It’s not that simple. The student loan market is utterly unfair against the borrower. The information is one-sided. There is no market competition. The interest rate has been artificially high for years. Once borrowing starts, it is hard to know how much more will be required in order to attain one’s educational goal. You can’t refinance the loan without privatizing it (and losing the program’s protections).
Also, this isn’t about non-repayment. It’s about relief from a situation that borders on usury.
As the party that demands student loan payback calls for more tax cuts for billionaires. Because, as everyone knows, according to Republicans, free stuff is only for people that don’t need it.
Yes. They did. And student loans are unique compared to any other debt out there. It’s more akin to a loan-shark service, than an actual loan. Unlike any other form of debt in the United States, the loan cannot be discharged under bankruptcy. It’s actual written into the federal code that created the system.
If you could change a single aspect of student loan debt, it should be that. Other reasonable changes should include 1) Public service discharge allowances (this needs to be expanded); 2) tuition to attend for-profit universities should not be covered through student loans; and 3) Universities should be required to underwrite a portion (if not all) of the best through their endowments.
Does anyone get the Maynard G. Krebs reference? (The TV show was called, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”.) Krebs, a beatnik played by Bob Denver, would always react with “Work?” anytime someone suggested it.
When I went to college in the 1970s, student loans had low subsidized interest rates, and a four year degree cost about the same as a good new car. Today the rates are almost credit card high and the cost of a four year degree is approaching the cost of a McMansion. Apples and oranges to compare what was with what is!
Next it will be home loans. Buy a house you can’t afford thru FANNIE MAE, and then the Democrats will forgive your loan. Thats not buying votes, that’s just being fair!
The 1950s Beat movement was largely people who had suffered through the great depression and WW2, and were then seeing America becoming obsessed with things like moving to the suburbs, weekend cocktail parties, and other status symbols. They were basically asking “did we go through all that just so we could have weekend cocktail parties in the suburbs?”
The successor hippie movement was similarly questioning America’s obsession with the pursuit of wealth and status, but also saw the folly of a useless and crazy Asian war that our finest young people were being drafted into. They were basically asking “did we go through all that just so we could die in support a clique of Vietnamese gangsters who claim to be anti-communist?”
Finally, there was the anti-globalization movement around the millennium. Like their predecessor movements, they were asking “why have we sent all our good paying jobs to third world countries, where poor people are exploited and paid pennies on the dollar, while the middle class shrinks in the USA?”
None of those movements was about wearing long hair or love beads, as American conservatives then and now would have us believe. True that there are people today who claim something to the effect of “yeah, I was a hippie freak; I had long hair, smoked pot, and liked to f—- hippie chicks”. They weren’t really hippies; they were just jerks.
The real hippie/beat movement was about being what would be termed “woke”. Opening one’s eyes to what is really going on and not meekly accepting the establishment’s narrative.
It is a heck of a lot more difficult to just survive than it was for previous generations. I don’t know how they are saving anything for retirement, and that is going to be a whole new disaster in a few decades. When I graduated from high school in 1962. my husband and I bought a three bedroom two bath house and two pretty good cars within the next three years, and paid for them with a job that he got right out of high school. I didn’t work, few married women did, and those that did so by choice. Now it isn’t a choice for most women, unless they don’t mind living in poverty. When I decided to be a teacher, my first quarter’s tuition was $79, and we rented any books that we needed. Anyone could go to college paying for it with a part time job.Since that time, the productivity of the American worker has skyrocketed, and we are generally acknowledged to be the best in the world. And, we are producing goods that we can’t afford to buy.Most of the value that we are producing is going to the 1%, who use that money to buy politicians who make laws that insure that they keep making most of the money, which they can use to buy more politicians, who will write more laws so they can make more money to buy more politicians and etc etc etc.
If this is Democracy, somewhere the whole thing has gone seriously off the tracks. A young person told me a while back that I couldn’t really understand why their generation was so angry. What I actually don’t understand is why they aren’t rioting in the streets.
There is truth in what you say. Never understood why student loans couldn’t be refinanced. Perhaps a loan to an interpretive dance major carries no collateral. The interest rates charged are way above other loans and almost anyone can get them. It’s a racket. Want to experience real usury, look at what they charge to run a balance on your credit card. Perhaps Congress has a solution? Quit whining and write your representative demanding reforrm.
I guess it’s nice to live in a world where anecdote becomes the reality. Is the argument here that ALL of the 16 million who applied for the relief are shiftless, non-working citizens? Is it the intent to ignore that the amount of relief was limited ($10,000)? Or ignoring that it was only for low and middle income borrowers?
Maynard G. Krebs was a fictional parody. He was just as real as the “music” that the movie industry used for young people to dance to in 50s and 60s movies, played by clean-cut white youths with sequined matching jackets playing guitars that didn’t plug into anything.
Just like this ’toon. Might as well throw in Welfare Queens and those leeches who would die without Medicaid.
Do remember that there is a difference between a university and a trade school. Every time I hear DeSantis talk about them I think he wants to use the GM Institute as a model – where you get a great engineering background but nothing else.
I am always struck by how the right misrepresents the people it wishes to lampoon, all part of the their strawman style attacks.
Most of the people who are drowning in school debt are working. Having a school loan is like having a mortgage, except you don’t have 30 years to pay it off and you don’t have a house as collateral. They may be working 2 jobs. They can’t afford housing, kids or marriage. They are not sitting around looking for a handout with worthless degrees.
No one should be surprised, though. The right has had college kids in their sights since the 60’s when college educated kids started looking around at truth of the American experience and calling it out.
The Beats were a flash in the pan, anti American, anti capitalist, counter culture movement. Their prominent leaders were hypocrites in their actions and even committed murder. They eventually mutated into the hippie culture.
Is this a depiction of Republicans when they realize the huge debt that they played a major part in laying on our children and grandchildren will have to be paid ?
In a new, open (random) AlterNet poll that currently is being taken, as of this date/time the question “Should [former President] Trump be allowed to hold office again?” has registered the following totals …
Yes – (1550) votes
No – (16337) votes
1550 + 16337 = 17887
That means that out of 17887 votes currently cast,
1550 / 17887 = 0.0867 or 8.67% feel that he should, while the remaining 91.33% feel he should not.
theshadowuu 12 months ago
I have to wonder how many people will get the Maynard G. Krebs reference.
Rich Douglas 12 months ago
It’s not that simple. The student loan market is utterly unfair against the borrower. The information is one-sided. There is no market competition. The interest rate has been artificially high for years. Once borrowing starts, it is hard to know how much more will be required in order to attain one’s educational goal. You can’t refinance the loan without privatizing it (and losing the program’s protections).
Also, this isn’t about non-repayment. It’s about relief from a situation that borders on usury.
Zykoic 12 months ago
Family memeber just paid off student loan at age 43. No redoes…
GOGOPOWERANGERS 12 months ago
Yea the person always the problem
Then why even educate yourself when you can a third rate cartoonist like mike lester the jester
GiantShetlandPony 12 months ago
Ridiculous. Met a teacher moonlighting as a bartender. You know, a near hundred thousand dollar loan for an education for a, then $30,000 a year job.
Radish the wordsmith 12 months ago
Ignorant prejudiced unwoke lying right wingers still hate everything about the 1960’s.
wagnerfax 12 months ago
There once was Lester, right-wing jester so sly,
Criticizing student debt forgiveness, oh my,
Biden’s plan for beatniks, he’d malign,
Yet ignored PPP loans, oh how he’d opine,
Fraud and double standards, his blind eye would imply.
WaitingMan 12 months ago
As the party that demands student loan payback calls for more tax cuts for billionaires. Because, as everyone knows, according to Republicans, free stuff is only for people that don’t need it.
My First Premium Member 12 months ago
It was nothing more than an attempt to get votes. Biden knows it, Nancy Pelosi knows it. The only ones that don’t are the dumb posters here.
aristoclesplato9 12 months ago
If this gender studies student is expecting to find a job in his field of study, he’ll be on the street for his life.
baroden Premium Member 12 months ago
Yes. They did. And student loans are unique compared to any other debt out there. It’s more akin to a loan-shark service, than an actual loan. Unlike any other form of debt in the United States, the loan cannot be discharged under bankruptcy. It’s actual written into the federal code that created the system.
If you could change a single aspect of student loan debt, it should be that. Other reasonable changes should include 1) Public service discharge allowances (this needs to be expanded); 2) tuition to attend for-profit universities should not be covered through student loans; and 3) Universities should be required to underwrite a portion (if not all) of the best through their endowments.
Jimvideo 12 months ago
Does anyone get the Maynard G. Krebs reference? (The TV show was called, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”.) Krebs, a beatnik played by Bob Denver, would always react with “Work?” anytime someone suggested it.
SKJAM! Premium Member 12 months ago
The young beatnik means here, “you actually have a decently-paying job that will hire me? Great!”
davidthoms1 12 months ago
When I went to college in the 1970s, student loans had low subsidized interest rates, and a four year degree cost about the same as a good new car. Today the rates are almost credit card high and the cost of a four year degree is approaching the cost of a McMansion. Apples and oranges to compare what was with what is!
mac04416 12 months ago
Next it will be home loans. Buy a house you can’t afford thru FANNIE MAE, and then the Democrats will forgive your loan. Thats not buying votes, that’s just being fair!
NeoconMan 12 months ago
Maynard G. Krebs? Seriously?
Makes sense, I guess. Lester hasn’t learned anything since 1962.
Newenglandah 12 months ago
The 1950s Beat movement was largely people who had suffered through the great depression and WW2, and were then seeing America becoming obsessed with things like moving to the suburbs, weekend cocktail parties, and other status symbols. They were basically asking “did we go through all that just so we could have weekend cocktail parties in the suburbs?”
The successor hippie movement was similarly questioning America’s obsession with the pursuit of wealth and status, but also saw the folly of a useless and crazy Asian war that our finest young people were being drafted into. They were basically asking “did we go through all that just so we could die in support a clique of Vietnamese gangsters who claim to be anti-communist?”
Finally, there was the anti-globalization movement around the millennium. Like their predecessor movements, they were asking “why have we sent all our good paying jobs to third world countries, where poor people are exploited and paid pennies on the dollar, while the middle class shrinks in the USA?”
None of those movements was about wearing long hair or love beads, as American conservatives then and now would have us believe. True that there are people today who claim something to the effect of “yeah, I was a hippie freak; I had long hair, smoked pot, and liked to f—- hippie chicks”. They weren’t really hippies; they were just jerks.
The real hippie/beat movement was about being what would be termed “woke”. Opening one’s eyes to what is really going on and not meekly accepting the establishment’s narrative.
artegal 12 months ago
We have a Maynard G. Krebs sighting!
Alberta Oil Premium Member 12 months ago
Seems republicans in congress don’t know either when they put the nation through the turmoil of debt ceilings.
piper_gilbert 12 months ago
How loans work? The PPP loan forgiveness illustrates how loans work.
Diane Lee Premium Member 12 months ago
If this is Democracy, somewhere the whole thing has gone seriously off the tracks. A young person told me a while back that I couldn’t really understand why their generation was so angry. What I actually don’t understand is why they aren’t rioting in the streets.
Al Fresco 12 months ago
There is truth in what you say. Never understood why student loans couldn’t be refinanced. Perhaps a loan to an interpretive dance major carries no collateral. The interest rates charged are way above other loans and almost anyone can get them. It’s a racket. Want to experience real usury, look at what they charge to run a balance on your credit card. Perhaps Congress has a solution? Quit whining and write your representative demanding reforrm.
Havel 12 months ago
I guess it’s nice to live in a world where anecdote becomes the reality. Is the argument here that ALL of the 16 million who applied for the relief are shiftless, non-working citizens? Is it the intent to ignore that the amount of relief was limited ($10,000)? Or ignoring that it was only for low and middle income borrowers?
DrDon1 12 months ago
Seems Lester likes to make baseless assumptions, followed by baseless conclusions…
IndyW 12 months ago
Do not pay off their loans!!!
I Play One On TV 12 months ago
Maynard G. Krebs was a fictional parody. He was just as real as the “music” that the movie industry used for young people to dance to in 50s and 60s movies, played by clean-cut white youths with sequined matching jackets playing guitars that didn’t plug into anything.
Just like this ’toon. Might as well throw in Welfare Queens and those leeches who would die without Medicaid.
Free Radical 12 months ago
It’s all OK when republican legislators get their massive PPP loans forgiven though
DangerMan 12 months ago
Do remember that there is a difference between a university and a trade school. Every time I hear DeSantis talk about them I think he wants to use the GM Institute as a model – where you get a great engineering background but nothing else.
ChristopherBurns 12 months ago
I am always struck by how the right misrepresents the people it wishes to lampoon, all part of the their strawman style attacks.
Most of the people who are drowning in school debt are working. Having a school loan is like having a mortgage, except you don’t have 30 years to pay it off and you don’t have a house as collateral. They may be working 2 jobs. They can’t afford housing, kids or marriage. They are not sitting around looking for a handout with worthless degrees.
No one should be surprised, though. The right has had college kids in their sights since the 60’s when college educated kids started looking around at truth of the American experience and calling it out.
Can’t have that now, can we.
Zebrastripes 12 months ago
Just ask Betsy DaVoe, the boney b¡tch, about student loans….she was getting bribe money from the loan companies and was under investigation…..
flpmlp 12 months ago
Maybe get a job and don’t go to college?
Kracklin Rosie - “Tolo Dan Nan Galad” Premium Member 12 months ago
The Beats were a flash in the pan, anti American, anti capitalist, counter culture movement. Their prominent leaders were hypocrites in their actions and even committed murder. They eventually mutated into the hippie culture.
Addled Brain 12 months ago
Is this a depiction of Republicans when they realize the huge debt that they played a major part in laying on our children and grandchildren will have to be paid ?
SrTechWriter 12 months ago
Meanwhile, in new actual news:
In a new, open (random) AlterNet poll that currently is being taken, as of this date/time the question “Should [former President] Trump be allowed to hold office again?” has registered the following totals …
Yes – (1550) votes
No – (16337) votes
1550 + 16337 = 17887
That means that out of 17887 votes currently cast,
1550 / 17887 = 0.0867 or 8.67% feel that he should, while the remaining 91.33% feel he should not.
Read it and weep.
https://www.alternet.org/2022poll-2656328721-2656635245-2657039473-2659450392/