Posted on 03/16/2020 7:09:58 AM PDT by Kaslin
“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained,” Winston Churchill said in 1948 on the birth of Prince Charles. Marriage and parenthood, in other words, are the bedrock of a healthy and flourishing society, but student debt has prevented young Americans from starting families.
Millions of college students start their adult lives with tens of thousands of dollars—sometimes more—in debt weighing them down. The mounting pressure of debt looms large over their lives like a specter, affecting monumental life decisions, particularly marriage. Recent studies show that student debt has them canceling or putting off this joyous milestone.
Unlike previous generations, marriage has become out of reach for young Americans. The U.S. Census Bureau said that “In prior generations, young adults were expected to have finished school, found a job, and set up their own household during their 20s — most often with their spouse and with a child soon to follow.” But this isn’t the case anymore for a majority of the millennial and younger populations.
Rather, they finish school with debt and can find a job—although in many cases not in the field they studied and earning far less than they expected—but are unable to reach the next building blocks. The Chicago Tribune reported that while about 85 percent of women 25 to 29 had married in 1976, their marriage rate dropped to 46 percent in 2014; and for men 25 to 29, it plunged from 75 percent to 32 percent. One in three young Americans are now delaying marriage due to debt. This is unprecedented.
The consequences of the steep decline in marriage has trickled down to other aspects of their lives. As marriage gets delayed, so does homeownership—another crucial cultural milestone. For most millennials, it won’t be until they are at least in their 40s before they can own a home. And this isn’t because they particularly love renting: nearly 90 percent of millennials want to own a home, but almost 70 percent have said that they can’t afford it. They've had to delay it due to student debt, which has put the American Dream on hold for our children.
The decades-long ideal of a cul-de-sac home with a white picket fence in a friendly neighborhood is replaced with the grey, concrete slabs of a brutish apartment building, in which the constant flow of new tenants makes it impossible to build the bonds of a lasting community. As social cohesion plummets, the cumulative result is modern history’s unhappiest generation, which is unable to enjoy the important life milestones of their parents’ generations.
But there’s a way we can help young Americans without resorting to the unfeasible socialist policies of Bernie Sanders, which includes erasing $1.6 trillion in student debt with higher taxes. Companies—if they want—should be able to contribute tax-free dollars to help pay down the student debt of their employees (a benefit that could also help them attract top talent).
While this isn’t possible currently, there is a bill in Congress that would make it a reality. The Employer Participation in Repayment Act (S.460) would let businesses pay down their workers’ student debt by allowing them to contribute $5,250 annually tax-free. Employers can already pay that tax-free amount towards the tuition payments of student workers, but not towards their debt after they have graduated. This bill would bridge the gap between student tuition and debt. Under the tax system, the two would finally be treated the same.
This common-sense solution has endorsements from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership team, including Senators John Thune and Roy Blunt, as well as 33 other conservative senators. More support, however, is needed for the Employer Participation in Repayment Act to get past Congress.
Some senators, who have family formation as a priority, could provide the pivotal votes for the bill. Senator Marco Rubio, for example, wrote that “marriage now resembles a luxury good” and is working to remove the financial barriers to marriage. Of course, one way to make it easier is by allowing employers to help their workers pay off their student debt. With his endorsement, he would join the 16 members of the House from Florida who have co-sponsored the bill, which would particularly benefit the state’s large military and senior communities who shoulder a sizable share of the country's total student debt.
Republicans can move the needle on this issue and can help young Americans afford the same milestones in life that we cherish today.
Debt as money is a failure, but it’s a failure that takes a long time to play out, slowly at first, then accelerating as the “winners” become fewer and the “losers” multiply.
The solution, as for everything else, is Biblical. If you don’t know what that means, you need some more time with the Good Book.
The Responsible Solution to the Student Debt Crisis ?
Simple.
Refuse to loan any money to students unless they attand a Constitutionally vetted , genuine post secondary institution of education THAT DOES NOT INDOCTRINATE STUDENTS INTO SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM, and who deny freedom of speech, freedom of religion,freedom to carry arms and freedom of assembly.
Put Hillsdale College in charge of vetting the acceptable list and recommending specific changes to those colleges and universties that do not make the list.
That will solve the student loan problem.
Yeah I’ll pass but thanks for being too lazy to tell us :)
by the way that statement sounds incredibly like pride and if you read the Bible so much you’ll know it’s a sin
I call shenanigans.
The likely truth behind why people aren’t starting families is that they value other things more (like having the latest iPhone), have been indoctrinated into a Left wing PC garbage, are looking down at their phones rather than towards their futures, have turned their backs on the knowledge of the Lord (a big one, leading to Romans 1:18-32) and things like that there.
Acquiring large debts to get “educated” is part and parcel of never having been educated to understand the value of delayed gratification and thrift to begin with. How many of these people lived on the cheap in college even then?
The sensible response is to get the federal government out of student loans and university funding, end student loans and require repayment.
These days you you probably should run a credit check on your love interest before taking things to the next step.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nearly-40-of-americans-want-to-know-your-credit-score-before-dating-2016-05-03
um.. maybe stop taking out loans that you cant afford to pay off?
naaa that’s crazy talk!
everyone HAS TO go to an ivy league school!!!
ROFL
freaking go to your local technical college for a few hundred bucks! STOP paying for granite countertops in the dormrooms for a degree in womens studies that you CANT afford!
I call it the “Big Education” cycle.
1) make unlimited loans available to students
2) schools raise prices to suck up available funding
3) schools raise salaries of staff
4) staff contribute to Democrats
and repeat
I’m not sure I agree. There are other factors in our culture which discourage people from getting married nowadays. There are quite a few people here on Free Republic who discourage young men from marriage, and this subject comes us without being tied in with student loans.
I’m afraid with present events, any “sensible” solution is long past.
One paying twice what they are worth perhaps, but they can find work if they choose, they don't, easy living in the basement.
Make the people who induced these former students to assume such a looming debt, agree to co-sign for these loans when they are made, or renewed. Universities and colleges everywhere have endowment funds, some of them HUGE. The amount needed for payment of the fees, tuition and related costs of schooling need not be loaned out by the college or university directly, but put up as collateral for the loan when it is first initiated. Then, the institutions of higher learning have a VERY vested interest in assuring that applicants will be prepared for those “high-paying” jobs, and will be readily hired upon graduation. Diploma mills, churning out essentially useless degrees, would quickly revise their curriculum to reflect much more of what the job market demands, or learn to rely on those who want vanity degrees to find means other than student loans to pay for those vanities.
For men, I'd say its as much prospective debt as pre-existing debt. Men get such a bad deal in divorce that many are gun-shy.
aw hell!
many people began working with tons of student debt
and they, we turned out just FINE
and we were, are SUPER THANKFUL the banks trusted us with the money
beginning work with student debt is not a tragedy, its a wonderful blessing to have been able to reach that great point in life ... and I feel zero concern about the graduates who wisely borrowed to study employable skills like nursing, medicine, engineering, many science fields, and so forth. They will have no trouble repaying. I also have zero compassion really for the Ancient Tanzanian Queer Gender Bending Studies majors who borrowed and borrowed for useless degrees that only cause employers to laugh. How foolish can people be, anyway? Actually, I do feel for them but they should not expect the working folks to pay for their folly, it would be so incredibly unfair
My daughter and her husband paid off $60,000 in student loans in 3 years. They did it by using their education to get good jobs and then really tightened the belt to get it paid off. Ate lots of beans and rice, no cable TV, etc.
They will really be pissed if the Gov. forgives loans.
How about having the colleges eat the student debt of all students who aren't gainfully employed within six months of graduation? Take the money out of faculty and administrators' salaries and pensions.
I could fix the student loan problem in two easy moves. take the government out of the loan business and allow students to settle debt through bankruptcy.
Virtually every problem mentioned is the result of bad decision making, especially in selecting a major or going to college at all. The largest single educational facility in the US is the US military.
There are lots of jobs in the military that extend to the private sector. Forgiving debt simply reinforces what these Participation Trophy kids think: “Somebody owes me”. Bullcrap. We don’t owe you a thing, but you owes us $XX dollars, so quit waiting for some liberal to bail you out, own up to a bad decision, and start paying it back. If you can’t find a job, leave your parents home and join the military and train for something that’s in demand in the private sector.
It’s not a complete solution but I think this would help.
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