Forum Post: Students Debt Jubilee - OWS: what's Plan B?
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 30, 2011, 9:55 p.m. EST by qazxsw123
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If, as Thom Hartmann says there are 11 million students who've already defaulted on their loans (hence have messed up their credit), why can't they be brought out to stand together and demand forgiveness of all students' debts?
Am afraid you're all wrong on all scores. Full disclosure: it took me 8 years to pay my $18,000 students' loans (rate 8.25 percent), first year, at $15 an hour no benefits. Difference is I found jobs that could sustain that debt and my standard of living (poorer but okay). Last, I don't see why we have to impose on others a system that's benefitting the super super rich among us.
Now is why all of you didn't get it the first time:
The social contract is: young person, go to school, stay out of trouble, and we will get you a job (as in one generation talking to another)
Debt is a social construct anyway: ask the investment banks and their bonus-receiving servants
Students loans (at least for State schools) should be forgiven because:
1) it's the moral thing to do (if you've failed your kids you need to pony up)
2) it would open up a new Audacity of Hope mood that this country needs desperately
3) in a world of trillion dollar debt, 1.2 T is peanuts--the gov't, read the taxpayers, can afford it.
4) the taxpayers have done it already for unsolvent banks
5) even though Debt has been made into a moral issue, it is not, should not (best book to read on the matter--forgot the title, but try this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/debt-is-not-money_b_186423.html
6) the economy would actually grow with all these people now free to move out of their parents' basements and start their own nests, even in a Craigs list furnished studio
7) everybody gets upset with groups when they are at the bottom (think unions) when corporations and their CEOs belong to plenty of groups, associations and the kind to represent them (think US Chamber of Commerce, and all their clubs, secrets or not. Am not going to mention the K street folks, ALEX, etc. writting OUR laws behind OUR backs.
As they say in France, l'union fait la force
I support OWS, as someone else said, to the hilt. But you got a good return on your investment. You are perfectly capable of paying off the loans, almost all of you.
For the ones that cannot get a job due to the economy, maybe the interest should be forgiven partially, with the difference being paid by the wealthy. Sounds fair.
If you demand forgiveness you bump up against real democracy, not the hollow fake ass kind. I would vote against this, as would almost anyone.
Because they defaulted. Also fuzzyp got it right. The economy would be worse off for it.
Because getting in a group and demanding forgiveness isn't upheld as a legal way of getting out of a contract.
Please explain why their loans should be forgotten.
Because that would be bad. It's way too much money for the government to just eat.