Like many, I had mixed feelings about eliminating or reducing student loan debt. One reason I hesitated was that while I paid my loans and later helped my children pay their loans, I did have friends who were having a great time with their money and not paying their loans. I knew this was irresponsible and it made me angry, but I didn't have control over that. So now, if they are let off the hook for the loans they didn't pay, it seems to support their irresponsible behavior. Also, when we look at the country's statistics, many people did not have a chance to go to college, and for those people, paying off the loans of those fortunate enough to attend higher education, may seem frivilous, but if you look at the situation with greater scrutiny, you will find that greatly reducing or paying off students' loans makes financial sense for all of us.
Politicians that I highly regard are in favor of eliminating student loans so I took a deeper look at the problem, and that deeper look clearly demonstrted to me that eliminating and/or reducing student loan debt is good for all of us. This is true for the following reasons:
- When you do the math, you'll see that eliminating student loan debt will lift all of us up--it makes good economic sense. We bailed out the big, wealthy banks of their excessive debt due to their irresponsibility (and possible criminal behavior)--did those rich banks deserve it? We did it to boost the economy. If we can bail out rich banks who acted without responsibility, we can bail out those suffering from the heavy weight of student loan debt.
- Many students were tricked or fooled by errant higher ed behavior--many were allowed to take on excessive debt and, in return, did not earn the kind of education that would result in a position that allowed them to pay off that debt. Many institutions benefitted from those loans and gave those students little in return. And many of the students who were tricked and fooled by these loans are students who did not have the financial or knowledge support to make a better choice. We need to free those individuals from the effects of this self-serving, greedy trickery.
- To eliminate and or greatly reduce student loan debt makes financial sense. Do the math, and you will see that this is true.