Yes. His attitude is poor. What it boils down to is a loan is a business arrangement. I have not defaulted, but I am seriously behind. I have an arrangement with the lender to pay less. They gambled on me and are losing. Do I want a higher paying job, any job? YOu bet, but it hasn’t worked out like that. The choice for me is homelessness and hunger or to repay and even then, I could not fully pay. They understood this going in. They INVESTED in me hoping to make money and lost. I would have been happy to oblige and I still am. That happens in business, though, in this case they will not lose due to my co-signer, the federal government.
I had a friend recently who bought a house years ago as an investment. The market went bad. Ended up under water. He would never recover his investment. He could not do a short sell, so he abandoned the home. He is an accountant with a good income and could pay but it was an investment, a business decision. THis was the agreement between him and the private bank. The business failed. He abandoned that venture. It happens.
Businesses and business ventures fail all the time, one could say more often than not. Many of these loans were essentially made to children, not a smart business move.
By the way, the feds can and do garnish wages and tax returns. His credit is crap, as is mine. As far as credit cards go, that is between a private bank and the card holder. Debtor prisons are not a good idea.