The student loan program that King Obama announced this week is typical vote-buying welfare that invites abuse and fraud.
True story. I struck up a conversation with a woman in an airport while waiting for a flight. The economy and the plight of recent college graduates came up. She openly (without a hint of shame) told to me how her daughter plans to take advantage of Sugar-Daddy Obama’s generosity.
Her daughter is majoring in a graphic design program at an expensive CA university and already has $56,000 in student loans.
Realizing that the labor market is depressed, instead of graduating, she is staying in school and living off student loans as long as she can. Which is what millions of others will do too.
She has no incentive whatsoever to limit how much debt she racks-up. She knows that she will not be held accountable to pay it back. Why stop at $56,000? $100,000! $150,000! $200,000! Sky’s the limit when you are spending free money!
After 20 years of repaying not much if any of her student loans, her debt will be forgiven.
How neat! Like free money or something!!
She added insult to injury by telling me that in her daughter’s line of work, many times she will be paid cash or on a 1099/self-employed basis.
So, since her daughter doesn’t plan to show much income tax on her tax returns anyway, the 10% of discretionary income will be practically 0. She plans to pay back almost ZERO!!
I shudder to think that we already have $1 trillion in student loan debt. With a government give-away like this one, we could easily double that to $2 trillion. What happens when the gov’t has to start forgiving 100s of billions in dollars in student loan debt?
Who pays for it? The money was spent. Somebody expected to get paid back. Who loses and/or who pays it if not the student?
That is exactly how the system will be gamed.
Those brainwashed kids standing behind Obama and cheering in front of him have idea how quickly he is destroying their country. So sad.
Easy, cheap, government-guaranteed money caused the housing bubble. Now it has caused a higher education bubble.
This is the vote-buying politicians’ way to keep the bubble inflated and keep the money flowing to one of their best mouth-pieces... liberal professors.
And the politicians won’t stop bribing the people with their own money until we are Greece on steroids.
I am profoundly sad to say that this woman was NOT an Obama-supporting liberal.
That is what happens when a country goes Socialist.
Everyone takes as much as they can, until there is nothing left to take.
As Prof. Alexander Frazer Tytler supposedely said back in the 1800’s (paraphrasing): A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always vote for the candidate promising the most benefits from the treasury with the result that democracy always collpases over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship.
That describes Greece today. It could very well be America soon.
All very true.
I am surprised we didn’t see this coming. We all knew European style socialism was the model American progressives aspire to, and higher education is free in much of Europe. Student loans that will never be paid back is simply the sleazy, backdoor, OBAMA way of doing it. None of that inconvenient debate in Congress, just a simple Executive Order. If he gets away with usurping the legislative function of Congress and they don’t impeach him, the Republic is over and the Dictatorship has arrived.
It would seem to me a person like that would have to live off grid to get away with it. They aren't going to have access to any more credit unless they show supporting income. They aren't going to be able to get a house loan. If you go out and buy a new car with cash, that is reported to the credit reporting agencies and to the feds..