It was during an Iowa town hall for would-be presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren back in January that the definitive argument was made against forgiving student loans.
Of course it wasn’t made by Warren, who soon was drummed out of the presidential field and has since returned to being a left-wing U.S. Senator and Native American poser. No, the penetrating insight was provided by a father, who had scrimped and saved to put his daughter through college with no student loans.
Asking Warren if forgiving the debt of the profligate meant he’d then get his money back, too, the man received the sort of dismissive answer that might be expected from Fauxcahontas.
“Of course not,” was Warren’s snide, condescending response.
Replied the man, cutting to the crux of the matter: “We did the right thing, and we get screwed.”
Welcome to the club.
There are a lot of us who did what we thought was the right thing, but it has turned out to be the wrong thing. In my particular circumstance, my wife and I paid off the bulk of our son’s college debt, with him contributing some to the effort. That was for his bachelor’s degree. He got a graduate assistant position to obtain his master’s and incurred no debt.
I guess we should have bought another vehicle, added on to the house, gone on some vacations, or just thrown money out the windows of our cars any time we drove instead of paying off that college loan.
If you think media efforts to deny cheating in the past election are disgusting exercises in propaganda, get ready for the lame-stream media’s take on forgiving student loans.
They will paint it as merely doing the right thing, and taking a burden off the youth – aka our future — and they also will portray any who would think it foolhardy to erase the debt as selfish idiots. No doubt those in opposition will be called racists, misogynists, Nazis and any other of the standard labels hung on those who would disagree with the lunatic left.
The banks or other organizations that provided those loans will be portrayed as predators preying on callow youth.
When I was young, a person had to display some academic credentials to get into college. Now it’s the ability to fog a mirror, and more importantly, the ability to pay – or get someone else to pay – that allows students to pursue something as productive as puppetry, urban studies, or, as seems to be the favorite of Pitt football players, administration of justice.
First of all, if a person attending college didn’t understand that taking out a “loan” meant the money must be repaid, then they really didn’t belong in college in the first place.
Higher education, like healthcare, housing and the stock markets, are quintessential examples of excess liquidity distorting the picture.
Colleges, which once put students in relatively spartan dorms, now compete for students by offering the equivalent of luxury apartments. Sure, it’s much more expensive, but you can just borrow more.
And colleges don’t want students to bother to complete their bachelor’s degrees in four years. Take five or six, or more. Just keep paying the schools their ever-increasing tuition and other costs.
If universities really wanted to cut students a break, they’d slim down degree requirements in terms of credits required outside the area of the students’ majors. But that would put a lot of philosophy professors on the unemployment line, so we can’t have that.
I personally knew a “non-traditional” college student – translation: someone older than average going to college. He discovered he could borrow enough money he didn’t have to get a summer job, so he maxed out his college loans and took the summer’s off to ride his motorcycle, attend any manner of celebrations selling alcohol, or take his dog to the beach in his pickup truck.
To think I’m going to pay higher taxes so his debt can be forgiven all or in part doesn’t exactly warm the cockles of my heart.
Apologists in the media will says this guy is a statistical outlier. They are wrong. His is an all-too-common story.
Similarly pathetic are stories such as one that appeared last week on zerohedge.com about a 59-year-old claiming to have borrowed $79,000 repaid $190,000, and still owe $236,000.
How can this be?
Begin with the fact he started his college career in 1980 studying philosophy and political science.
He eventually went to law school, and of course didn’t finish, but he did a great job of adding on debt. In intervening years, he just stopped paying the student loans, so penalties and interest really piled up for a guy, who in a moment of striking clarity admitted his “stupidity” was to blame.
So, again, we as taxpayers are supposed to bail out a self-described stupid 59-year-old?
Why should these handouts be limited to moronic college students? Maybe the government should step in and pay the mortgages of the people who never encountered a budget they couldn’t bust.
Uncle Sam surely could see his way clear to help all those people riding around in $50,000 SUVs who can’t manage $500 in ready cash for an unexpected expense.
How about those who got jobs in lieu of going to college? They made money instead of piling up huge debt and then often finding no work in their field.
Should we give the non-college crowd a $50,000 check to spend on whatever they want? That would help provide the inflation the Federal Reserve is seeking.
I’m 65 years old and retired, but I’m tempted to go back to school and run up some considerable college debt just so I also can dip my hands into the government till.
And that is the problem. By encouraging bad behavior, the government will get more of it.
Once you start bailing out financial illiterates, how do you stop?
Quick answer, you don’t.
Sam Ross Jr's site 