College Debt Slavery

As I've noted before, I was lucky in that I did not need to borrow for college or graduate school. I couldn't find a job after I was finished in 1993, but it did not really matter. For young adults attending college now, the story is quite different. They have been screwed hard. College has become so unaffordable that over 90% of students had to take on some form of debt to graduate. Unlike most other forms of debt, they cannot default as the government has created a system of usury that makes those who attend college a debt slave. College is not worth attending anymore unless one can pay these debts in a reasonable amount of time after leaving school. See A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College via Colleges as Merchants of Debt, which points out:

I’ve never understood when (once in a while) someone (clearly young) shows up in comments and rails against Social Security and Medicare because of the burden it imposes on him. Now I get it. The student debt issue is deepening social fractures. If young people are asked to stand on their own, and given only unpalatable choices (forego a college degree, the entrance ticket to middle class life, or accept debt slavery at a tender age), no wonder they adopt a “devil take the hindmost” attitude. I hope some of these people who so cavalierly argue for loading up the next generation with debt realize that the young may not want to take care of them either, and they are far more at risk. The outcome of cutting social safety nets to the elderly ultimately means that old people will die faster.

Such is the price in shafting the young.