student loans. Period. He borrowed the money. He spent the money. That's his albatross to carry, no one else's.
Or better yet, here's a thought: Take it out of his alma mater's endowments. Make the school pay for cheating students with worthless degrees. That's a student debt forgiveness plan I can get behind.
4 comments:
Some time ago, the American Enterprise Institute published a list of "Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom" that summarizes the absolutes of economics. One of them, highly applicable here, runs thus:
"Debt is always paid: if not by the borrower, then by the lender."
There's an enormous truth buried in there -- and it has massive application to the "student loan debt crisis." The drive to make student loan debts "forgivable" by political fiat is an attempt to make ordinary American taxpayers the lenders, and as such to make us responsible for paying off these "bad debts." Before the federal government got involved in student loans this would have been unthinkable. Today, it's just one more collectivist chancre on the American body politic.
We need to expand student loans to elementary school students. It's never too early to learn personal responsibility and the Amercan way.
American taxpayers are already the lenders, ala guaranteeing the loans so that banks will lend money to students even though they are a horrible credit risk. As long as the banks know that they will get repaid, they will lend any amount of money to anyone. And the schools line up with their hands out, willing to just about blow any male student, in order to get their fair share of the largess.
In order to attract students, the schools have gone to building bigger and better facilities, like coed dorms, fancy student lounges, huge intramural sports facilities, so that all of the students have a chance to play their sport from high school, even if they did not have the talent to make it at college level.
And what college would be complete without fancy artwork on it's walls, by the original artists?
Then, of course, we would not want little Buffy or Tommy to have to actually study to earn a real degree, so they make up degrees out of subjects like feminist and gender behaviour studies, or racial ethics, or crap like that which means that they qualify to be able to not just drink Starbucks, which of course they have available on campus, but also to work their after graduation, since that is all they will be able to get with their worthless degree.
I don't think I could actually recommend that anyone go to a state school these days. It's gotten that bad.
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