Student Loan Bailout to Save Our Economy
With all the talk about Bank Bailouts, Credit Card Bailouts and Big Corporation Bailouts, there is one section of our country that is curiously being overlooked when it comes to desperately needing a bailout, Student Loans.
I recently came across this Facebook Group Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy and agree with it 100%, this quote pretty much sums it all up:
“There is a lot of sympathy for homeowners who were victims of predatory lending; at least a mortgagee can file bankruptcy.
Many University students were only eighteen years of age when they signed on for enormous debt from which they can never recover. Where is their protection from predatory lenders?”
In our county higher education is prized and pounded into our head from Kindergarten. We teach our children that without a college education they will have to struggle to survive and will never live a wealthy, successful or happy life.
But what they never mention, until after the fact is how much a college education actually costs and that there is no guarantee that a college degree will grant you a high paying salary to allow you to live the American dream.
Speaking from experience, I can honestly say that my college education; apart from giving me a Bachelors Degree, has also thrown me into debt, lowered my credit score, has made it impossible to establish any new credit and has made living a happy life almost impossible. Even though I have 2 jobs and literally 75% of my total monthly income goes to payback student loans, I am getting taxed on these and still giving all the earned wages back to the Government; which is basically paying them twice, all while I still have to pay my other bills and find a way to survive.
So now myself, like many other American’s must be asking why is our United States Government throwing billions of tax payer dollars at Big Corporations who are directly responsible for their own financial crisis and ripping off the citizens of our country, but no one is willing to help college graduates who are only doing what the leaders of our country have asked of them to do, get a higher education?
Student Loan Bailout
I, like many others, feel that if there was a Student Loan Bailout, then our economy would improve faster then any other bailout proposal so far.
The lending companies would get all their money back; the money that goes to paying student loans would be saved in our banks or spent back into the economy, people would be able to pay their credit card bills, car payments, mortgage payments; people would be able to have extra money to invest in the stock market, small business or housing and rather quickly our recession would be on it’s way to being turned around.
Even if you do not owe any student loans, I ask that you join Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy because this is something that we all will benefit from.
Why should the big corporation multi-millionaires who are responisble for our recession be the only ones who get assistence when the hardworking American people are the ones stuck with the bill?
I must agree that being in “debt” feels like bondage, however I disagree that because you have a high paying salary you are living the “American Dream”. Based on my experience, I believe our personal reasons for continuing to be in debt and being enslaved to our debt(s) are a result of our lack of being a good steward of what we already earn, own and have.
For me, I have a mortgage, a car payment, some credit card debt, a daughter and wife to support. Fortunately for me, my father paid for my college tuition and so I’m not facing your situation of having to pay back a school loan, however my wife and I are still currently paying off her MBA degree from back in 2003. I consider our financial situation as middle class, we’re by no means in the 40%-45% tax bracket, but we make enough to meet our monthly needs with plenty left over for entertainment and yearly vacations.
Despite not having the high paying salary and being in debt, I still consider myself and my family living the American Dream – that is (from a financial perspective), even though we do owe money to many financial institutions we have a sense of peace and security for the future through our understanding of “good stewardship”. It’s not about how much you make, but rather what you do with what you do make – as a result of our freedom of choice.
In the context of the average American’s financial situation, I agree that there are unscrupulous individuals and companies in both industries who are greedy and are out to take advantage of people. I also agree that getting a college degree and owning a home are part of the “American Dream”. However, I don’t think cancelling student loan debt will stimulate the economy.
I think we as Americans have lost the understanding and practice of what it means to be a “good steward” – as dictionary.com defines “Stewardship” as a person who manages another’s property or financial affairs; one who administers anything as the agent of another or others.” To think that the money we earn and the material possessions we have are our own – we are greatly and gravely mistaken. Our lives and our material wealth are merely on loan.
Instead of seeking a physical fix , I believe we need to seek a renewing of our attitudes toward money and wealth. Through this revival, I truly believe that we as a nation can recover, restore and relive the “American Dream”.
As the American writer and historian James Truslow Adams wrote in his 1931 book “The Epic of America”. The American Dream is “… that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”