I was sorry to see that a recent Rasmussen poll which reported that 2/3’s of Americans oppose full forgiveness for student loans (“66% Oppose Forgiveness of Student Loans“). That contrasts sharply with Obama’s announcement limiting loan repayment to around 10% of income for 20 years before forgiveness (President to Ease Student Loan Burden for Low-Income Graduates“).
Or maybe the contrast only suggests Obama’s tedious sense of caution… Either way, I think we need to do a lot more work in putting student debt into the context of the ongoing destruction of both class mobility in general and the middle class standard of living in particular. It’s part of the same conservative economic world that brought us the housing crash, the European debt crisis, and the seemingly unending recession.
The Reagan ideology said that the market could do no wrong and wildly privatized and deregulated anything and everything. The result was inevitably the same: a radical concentration of power and resources into the hands of a tiny majority. The ruling class succeed beyond its wildest dreams. The problem, of course, is that they are killing the goose that laid this golden egg. It’s time to start to de-concentrate power and resources.
