Real-world consequences

Oregon Muse in the Ace of Spades Morning Rant:

"Another plank in the progressives' 'give everybody everything for free' platform that came out during last week's dreadful 'debates' was the cancellation of student loan debt. It has gotten so out of hand that the commie scum are saying bah, let's just erase the whole thing. But that's a $1.6 *trillion* dollar erasure. And not one of the commie scum on stage was asked who did they expect to eat the cost? The debt doesn't just magically disappear into thin air because someone passed a law.

There are real-world consequences for this sort of foolishness. This is not to say I'm endorsing the current system. Everyone knows that the student loan racket is a complete scam, and should be fixed. Now, I could make some market-oriented modifications into the student loan programs, but not yet. That's the 'peacetime' conservative solution, whch is no longer applicable as we're fighting for our country and our lives. So we need to take the fight to the enemy, which in this case are the colleges and universities. They have been waging war on normal Americans for decades, and it's about time they paid the price. They have been cranking out sub-standard and bogus scholarship for years now, so they need to be replaced. And by 'replaced' I mean 'nuked from orbit.'

Therefore, the federal government needs to seize the endowments of every institution of higher education in America and liquidate all of the assets and use the cash pay off every student loan once and for all. Yes, I know we'll have a crap ton of unemployed gender studies majors and professors out on the street, but hey, with the borders closed, we'll have a need for gardeners, waiters, busboys, janitors, washroom attendants, laundry workers, and other low-skilled occupations that are actually useful. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing tatted up, pink-haired intersectional feminists of indeterminate gender cleaning gum off of sidewalks and fetching my morning coffee. Hey, it's honest work. And after the academic anti-American commie crap factories are turned into steel mills and coal mines, we can introduce the market reforms to the universities that will eventually replace them, including making it illegal for the government to guarantee student loans. Let the lending institutions assume the risk, not the taxpayers. And if the banks think they can make a profit from lending tens of thousands of dollars to women's studies majors, good for them. But I doubt that they will. Not any more. Loan managers are smart enough to recognize an unacceptable risk when they see one."

Aging with debt

Tyler Durdin reports in Zero Hedge,

According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the federal government is increasingly garnishing Social Security benefits to help cover student loans payments owed by baby boomers. According the Wall Street Journal, a total of $1.1 billion has been garnished since 2001 with $171 million being collected in 2015 alone.