Ready for Student Loan Revolt!

Students burn your loan contracts!

That's the suggestion from James Howard Kunslter: "This idea should catch on as the election season heats up. Like the anti-war youth of August, 1968, burning their draft cards in the streets of Chicago, the Millennials should flock to Charlotte and Tampa this summer and fill the parking lots (there are no streets in these places) with the smoke of their burning loan contracts - and then proceed with the loud repudiation of party politics in its two current useless, lying, craven, feckless factions." (Read the entire essay below.)

It would do this country good if enough passion for genuine change could arise and manifest itself in that kind of revolt -- especially from young Americans looking to create a better future for themselves. Unfortunately, I suspect that our consumer culture and the corruption of our political system has bred all the real gumption out of not only the young, but most of us generally.

The student loan crisis is real, but the dysfunction of the federal government, especially in the Congress means that nothing will happen to ease debtors out of their predicament. A rather timid piece of legislation has been introduced, the 'Student Loan Forgiveness Act' ... but it will go nowhere with the current reactionary extremists dominating the U.S. House of Representatives or with the obstructionist minority in the U.S. Senate.

Besides a revolt against the elite one percent that has put the college 'educated' into virtual indentured servitude with oppressive student loan debt, what we actually need is a complete change in the 'higher education' paradigm. The present four year degree regimen spends about third of its time doing remedial work that should have been accomplished in high school, then it makes students take classes unrelated to the chosen field of interest.

Until we get out of the mind set from the last century that 'higher education' can only be achieved in one way, we are not going to be generating the economic innovators and producers for the rest of this century. Technical schools, apprenticeships, certification programs, life/work experience -- not the old formulaic 'four year degree' -- are where the future lies.

Here are links to several informative articles ... some the horror stories of what the current student loan system is doing to our fellow Americans.

Learn What the Student Loan Forgiveness Act Could Mean for You | Isaac Bowers/Equal Justice Works/U.S. News

Obama Relies on Debt Collectors Profiting From Student Loan Woe | Bloomberg.com

Colleges Withhold Transcripts From Grads in Loan Default | Dave Lindorff/The Nation

Strange Jubilee | James Howard Kunstler

Is there a Baby Boomer so dim in this land of rackets and swindles who thinks that he or she will escape the wrath of the Millennials rising? The developing story is so obvious that only an academic economist could fail to notice. Here's how it will go: some months from now, as the financial unwind worsens, and the mirage of gainful employment shimmers away to nothing, and the technocrats of Europe meet nervously by some Swiss lakeside (and are seen glumly shaking their heads), and Romney and Obama try to out-do each other peddling miracle cures for the tanking national self-esteem - a dangerous meme will go forth across the internet, and this meme will say: Millennials, renounce your college loans and set yourselves free!

And then something truly marvelous will happen. They will at once disempower the swindling generation of their fathers, teachers, loan officers, and overlords and quite possibly bring on, at long last, the epochal collision of pervasive American control fraud with the hard hand of reality.

I think this will happen, and I would venture even to set the meme loose here and now and watch it go viral. The college loan racket has been an even more cynical enterprise than the mortgage racket was because so many people who ought to have known better, people of supposed intelligence such as college deans, cabinet secretaries, and think-tank Yodas, all colluded to support the false promise that the gigantic cargo cult of higher ed would keep churning out fresh careers forever - when the truth was that the entire groaning vessel of hopes and dreams was already under water and sinking into the eternal darkness.

And is there a Millennial so dim who believes that the promised package of lifetime goodies once called "a job with benefits" waits like a liveried servant to conduct them without friction through the ceremonies of career and family according to premises and promises of an obsolete American Dream? Dreams do die hard. As dreams go it was a pretty good one while it lasted, but like all dreams, it has vanished in the mists of a new morning leaving the dreamers half-sick, anxious, and drained. They have nothing to lose but their fears of the re-po man and the simulated dudgeon of telephone robot debt-collectors.

This idea should catch on as the election season heats up. Like the anti-war youth of August, 1968, burning their draft cards in the streets of Chicago, the Millennials should flock to Charlotte and Tampa this summer and fill the parking lots (there are no streets in these places) with the smoke of their burning loan contracts - and then proceed with the loud repudiation of party politics in its two current useless, lying, craven, feckless factions. The effrontery of these rogues, promising a hundred years of shale gas, and jobs, jobs, jobs, and a personal relationship with Jesus! Send them packing into the bowels of history, then go home and make it work locally, where it will have to happen in any case because the arc of events has a velocity of its own now and that is our certain destination.

The colleges themselves will, of course, implode shortly, along with everything else currently organized on the super-gigantic scale. They are no more prepared for what is about to happen to them than the chiselers in government, banking, medicine, and global corporate enterprise. We will wonder in retrospect how they ever managed to winkle 50-grand a year for their absurd promises, and how we permitted young people with undeveloped powers of judgment to sign their financial lives away on terms even more stringent than their parents' mortgages. When the universities do go down, tossing their employees overboard in the process, it will be interesting to see the former faculty chairpersons and distinguished professors of econometric modeling learn how to plant kale and care for chickens side-by-side with their formerly-indentured students. I can imagine a period of turmoil in America even harsher than, say, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China where officials, professors, and authorities of all kinds were paraded through the angry mobs wearing dunce caps. Weird things happen history.

The college loan money will not be paid back anyway, so Millennial youth ought to seize the golden opportunity to make the deliberate point that the years of swindling are officially over now. This strange jubilee could, and should, change everything.

Could $1 Trillion Student Loan Debt Derail U.S. Recovery? | CBS News

Comments

[Lyman]

Well, since the immigration amnesty programs of the past have worked so well, I'm sure student debt amnesty will work flawlessly! So, if you pay your debt, thanks, but now you need to also pay off someone else's too? Biggest student debt scofflaws are doctors and lawyers, ones who took the largest loan amounts, and theoretically should be most able to pay; should they be let off the hook? Maybe, we shouldn't guarantee student loans for everyone to go take classes that are won't result in earnings sufficient to pay them off. If they all had to take, and pass, STEM curriculum courses at accredited colleges, maybe the U.S. could regain some competitiveness.

Don't pay your mortgage - government bailout,
Don't pay your student loans - government bailout,
Have too many kids - AFDC, welfare, tax credits, government bailout
and on, and on....

[Dave Chandler]

I have some ideas for perhaps what ought to be done to ease this student loan/tuition cost crisis.

First, loans from the federal government ought to have an interest rate no higher than the cost to administer and process the loans ... one percent should be enough. The goal should be to educate young people, not turn a 'profit' for the central government.

Second, perhaps there ought to be a cap on how much can be borrowed per degree, in other words so much per year for four year degree. If colleges know that money from students is limited, maybe they will work harder to keep tuition and costs close to that cap so they can attract students.

Third, and one of my big contentions, is that too many kids are going to college. There is a near mania in this country right now pressuring 'every high school graduate' to get a college degree. The truth is that most people don't need a bachelor's degree and most jobs in this country still don't require that level of education. Frankly, I'd like to see some four year colleges and university closed; I'd like to see a redirection towards meaningful two-year 'associate degrees' and more public apprenticeship and certification programs.

For those already stuck in the student debt tar pit I am not for a total student debt forgiveness or pay-off. However, I would like to see all government student loans retroactively made one percent interest loans; and I would like to see student debt subject to the same laws and regulations as all other non-secured debt in this country.

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[URL]

But really, it is all about responsibility. If you have borrowed money for education, you need to pay it at a certain time and interest rate. How can the government make better use of the money they loaned you anyway? Some countries do not have this opportunity so you must be thankful really.

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