This isn’t a regular post, will continue with my Amazon series later tonight. Just noticed everyone is talking about student loan debt and just want to say I think our education system and career preparedness are badly broken, and we have cajoled a few generations into university educations with the promise of high paying jobs, or the threat of perceived low paying jobs (trades are paid well and are not shameful! fix that toilet, make that money!). 38 (from a list I found on the internet, guaranteed to be accurate) countries offer free college. Educating your population regardless of wealth is, in my opinion, a super good idea. So people took loans here, and forgiveness makes people mad. They didn’t take loans, or they paid their loans, or they didn’t go to college, etc. so why should others get to freeload? People need to be responsible for their own choices. I hear that. I do think we should be responsible for our choices, but also think if those choices are made under false pretenses, or by children, having some clemency and helping unburden them is not wrong. The bigger problem for me is that the root cause isn’t fixed. Forgiving loans fully or partially now is a life preserver thrown from the boat, but people who live at home and have a curfew are still being seduced to jump into the rough waters. I would rather see a system by which schools are reimbursed some amount of earnings in N years following graduation or some other method that doesn’t require tremendous debt that incurs interest and penalties. Or something. Anything more sane than 18 year olds being told they better go to college and get a degree so they can get a good job, so they take out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to do it. I don’t have a snappy finish. I don’t care if loan forgiveness is socialism. We live in a society. We should hope for the common good. Sharing the burden of providing a propsperous society for everyone is the whole point. Fierce individualism may be an American stereotype but we are weaker on our own. We can go further and have more fun along the way if we go together.
Ah, I am inspired. I also shall write a post.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together 🤘🏼
Absolutely! We were pressured to take these loans by an educational system that doesn’t even teach financial literacy.
I’m with you, Lee McKeeman. Another astute analysis and summary of a complicated problem that doesn’t need to be so complicated. Or painful.
All of this! The entire American education system (from primary all the way up to post-secondary) is in dire need of reform, maybe one that starts with a paradigm shift of how we view education/educators/access to quality education. For your reference, I finally found the official link with all of the officially released information so far: https://studentaid.gov/debt-relief-announcement/. I think part 3 as listed in this site will go a long way for a LOT of people, although it doesn't fix all of the aforementioned problems.
There's nothing magic about the age of 18. There is no reason publicly funded education should stop then.