I Don't Get This Mindset On Student Loans...

How, all of a sudden, did this become a four alarm fire to people who never cared before?

I get it. It’s over a trillion dollars. I get it. They need to be paid back. I get it. I hear you. But, did you care before someone on tv told you that you should care? Did you think it was a problem before some powdered and bronzed face with carefully coiffed hair told you that you should think it’s a problem?

Chances are you didn’t. In fact, I’m willing to bet you didn’t.

You know how I know? Because, the student loan “problem” has been around a very long time. I’m not talking, 30 or 40 years, but it has been a problem for a good fifteen years or so. So, why is it then, that only in the last nine years, have student loans become such a dire emergency? What was so wrong with the SAVE Plan, that a bunch of Red States decided to do what the people currently in charge of the federal government are screaming shouldn’t be done — and blocked the act in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals?

Here’s what I don’t get. Like, at all. Do you really, honestly, think people who took out these loans thought they’d never have to pay them back? Seriously?

If you say “yes” with any kind of sincerity, I can’t take you seriously as a human. You know better.

Of course people knew they’d have to be paid back. Knowing they’d have to be paid back isn’t the problem. If you’re paying attention and not just waiting to talk, the problem — the whole, entire problem — is TRYING to pay them back. The payments, themselves, are the problems. They’re gigantic. So much so, that the people who want to pay them, can’t pay them. Sure, a lot of the people can — and they have been and they are, and they do. But, for those who were struggling, for whom the income-based plans STILL would have asked too much —

$700 a month just because of the way your discretionary income might shake out? Especially if you’re the only one working to feed a family of six or eight? That’s a budget killer.

—That’s why the SAVE Plan was created. Something else was needed. Something that would allow payments to be more flexible. And, that solution is still needed. Because, if you want the loans to be paid back, you kind of have to make avenues for them to be paid back. Not just stick your fingers in your ears and act like your idea is the only way through.

But, that’s the attitude society has toward people. Every time. Every. Single. Time. This conversation comes up, it never fails that there is at least ten versions of You took out the loans, you pay back the loans comes up. It’s like some kind of magic talisman for the people who don’t want to actually sit down and fix the problem. But, that’s the answer, isn’t it?

You don’t want to fix the problem. You LIKE this problem. You like watching these people suffer because you imagine them all to be blue haired, snooty, college wokesters with degrees in Abstract LGBTQ Interpretive Dance History And Pottery Making, or something you fancy as equally “useless”. So, to you, these are all people you hate, getting what they deserve.

It’s struggle porn and you’re getting off on it. Aren’t you? Come on. Admit it. You’re getting wood just thinking about it right now. A little mahogany? A little hickory-dickory? Sure you are.

You want to teach these kids a lesson, don’t you? They need to learn how hard life can be or that life isn’t fair. Or they need to learn some mean lesson someone, somewhere, made you learn. Now, you think you’re a better person for it. You think it made you stronger. But, did it? Are you a “better person”? Does a better person want other people to suffer? Does a strong person enjoy watching people say, “Hey, I want to do this, but I just need you to understand I can’t do it the way you’re asking me to,” and then replying with, “Oh well. Sucks to be you” ? Those don’t seem like things a better or stronger person would say and do.

I don’t get it. I don’t get the hate and open hostility. I don’t get the joy in watching people who did the thing they were told for years to do, by any means necessary, like they were told, get thrown to the loan sharks. Is that what we want America to be? We preach at our kids to do something; they go do it; then we throw them to the sharks with, “Oh well. Shoulda been a plumber” ?

I don’t get why so many people who didn’t give a rat’s ass for almost a solid decade, suddenly think this is the keystone event. Our country is 30+ TRILLION in debt. That’s 30,000,000,000,000. For reference, you’ve been led to think that not even 1% of that number is what’s going to utterly destroy this country.

Mathematically, 1.6 trillion comes out to a little more than .5%. You’re tearing your hair out and laughing at the suffering of future generations of kids and others who tried to better themselves over what amounts to a half a percent.

Think about this: You are torturing your own children over pennies while you cheer your government for wasting hundred dollar bills.

Don’t try the whole “Them’s muh tax doll hairs” excuse with me. Dude, our tax dollars get wasted on so much stupid stuff. How much have we paid for presidents to go golfing? How much are we paying for Trump’s military parade? How much did we pay to re-fit Qatairforce One? How much taxpayer money did Elon just make off with, so that he could get richer? How much taxpayer money is basically subsidizing Walmart and other corporations? Don’t give me that. It’s not about tax money for you. If it was, there are TONS of things that have been happening for DECADES that you’d be infinitely more upset by. If we eased off foreign aide for a few years and military spending for maybe two or three, we could wipe that entire 1.6 trillion off the books for every person in this country. So why don’t we? What stops us?

I paid mine! They should, too!

Okay. Fine. Then, why shouldn’t we make a payment plan that lets them pay what they can realistically afford, that isn’t ridiculous, so that we recoup some money while having borrowers still honor their commitment? Hmmm. Wait. That sounds awfully familiar. I think there was a plan like that, that someone tried to do a couple years ago…called it something like “SAVE” or something.

That’s unconstitutional! The Higher Education Act doesn’t give Biden the right to just make that plan up!

Alright. Look. You don’t want to do the simple thing and just wipe it clean — because it makes you jealous and you feel like someone’s getting something you’re not. Okay. Fine. We offered a compromise that lets the borrowers come in at an angle they can work with, while giving you the satisfaction that they aren’t getting away with not paying anything — and you’re still not satisfied. So, what gives?

What is it ? No. Really. What’s your deal ?

Come on. Don’t bullshit me.

Do you just hate those people? Is it because you think they’re liberals now ? Did they do something or say something that you hate ? Do they think something you don’t like? Do you associate them with a group or groups of people that you don’t like ?

What is it that makes you suddenly get so intensely passionate about a topic that no one, except borrowers and lenders and the government, cared about for YEARS; that, when multiple solutions are presented for, none suit you enough because they don’t punish the borrowers enough to please you ?

And, don’t tell me it’s the national debt, pal o’ mine. That’s been out of control since Bush II wrecked it with his little foray into the Middle East. If it was the national debt, you’ve got tons more there to be miffed about, that the piddly sum that makes up what college kids and former college kids owe. So, it’s not about the size of the debt. And, if it was, what’s your position on the “Big, Beautiful, Bill”? I hear it adds about four trillion to the debt. You down with that?

Help me understand because, honestly, all I keep coming up with is that it’s common, garden variety covetousness. I’d like to be wrong. I’d like to think there’s some good reason that makes better sense than “We’ve identified this problem. Here are multiple solutions for everyone.” Some reason that leads so many of you to be so obtuse any time this topic is presented. Surely there has to be something and it can’t just be a more decorative version of “I suffered. So, they should too.” Can it? Surely not.