A student-debt jubilee is absolutely necessary, it’s just, and it’s fair:
Almost nobody is repaying their student loans
In the 2020 CARES Act, Congress gave student-loan borrowers a temporary break from repaying their loans. President Trump extended that twice and President Biden once, with loan payments now set to resume Oct. 1, 2021.
Borrowers could have kept paying if they wanted to, but almost nobody did. As Tom Lee of the American Action Forum recently explained, the portion of borrowers repaying their student loans dropped from 46% at the beginning of 2020 to 1% today. The portion of borrowers in forbearance rose from 10% to 57%. The rest include borrowers who are still in school, who have gotten deferments or who have defaulted.
Now, I understand there are a lot of college graduates who will whine and complain about how THEY had grit and how THEY worked their way through school and how THEY pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Of course, these retards are all ignoring the rather pertinent fact that average annual college costs have increased 3,819% from 1964 to 2019.
The Cost of College in 1964-65
- Average cost of public school: $261
- Average cost of private school: $1,160
The Cost of College in 2018-2019
- Average cost of a four-year public school: $10,230
- Average cost of a four-year private school: $35,830
Even if we adjust for inflation, the average annual cost of college in 1965 was $2,116.21 for public and $9,405.40 in 2019 dollars.
So, what I propose, in the interest of taking into account the narcissistic feelings of those who are more concerned about fairness about the past than what is good for everyone who is a participant in today’s economy, is to eliminate all student debts in excess of $4,000 for those who attended public schools and $20,000 for those who attended private schools.
This would make the remaining debts reasonably affordable going forward, would free those whose lives are already ruined by crippling debt servitude, and would mean various younger generations would have paid a similar amount for higher education as the Boomers. It would also end the charade of extending usurious loans to young people who cannot be reasonably expected to pay them off.
UPDATE: I’m going to type this very slowly in the hopes that the morons can understand this: contracts do not determine reality. It does not matter if you have signed a contract agreeing that you will fly to the Moon by flapping your arms, there is no way you can deliver on that contract. Moreover, fraud vitiates all contracts, and students who took out student loans were lied to, deceived, and defrauded. The fact that someone agreed to something does not mean that they are bound to the agreement in any and all circumstances.
UPDATE: The endowments of the 20 richest universities alone would cover one-fifth of the cost of entirely writing off all student loans.