Tag: student loans

#rsrh BTW, the student loan system needs reform.

They’re too damn high and brutally hard to get rid of, on the average; and they’re largely that way because the colleges don’t actually have any skin in the game.  I think that it was Glenn Reynolds who suggested that one answer would be to allow student loans to be discharged by bankruptcy again – and to put the schools that facilitated the debt on the hook for ten percent of the liability.  Even if that’s just going forward (IANAL, but I think doing otherwise runs you into ex post facto territory), you’d still be amazed at how fast colleges get spiraling costs under control.

See?  I’m not totally heartless.  Or, at least, I can direct my heartlessness at Big Academia, which is frankly in need for a little laudable public humiliation and shaming.

#rsrh Student loans / potholes / stimulus suggestion.

This thought just popped into my head as I was responding to an email, and I thought that I’d share it further. Because I’m just a helpful guy that way.  Anyway, here was my suggestion:

Let’s combine a new CCC program with a student loan forgiveness deal: twice minimum wage, but every dime above minimum gets deducted automatically and goes to pay off your student loan principal. I’m sure that we’ve got some potholes that need patching, and getting to watch a twenty-four year old semiotics major visibly realize that it’s all come to this will justify the cost right there.

Discuss.  I can see a couple of potential problems, myself, but understand: this is only one-third, at best, about any sort of economic ‘stimulus*.’  The actual goal here is to take as many members the 23-45 year old ‘over-educated idiot’ demographic of the population as possible and violently rip them out of their insulating – and smothering – cocoon from the real world.

Think of it as… shock therapy.

Moe Lane

*Although frankly if we’re going to throw money away anyway we might as well throw it away at student loans, which need drastic reforms.

SWAT team raids by… US Department of Education.

No.  Seriously.

[UPDATE: Folks, it looks like they just updated the story and changed the URL.  Here you go with the new one.]

Apparently, there was this woman who had skipped out on her student loans, so the feds sent a SWAT team to her house to deliver a search warrant.  That is to say, the SWAT team stormed the house, broke down the door, handcuffed her husband, and stuck around for six hours until it finally was successfully pointed out that not only was the woman not there; she had in point of fact skipped out on her family, too. [UPDATE: The government is now claiming that the Education/SWAT raid wasn’t due to student loan defaults; which doesn’t actually resolve any of the questions below.]

Now, you’re probably asking yourself the following questions:

  • Since when did the Department of Education get to do what sounds awfully like no-knock raids? Answer: I’m not sure.  Perhaps this question should be presented to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (Democrat), who is of course appointed by President Barack Obama (Democrat).
  • Since when does a search warrant for student loan defaults [UPDATE: or fraud, really] permit the same tactics that one would use to secure a crystal meth lab that has a sideline in illegal automatic weapons? Answer: there is no way that I can match the righteously outraged fury of Reason.com on this one, and I will not even try.
  • Wasn’t there some kind of student loan relief program signed into law?  Answer: HAHAHA!  No.  The closest thing to that is that students in the future who paid their loans all along will get forgiven the balance five years early – which means, in twenty years instead of twenty-five.  Yup, I know that the President promised otherwise.  The President makes a lot of promises that he doesn’t keep.  He lies a lot, too*.
  • Should I be paying off my student loans, then?  Answer: YES.  Or else the SWAT teams may come for you.  And, presumably, shoot you if you freak out about it.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Hey, I didn’t vote for him.