Monday, February 13, 2017

Haunted to the End by Student Debts

You may not know this, but if you have ever defaulted on a student loan, the government will take it out of your Social Security payments. Today's awful article in the Times is about retired people whose SS checks are being garnished for old student loans, pushing their incomes below the poverty line.
A report issued last month by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shows that the number of Americans aged 60 and older with student loan debt has grown fourfold over the last decade, to 2.8 million in 2015 from about 700,000 in 2005. The average amount owed by these borrowers has nearly doubled, to $23,500.

Some older borrowers are carrying their own education loans, but most fell into debt helping their children or grandchildren, either by borrowing directly or co-signing loans.
Asking people to finance their educations with loans is just a slow-rolling social disaster, and we need a new system.

2 comments:

G. Verloren said...

Funny how this happens, but at the same time you'd never in your wildest dreams see a Wallstreet banker who went bankrupt be forced to make up the difference in extra taxes.

The poor get poorer and the rich get richer, the generous get punished and the selfish get rewarded. Capitalism at work, everything going according to plan. After all, the absolute bedrock foundational notion of our entire economic theory is that more wealth you possess, the more wealth you can extract from everyone else.

leif said...

a corollary to the golden rule... those with the gold make the rules.