Yes there are people-- many-- who are still in universities and will be facing the same debts and the same poor job market when they get out. In a future where student loan debt was erased for those who already received their degrees, the only mistake these mostly younger people will have made is not being born earlier and thus not being old enough at the right time to reach the goodie bag when the big kids ripped it apart. To those who think the stimulus from the student loan forgiveness will create jobs and improve the career prospects of future graduates (putting aside for a moment the argument of whether or it not it actually will) that doesn't change the fact that the young people will still be stuck having to pay their debts while their older counterparts no longer have to. As well, the question will then arise "if the government did it once, why won't it do it again?" So the logical thing for these young people to do would be to not pay their student loans, let the country be driven to the same precipice, and let the government repeat the same hasty act of surrender.
Hey then, can't we just make higher education "free"? (See #2)
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Sarcasm aside, the purpose here is not to overlook the fact that people are suffering because of their student loan debts, or to draw attention away from the fact that higher education in our country has become an expensive trap for most Americans. Not all the people defaulting on their student loans now are doing so because they are irresponsible. Some of them may have legitimately fallen on hard times and are victims of our failing economy While talking about personal decisions it has to be measured in the context that many of the people struggling now were raised in a system that assured them the center would hold and that there would be a future for them in which there would be stability. Growing up we were taught that having a reasonable amount of debt was a part of life, and that everything would be okay as long as we worked consistently in our chosen careers and made our payments each month. The lack of a crystal ball mentioned previously applies to these people too, and given the reality around them it's unreasonable to assume that most people brought up in the indoctrination camps we call public schools (which proudly fixate on wars we won and the fact that we ended slavery but hardly mention the Federal Reserve system), while watching the corporate idiot boxes at home (before the Internet took off), and being told "everything is fine" their whole lives are going to have the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson when they're 18-25 and being told to sign the bottom line by the pleasantly smiling people in the financial aid offices of their universities. What we face now in the big picture is the culmination of decades of manipulation by the Federal Reserve cartel and the misplaced trust of generations of people who simply sought successful lives and never had the seed planted in their minds that perhaps disaster was waiting for all of us down the road. In regard to student loan debt, we are looking at the result of big government policies blowing costs sky high. The existence of the third party payer makes taxpayer money available to universities and thus doesn't force them to work directly with their customers and their customers' incomes to maintain costs at reasonable levels. There is no silver bullet fix to this situation. Too much government is the problem and there is no way to undo past mistakes with more government intervention. The only reasonable thing the government could do now is admit its failure.
"But still, why not forgive student loan debt?" some might ask. "Okay, it's not fair to all those groups mentioned above, but who said life is fair? We can't have all of these people perpetually in debt if there's no means for them to pay it back."
Forgiving student loan debt with the stroke of a pen is not going to make the underlying problems of our system go away. More importantly, most people are against it. The Huffington Post recently admitted that according to a Rasmussen poll, 66% of Americans oppose forgiveness of student loans-- a big chunk of the 99% that many student loan forgiveness advocates claim to represent. If you read the comments on articles discussing this idea, most of them are hostile at just the suggestion of student loan forgiveness, mainly because a lot of people fall into the categories already mentioned above While some individuals would be taken off the hook, others in the groups I've listed would be so wronged that no amount of patriotic rhetoric and talk about "we" would be able to rectify it. What faith can anybody have in a system without dependable rules? Questions would be asked, such as, "If Joe doesn't have to pay his student loans and I already did, then why should I have to pay taxes?" Suddenly the people that some call "sir" or "mam" who got their student loans forgiven and are enjoying the rewards of their degrees would look to those who paid off their loans or passed up higher education over fear of debt less like fellow Americans and more like the undeserving sheep that God (or rather government-- the God of socialists) unjustly favored.
It was bad enough when it was the banks. At least the so called "99 percent" were generally united in condemning that immoral fiasco.
Yet erasing student loan debt, while rewarding some, would create a division within the people that would undermine the foundation of our society. Whether quietly or out loud, those who weren't rewarded (except with patronizing talk of how they should feel good about themselves and also be happy for the "99 percent")-- would rightly disavow their allegiance to the government of the United States (not the U.S. Constitution but the failed government that trashed it) and divorce themselves from their collectivist neighbors who say "We" but really mean "Me" when they make such demands.
Spite alone wouldn't condemn the nation as a result of erasing student loan debt, but the loss of the last string of trust anyone had in the American system and their fellow man would. After all, when the rules go out the window, the game of civilization is essentially over. If the banker presuming over the monopoly board won't stop cheating in favor of his friends (the bank bailouts) or those he's trying to shut up (student loan protesters), then the next logical step for everyone else is to either quit playing or turn the board over out of anger. Translated into the real world, it's a situation that would shatter faith and leave Americans with no reason to follow the rules except out of fear of heavy handed force-- a society none of us want to live in.
If the 'Occupy' crowd is really concerned with the general consensus then let them know now that they don't have it with this demand, and drop it in favor of solutions that actually make sense.
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