Eliminate Student Loan Debt

On April 6,the Biden administration announced it would extend the pause on repayments of student loan debt, which was put in place during the COVID pandemic, when people lost their jobs and sources of income during the pandemic (https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/biden-harris-administration-extends-student-loan-pause-through-august-31 ) the pause on repayments was supposed to end at the end of January, then it was pushed back to the end of May, now it has been pushed back to the end of August.

The pandemic has shown one of the major problems facing our economy, the distribution of the nation’s wealth going to the highest percentage of the population, the lessening of the nation’s wealth to the lowest percentiles of the population, and the narrowing of the middle class, which young people, who take student loans to apply for college, aspired to. Student grants and loans have been great at bringing working-and low-income kids to college, get an education, and with their knowledge boost the economy and society.

But, thanks to the neo-liberal, “free market” policies we’ve had since Reagan, factories have been closed, and companies have gone to poor, developing nations with low wages and weak labor laws; unions have been weakened due to the closing of such factories, and union busting is a big business; and, with such Supreme Court decision as Citizen’s United, limits on corporate donations to political campaigns have all but disappeared, causing candidates in both parties to abandon working-peoples’ interests and twist the laws to weaken protections on workers and consumers.

It has become more and more difficult for working-class kids to move up the latter in such a situation. Plus, student loan debt is a huge drag on the economy, worth over one trillion dollars. ( https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics)

There is a movement to call for the elimination of student loan debt. that would relieve a source of stress upon young people getting by with their lives. It would make better sense than earlier billion-dollar bailouts of banks in the mortgage crisis on 2008, and the crisis in the savings-and loan -firms in 1989, billion-dollar companies who couldn’t manage their finances- which shows the effectiveness of the glorious “free enterprise system.” Let’s get in on it, for the future of our families and our country.