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Thursday, February 05, 2009

MundiMuster! Stimulate the Economy: Forgive Student Loans

Sign the Petition
Over the past twenty years, student loan debt in the United States has more than doubled. We are now graduating students with a marvelous skill set as well as a mountain of debt. If we were to take our tax dollars and invest them in paying off student loan debt in this country, we would be investing in our future and in ourselves. Many individuals and families pay more than a third of their monthly income to student loan debt. If we free up this earned income by paying off debt, our educated masses in this country could create new businesses, invest in homes, and become a foundation for the new economy. This will have a much deeper positive impact on all Americans than handing bailouts to corporations who have no impetus to invest in this country.

Stop punishing the education America needs to flourish.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How is this different from universal education? Might as well just advocate for that.

But, I see one potential problem with this approach (however well-intentioned it is). As stated, it doesn't differentiate between public and private school debt, the latter of which is much more expensive. If people knew the government would pay off their college loan debt -- indeed, not just to state supported schools, but as a subsidy to attend private schools -- they would flock in greater numbers to the private (and "better") universities.

It would be a mechanism for increasingly subsidizing private schools at the further decline of public ones, and it would be inefficient. Why should the public pay for someone's $20,000 / year education when that person can get a good education for $6,000 / year?

I suppose this only works if it is a one-time deal (like the stimulus package(s), supposedly). Anyone who currently has student loan debt will have it paid for. At a time when job prospects are historically low, that would help a lot of recent graduates.

A more longterm plan would have to be better structured.

Dale Carrico said...

Agree. The angels are in the details. But now's the right time to megaphone the broad brushstrokes, seems to me.

Anonymous said...

Or how about this:

Give students $10,000 to attend the Singularity Institute. God knows there's no better investment than one that benefits the futures of the rich. I mean, hell, they have what, a 0% chance of any of their dreams panning out as is? Can you really blame them for trying to push that up to 0.000....001%?

Bring on the Robot Gods and Nanofog! It's not like there are any real problems right now in the world anyway.

Dale Carrico said...

As far as the Robot Cultists go, it would be cheaper just for everybody to ignore them when they're around, and maybe they'll think they've all already spontaneously uploaded.