FB Graphics, Student Debt Crisis
These types of graphics are just driving me insane. Seriously. I feel really bad that millions of people can’t find work, including young people. But to those of you who have this kind of student loan debt, you took out the loans, you signed on the dotted line, you got your education (what was the major again because I don’t see that?), and you have to pay your bills.
If you had done this with a car or a house, you would be without the car and the house.
The country taking over the student loan business and also subsidizing billions without cost controls hasn’t helped the situation either – it was supposed to help, it hasn’t. But some of us didn’t get to go to college. I worked, in some cases, as many as three jobs just to get by and live in the cities I wanted to live in (NYC and Boston). I didn’t complain about “the rich”; I did what I had to do to survive.
I was able to go to Extension School at Harvard for a couple of semesters, trying to earn an associates degree, but I had to stop going because a new job I took that didn’t allow me to get to class and I never finished. This is what happens sometimes to working folks. I had a full-time and a second, part-time job at the time, too.
I feel for young people today, I do, but they are going at this the wrong way because folks shouldn’t be taxed more to pay for everyone’s education and debt, an education that, it turns out, did not help you get a better job or get ahead. See, the problem isn’t that young didn’t get free college – the problem is that they – and many others – were conned by the previous Baby Boomer generation into thinking that higher education was the yellow brick road to prosperity when in many cases, it isn’t. At the same time, the crooks from both parties sent all the low skill, decent wage work overseas; the kind of jobs that our grandfathers had while our grandmother didn’t work; the kind of jobs that lower middle-class folks like my family always did in this country.
So now, we’re all in the same boat – screwed, if you will.
Any young person with a degree, however, received something millions – and billions – of people will never get – a bachelors degree.
But people need to think about what they do before they act: $70K is school debt is really, REALLY huge. If people need to take a third job, they you have to do what you have to do. I had a three jobs in the late 1990s. I work the equivalent of a full-time and two part-time jobs now, in actual hours, to get my job done and keep my job (and, to get to hot, breaking news, since I’m super competitive).
Many, MANY millions of other people also have multiple jobs and have had them for years. Remember Clinton’s line in the mid-1990s? I created 22 million jobs. And people starting saying to him, “Yeah, I have two of them …” or three of them. This has been the norm for many folks for decades; we all do what we have to do, toughen up, buttercup.
There are also a lot of programs and safety nets for people who make such a little amount of money. This year, the person who posted this graphic is required to have an ACA health plan, forced, at gunpoint, by the IRS. At $20K, she will have a lot of subsidy. That problem would appear to be solved for her and she can get the care that she needs.
But I don’t think this generation is exempt from doing what the previous generation had to do. It’s simple: Get a roommate, cut your cellphone bill, yes, get a third job, keep looking for better opportunities. At my previous job, during the Great Recession, we had pay cuts and had to deal with it until things turned around. You have to just keep working at it and not give up.
In 1992, as an example, I earned about $14,000 a year or about $23,000 in 2015 dollars, not much more than the person in this graphic. I also had a girlfriend that I lived with and we shared the cost of everything. She didn’t make much more than I did and we had pretty good lives – we were able to feed ourselves, we had cable, we went out clubbing, etc. Things are a bit more expensive today – housing certainly is – and we didn’t have cellphones or vehicles. But I was in the woman’s shoes and was able to make it work.
Do go and vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, the only candidates who can win that have committed to fixing the lack of jobs problem due to globalization. But please, stop complaining because of your debt. Life is about choices and that’s a choice you made and have to deal with.
I’m in the process of putting together a more in-depth post about this but I can tell you, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 20.6% of the default rate on student debt since 2009 is between $50K and $100K. In other words, she’s not the norm. It’s a high amount of money to walk away from.
Again, everyone can agree that the system has problems – including the over all cost of higher education, the salaries of some who work for the colleges, and the interest rates set, the government making it more expensive by subsidizing the industry, etc. But students with huge amounts of debt agreed to the terms and conditions of the student loans; no one forced these students to take out all this debt.
