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Student Loans In America: the Next Big Credit Bubble
PolygamousRanchKid writes "In late 1965, President Lyndon Johnson stood in the modest gymnasium of what had once been the tiny teaching college he attended and announced a program to promote education. Almost a half-century later these modest steps have metastasized into a huge, federally guaranteed student-loan industry. On October 25th the Obama administration added indebted students to the list of banks, car companies, homeowners, solar manufacturers and others that have benefited from a federal handout. In response to students burying their obligations in court during the 1970s, anti-default provisions were imposed to make it almost impossible to shed student loans in bankruptcy. There are increasingly loud calls for reform of the system, with demands that range from a full-fledged bail-out of borrowers to a phased curtailment of government lending. The changes announced this week are designed to ease the pressure on struggling graduates. Borrowers who qualify will get payment relief, not debt relief. The administration says these changes will have no cost to taxpayers."
"Social Security and socialized medicine are entitlements, it's something that people ought to be entitled for just for being born American citizens."
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. No human has any right to force (via government taxation) any other to support them (parent/child relationships excepted). You want to be taken care of? Look to family and private, voluntary charity. I am not your keeper, except to the extent I choose to be.
You're not "entitled" to anything, except the opportunity to subsist on your own.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
So the government gives loans to the poor, to go to a school that it is statistically unlikely that they will graduate from, learn anything from, or even gain any positive benefit from. Then the government demands return payment under penalty of law of this money, which has in every way you look at it, passed directly from the government to schools and teachers that have through tenure been guaranteed high paying, high benefit jobs for the rest of their natural lives. These schools have failure rates that are staggering when reviewed by any measure you can think of, and if forced to rely just on the money that came in from graduating students would be forced to either take drastic pay cuts or shutter their doors. The poor are then forced to spend a large portion of the beginning of their careers paying back loans, that payed for their boss to graduate. It's an inefficient, un-subtle and demeaning tax on the poor to pay for the wealthys education and keep tenured professors in plush offices teaching one or two classes a week. It's typical of a well meaning government program that's been corrupted by rich people that want a free ride, and lazy intellectuals that want to get paid exorbitant amounts of money for contributing to the humanities. As usually, the government should just stay the hell out of it and we'd all be better off.