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{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} at the beginning of 2020 to 1{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} today. The portion of borrowers in forbearance rose from 10{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} to 57{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6}. 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{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} from 1964 to 2019.
The Cost of College in 1964-65
- Average cost of public school: $261
- Average cost of private school: $1,160
- Average cost of a four-year public school: $10,230
- Average cost of a four-year private school: $35,830