I'm also sympathetic to the fact that the loan industry doesn't make the rules. Still, they are more than happy to exploit the rules due to the taxpayer guarantee.
Granted, Lisa was an idiot to accumulate $300,000 in debt for educational loans, though it isn't clear how much of that amount was original principal and what was added on as fees, late charges, extra interest and the like.
But the point is that a real lender who didn't have the taxpayer guarantee would've cut her off at some point long before she got that deep into debt.
Let the other posters enjoy their sanctimonious smugness about why she should be saddled with that debt forever . . . but the point is that she will not likely ever to be able to pay it back.
While I made a proposal on my original post on how to distribute the pain around a little and so did you, the sanctimonious group has done little more than to endorse ensuring that the taxpayer will eat just about all of Lisa's bad decisions both by making the loan impossible to pay back and ensuring she will spend most of her life on public assistance.
The same attitude will also ensure that conservatives win fewer elections. But, I suppose, all of that is a small price to pay for the right to be sanctimonious.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Because I don't endorse your illegal, unconstitutional means to achieve some worthwhile purpose doesn't mean I think the system should remain unchanged.
I'm merely pointing out that your means are immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, and, quite frankly, cockamamie.
sitetest
I can't see forgiving some portion of student loans in a blanket manner because many, many people took less prestigious degrees precisely to avoid debt. This trend of punishing people in our country for doing the right thing has got to stop. And there can be no question - going forward, student loans should be bankruptible. We will see an immediate and long overdue tightening in lending standards.
It's my personal belief that retroactively, at least some portion of outstanding student loan debt should be bankruptible, which I suppose will leave taxpayers on the hook. While people took out student loans voluntarily and foolishly, most of those loans were taken in times where job prospects were much brighter. Having people declare bankruptcy still allows them to get out from a very bad decision, but it is a path that would not be taken lightly and would have repercussions.