Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the government “forgiving” student loan debt, is a great way to transfer wealth from the bottom to the top. The new class is defined by the fact they have degrees. They are the executives, CEOs, journalists, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and accountants. Those who don’t have degrees will be forced to pay the debt of their bosses. Quite a swindle to play on the poor. Of course, only a true psychopath would further impoverish the poor, to enrich him or herself. To the alternate argument, that many who have degrees are waitresses, ditch diggers and coal miners. I would point out, that for those who don’t have degrees, these are their only job choices. People who use debt to buy a useless degree shouldn’t be rewarded anymore than someone who uses debt to buy drugs or gamble.
The real problem is the cost of a university degree today. The value to cost ratio of a college education diminishes by the hour. The quality decreases while the cost skyrockets. This is due to several factors. The perception that everyone needs a college education, is pernicious, because most do not. Even in our highly technical civilization, trade schools are more effective at training for hands on work than universities. Another factor is that brain washing with a political ideology, to the detriment of rational thought, is not terribly empowering for the victim. In fact, a strong argument could be made that stultifying a student into an ideologue, is not doing that student any good at all. Especially when that brain washing comes at such a high price. Decades paying off useless unforgivable debt.
When the government made student loan debt, federal debt, and thus inextinguishable by bankruptcy, they erased one of the underlying principles of capitalism, and unleashed runaway inflation in tuition price. Bad debt should be extinguishable by bankruptcy, so the person can get back to making money, a pursuit that helps everyone. Saddling a young person with useless debt insures you will not create a business, buy a home, or start a family. The only option is to go to work for a firm to pay off that debt. Like a minefield student loan debt is a channelizing device. Keeping us from being entrepreneurs to insure we become cogs. Moreover, disconnecting debt from profit, loss and difficulty in acquiring, teaches a false lesson about debt. Further hampering the student’s life outcome. All government’s fault.
That so many are saddled with unforgivable debt, for a degree in gender studies, with a minor in advanced underwater basket weaving, is not the fault of a ditch digger, it is both the fault of the student and the college. The student for being a dupe, the college for selling worthless sheepskin at a dear price. In any other context, that would be called fraud, classic selling a pig in a poke. What thickens the irony more than a french roux, is the same organizations that are attacking for profit colleges and trade schools, (the competition) that teach under served students how to do things that make money, they are saddling students with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. For a useless degree that imparts no benefit whatsoever, but diminishes the student’s life outcome greatly, by instilling counter productive notions.
As the endowment of Harvard grows ever closer to that magical fifty billion dollar level… they and every other university and college, inculcate counter productive post modernist drivel, charging ever more for it. Building absurdly huge endowments. Then, like Ebeneezer Scrooge, they hoard those endowments. So much so, Ivy League universities endowments bristle with billions. Instead of demanding painters, landscapers and janitors pay off the debt of executives, lawyers and doctors, so the elite can further enrich themselves and their endowments. Why don’t universities lead by example, and buy a degree for everyone, with their endowment interest? Making student loan debt archaic. Else the ivy leagues could pay a big chunk of existing debt. Unless they are hypocrites.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
