Donald Trump is wrong.
We don’t need to make America great again.
We need to let Americans fail again.
It all starts by solving our student loan crisis.
According to recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the most recent graduating class, the class of 2015, was the most indebted in American history.
Students who threw caps in celebration last May held, on average, $35,000 in debt.
While that’s only a few thousand dollars more than the average amount of debt held by students
who graduated one year earlier in 2014, it’s over $20,000 more than the average amount of debt held by students who graduated ten years earlier in 2005.
There’s absolutely no reason to expect that the class of 2016 won’t be in even more debt.
The worst part of all, though, is that that there is no escape for the estimated 37 million Americans struggling to pay off their college loans.
Thanks to the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, it’s now illegal for them to get rid of their student loans through bankruptcy, something you can do with pretty much every other kind of debt.
By the way, do you know what the other types of payments are
illegal to discharge through bankruptcy? Child support payments, criminal reparations and unpaid taxes.
That’s right, the U.S. legal code treats college grads the same way it treats tax dodgers.
Pretty ridiculous, right?
You bet.
There is absolutely no reason why student loan debt should be treated differently from any other kind of consumer debt.
The banksters just wanted a little freebee from the government, and in 2005 Congress gave it to them.
And here’s the thing: this isn’t just a problem for all the $20,000-in-debt college grads out there who now have the financial equivalent of a ball and chain strapped to them for the rest of the working lives.
This is a problem for all of us.
