I have to pass this along, just to prove that I'm not entirely crazy. A few days ago I made a list of a number of policy positions the Democrats should take to attract, you know, voters. Among my suggestions: forgiveness of student debt and free college education. Well, I'm not alone at any rate. From an article by Joe Firestone at Naked Capitalism, discussing Elizabeth Warren's somewhat vague pronouncements about what people in this country actually want from their government; Firestone gets specific:
They also want more than a Government that will just help out students, but rather a Government that will forgive student debt, and, going forward, will provide free education for all Americans through College. They have it in Germany. Of course, we can afford it here too. Why isn’t Warren, one of our two supposedly most progressive professional politicians, advocating that.
We forget our past quite readily. There was a time when college educations were free in California, and almost free everywhere else. When I went to law school at UConn, and that, remember, is a graduate level school, tuition was either $300.00 or $600.00 a semester (I can't recall which, but it was one of those numbers). It is now $24,714 in-state and about double that for out of state. I don't need to do the math; inflation doesn't explain the difference (I'm not that old). If you go directly from college to law school chances are you come out with a mortgage on your life of around $300,000.00, assuming your parents can't afford to pay the freight, and the mortgage is only slightly less if you stop at the college degree level. It's hard to pay that kind of mortgage when the odds are good you'll still end up flipping burgers for our sub-poverty minimum wage.
We should recall, as well, the GI Bill, which after WWII offered educational opportunities to returning GIs that most would never have had otherwise. The nation got a solid return for that investment. There's no reason to limit such good social policy to veterans. Everyone has a right to an education.
The party that addresses this issue directly and effectively will win elections. But you can't eat around the edges. Lowering student loan interest rates by a percent or two is all very nice, but it doesn't effectively address the problem and it won't drive those swamped with student loan debt to the polls. This is an issue made for Democrats; the Republicans will never embrace real reform; they'd much rather hand the student loan industry back to the banks and the “servicers”. It's an equal opportunity issue; it affects people of all hues, genders and geographic origins. It doesn't only affect students; pity the parents who are trying to help out their struggling offspring.
The Democrats would be crazy not to take up this issue; but then, the Democrats are arguably only the less crazy party in this nation.
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