Student Loan Justice Exposed

Here is the link to a piece in the NY Times about Alan Collinge and his PAC Student Loan Justice. Please take the time to read it, and feel free to leave your comments here regarding how you feel about the article and about Alan Collinge and Student Loan Justice.

I’ll get things started with a few comments I just received from a reader of my blog. I have to say, his comments are right on target in my opinion. I was beginning to think I was the only one who felt this way, but I am pleased to see that there are other people who hold a similar view of Alan Collinge and his group.

Thank You very much to whoever left these comments. Please keep them coming.

First, you don’t have to be a a Nobel laureate in Econ to understand that the bankruptcy code doesn’t cover your irresponsibility; David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director, took care of that. It has been well known ever since that the Bankruptcy Code doesn’t cover the discharge of student debt. And really, let’s be honest—how much advance research did you do before you happily signed on the dotted line for those loans? Or were you just planning to try and discharge the debt the moment you took it on? Don’t pretend that your loan agreement, or the background Code, had anything whatsoever to do with your decision to load yourself down with student debt without a plan to repay it.

You still can’t get over the fact that you got yourself into this situation, can you? Sure, a nice throw-away line about how you “accept responsibility for borrowing money”, but that’s quickly qualified by a convenient backpedal, that you’d only borrow with “the same consumer protections that every other loan in our nation’s history has had behind it.” It’s always somebody else’s fault—the lender’s for not giving/acknowledging your forbearance request, the legislature’s for closing the bankruptcy loophole a decade before, etc. I also note that you also fail to mention the fact that your lender agreed to waive penalties and interest in February 2008, a point you conveniently overlook in your self-pity.

You voluntarily left your job in 2001, with no place to land, on the leading edge of a recession, with a boatload of debt hanging over your head. That’s an event of your own creation—not a “hardship”. Why should society subsidize your bad choices? We shouldn’t. Even if I felt that student loan forgiveness were a worthy cause—which I don’t—you’re a lousy spokesperson for the cause. To the extent that freeloaders like you try to parasitically discharge your own debts, you do so at the expense of the taxpayers (who guaranteed and subsidized your loan), and/or other students (who would face commensurately higher borrowing costs, if your relief were granted en masse.)

You’re right, I’m a prick, but only to sanctimonious, over-privileged whiners, who thrust themselves into the NY Times as some sort of martyr. I know damn well that you can’t with a straight face claim to have left no stone unturned before resorting to default on your debt. Why didn’t you move in with friends or family, and take a crappy job to pay down your debt? Why do I look at the picture of you in the Times and see you sitting before a new flat panel display, with a nice new cell phone, and a pair of designer sunglasses on the desk? If you were serious about “accepting responsibility for borrowing money”, you’d realize that the US taxpayers are picking up the slack for your decision to stand on the street corner handing out self-published pamphlets like a crazy street preacher, rather than getting a damn job and writing the checks that you owe.

Your little Don Quixote cause is going to make you entirely unemployable—what has it been, 7 or 8 years since you held a real job? Plus, now when employers Google you, they’re going to see you for the slacker that you are. My advice: Get over it. Move back with your parents. Get a regular job, ideally that takes advantage of your 6 years of higher education, but a job folding clothes at the Gap if necessary. Sell your crap. Turn off your cell phone plan. Start paying down your debt. And lose the self-pity. A 38-year old, healthy white guy, with degrees in engineering, doesn’t make a convincing “victim loser.”

and another:

(1) Did you not read before you signed the loan agreement? Why do you need “negotiation power” with the lender? What part of “unconditional promise to pay” do you not understand?

(2) Nobody put a gun to your head and told you to go to USC, which is a ridiculously overpriced private school with a second rate reputation; why didn’t you go to UCLA or Cal, get a first rate education, and come out 1/3rd in debt?

(3) I particularly liked the part where you quit a lab job at Cal Tech in 2001 because you didn’t get a raise; classic overprivileged mentality. I could make money if only I could buy you for what you’re worth, and sell you for what you think you’re worth. Quitting your job because you didn’t get a raise, right in the face of a looming recession? Sounds to me like somebody who figured he was “worth more” after years of sitting on the sidelines during the Internet bubble, and got his comeuppance for being a retard. Then you sat out the long recession. (Hey guess what, pal, I was unemployed for 6 months in that recession too!)

(4) I personally had $50k in student loans, which I retired completely in 4 years. Cry me a river. How about you give up your salsa and tango lessons, and get a second job, or work longer hours? Oh wait, I forgot, “personal responsibility” isn’t part of your vocabulary.

(5) You’re 38 years old. 16 years of your professional life is over; what do you have to show for it—no 401k, no savings, debt, bad credit, probably unsecured credit card debt too. Good one, there pal. Stop whining about it you overpriveged tool, and act like a man. Face your responsibilities.