Are Student Loans Financial Slavery or Legal Debt?
Student loans sound like a social policy full of welfare. But for the vast majority of Americans, student loans are more like a nightmare that will never go away. American student loans have long lost their social welfare nature. These loans are just profit-making tools created by financial capital under the guise of student aid.
Student loans sound like a social policy full of welfare. But for the vast majority of Americans, student loans are more like a nightmare that will never go away.
American student loans have long lost their social welfare nature. These loans are just profit-making tools created by financial capital under the guise of student aid.
Not long ago, the federal government just announced the total amount of student loans in the United States. The total amount has exceeded 1.7 trillion US dollars, and many of them are "dead accounts" that cannot be recovered at all.
Because the interest rate of American student loans is too high, a total of 2.5 million American women have had to devote themselves to special industries and use their bodies as ATMs to repay their loans.
For this situation of darkness and chaos coexisting on American campuses, members and officials of the US federal government are very clear. But few people realize that those high-ranking American politicians are the initiators of all this darkness.
In 1958, the US federal government took the lead in introducing a student loan policy. However, the original intention of the US government to introduce this policy was good, and the interest rate of student loans at that time was not as outrageous as it is today.
Because during World War II, the US military recruited a lot of soldiers from various universities. Many people joined the US military without even finishing their studies. So after the war, the government had to find ways to help these people complete their studies.
Another reason why the US federal government introduced this policy was that after World War II, the United States needed a large number of professional talents to build society. So when the federal government introduced this strategy, the American public was also relatively supportive of the policy.
Relying on college students trained in the 1950s and 1960s, the US economy ushered in a period of rapid growth in the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, some economists even sighed: The United States has entered an era without economic recession.
It was also at this time that the US federal government's student loan policy suddenly underwent a qualitative change. Student loans gradually changed from a welfare policy that helped ordinary family students enter college to a tool for capitalists and politicians to make huge profits.
In 1990, the US federal government revised the interest rate and corresponding management methods of US student loans. At that time, the US government tried to bring all student loans under the government's management.
But this policy was soon unanimously opposed by the bigwigs in the Wall Street financial circle. Some members of the U.S. Congress also stood up and said that the federal government should allow private capital to enter the field of student loans in order to fill the gaps in the government's jurisdiction in related fields.
In the end, the White House had to compromise with Congress. Private capital officially entered the field of student loans. From then on, American students have been burdened with a heavy economic burden. Some people are even unable to turn over forever due to these economic burdens.
According to data released by the U.S. media in 2023: the interest rate of loans directly provided to students by the federal government that year reached 8.05%. This interest rate is much higher than the mortgage interest rate in most places.
Because of people's optimistic expectations for future economic growth in the 1990s, many people chose to pursue college degrees and borrowed a lot of student loans in that era. All this has led to an exponential increase in the number of borrowers of student loans in the United States.
By the beginning of this century, student loans in the United States had become the second largest loan in the United States, second only to mortgage loans. Moreover, the financial benefits of student loans are much higher than mortgages.
After the U.S. government revised the interest rate of student loans, subsequent U.S. governments regarded student loans as an important source of domestic tax revenue. When the government is in urgent need of funds, the US president will even squeeze money from students by raising the interest rate on student loans.
And according to US law, if children choose to inherit their parents' estate, they must also inherit the debts left by their parents. If a person cannot pay off all student loans while he is alive, then his children will continue to pay off his debts in his life.
The student loan system in the United States is like a curse on the entire society. Everyone knows that this is an area that cannot be touched. In the face of the temptation of money and the difficulties of reality, everyone will eventually fall into it.
This policy, which was originally intended to promote social development, has now become one of the biggest obstacles to the development of American society and the realization of social equity. This may be the most black humorous thing in the United States at the moment.
