One of the arguments to gain steam on Facebook and on The HuffingtonPost is the issue of cancelling student loan debt, which some say would provide a huge boost to the economy from young Americans and struggling professionals whose monthly incomes are saddled with student loan debts with prohibitively high interest rates.
Jon Chattman at the HuffPo goes into this in further detail below:
Robert Applebaum, an attorney from New York, thinks so and has an idea on how to help many in his shoes -- and trust me, there are many -- while stimulating the economy at the same time. The 35 year old started up an online campaign this month to bail out those "hard-working, educated middle class" suffocating in college loan debt on Facebook. He formed the group "Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy" because he believes forgiving student loan debt for those making under $150,000 annually would help boost the economy from "the bottom up."
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He continued, "One-time tax rebates and meager tax cuts do nothing to stimulate the economy. A recession is as much a psychological phenomenon as anything else. Knowing I'd have an extra $500 per month in my pocket will get me spending again. Multiply that across the country and the economy will start to move again."
Applebaum has been fighting off his own loans since 1998, and owes more now than he did when he graduated. He said he decided to form a group on the social networking powerhouse because he's sick of watching people like him pay the price for choosing to go for higher education and advanced degrees.
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"If nothing else, it warrants a good, hard look and some analysis as to whether it could work... We have an entire class of highly educated poor people. The idea is no crazier than handing over billions if not trillions of additional dollars to the very institutions responsible for the crisis."
I joined that facebook group, and I've been wondering what the precise argument against the forgiveness of student loan debts would be. I currently have $11,000 in student loan debts, and my fiance has over $90,000 in student loan debts. Altogether, once we marry, we'll have over $100,000 in student loan debts, which is crazy. He has to pay over $600 a month for his student loans, so that's money that doesn't directly stimulate the economy aside from the loan companies themselves. And I pay over $100 a month for my own student loans since I had them consolidated before the deadline.
Having over $700 in dispensable income would be great, and that'd help boost our local economy here in Austin. Once again, why would this be so bad to have a one-time forgiveness of student loan debt?
Think about the political upsides. Forgiving the student loan debts of my generation, ages 20-30, would create a huge class of Democratic voters loyal to President Obama and the Democratic agenda as well.
The only political downside I can see is that the older generations would resent this student loan forgiveness and that the loan companies would have a huge ruckus over this.
So, let's talk here. If Wall Street can get bailed out, why can't we?