Posted on 06/09/2015 4:04:36 AM PDT by lifeofgrace
Humorist Lee Siegel wrote in The New York Times that he unashamedly and without remorse defaulted on his student loans.
Am I a deadbeat? In the eyes of the law I am. Indifferent to the claim that repaying student loans is the road to character? Yes. Blind to the reality of countless numbers of people struggling to repay their debts, no matter their circumstances, many worse than mine? My heart goes out to them. To my mind, they have learned to live with a social arrangement that is legal, but not moral.Congratulations, Mr. Siegel. You have figured out liberty.
Live amorally, without remorse, condemn the system as corrupt, and stick it to The Man. That's the ticket.
Nobody has to pay for your default, right? When Sallie Mae pays credit hounds to come after you, you just change your phone number.
When they try to poach your credit rating, you live with it, raise that big middle finger, and go on with life. Maybe you'll earn enough to rebuild that credit score. But who cares? It's a free country, you you exercised your freedom to be a deadbeat pig eating at the trough of American opportunity.
So, Mr. Siegel, let me write this on behalf of every employer who's every written you a paycheck. For every publisher, newspaper, media company, or 7-Eleven where you may have put in a half-assed effort to earn a buck, here's their reply.
Dear Lee,
Thank you for your hard work and laborious efforts on our behalf. We are so glad you were able to make money for us, because that's the point of being in business: to make money.
We're aware of the heavy burden placed upon our businesses by society's expectation that we actually have to pay you for your work. We know this, and with due respect to society, we have chosen life without paying you.
Of course, you will have to struggle to pay your bills, feed yourself and your family, and buy needed items like shelter and dog food, but we think you'll muddle through. You'll make it just fine.
It just suits our lifestyle better not to submit to the crushing weight of paying you. We know, in the world's eyes, this makes us deadbeats and horrible bosses, but we're willing to live with this.
In fact, we are sharply aware of the strongest objection to our lapse into slave-ownership. If every employer acted as we did, chaos would result. The entire structure of American commerce would change.
The lazy, good-for-nothing workers who come in late and leave early, with no evidence of their labor would be exposed as the greedy vultures that they are. The government would get out of the minimum-wage and labor regulating business. Congress might even explore a special, universal sales tax which would make things like newspapers and magazines more affordable since we're no longer paying you.
Again, thank you for all your efforts. We are really thankful that you have chosen to reject your obligation to pay for your education, because now we can move forward with a clear conscience.
Since America owes you a free education, we believe that we are more than justified in claiming that you, Mr. Siegel, owe America the fruits of that education, at the same price you paid for it.
Sincerely,
Your Bosses
Pretty much. When everybody figures out that they can walk away from their obligations and cannot be made to honor them, hell on earth.
It would be nice to see it happen. Boy, I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear him sputter with outrage.
Liberals like him have an intellect a mile wide and a nanometer deep. Scratch the immediate surface and you encounter the hard illogic underneath.
Right underneath.
As long as they “pretend to work,” their employers should “pretend to pay them.”
Stands up and applauds.
I Read the original article and was appalled.
I’ve seen others skip out on their obligations. When informed that if they don’t pay, someone else will have to, they just shrug. We have a younger generation which thinks it’s entitled to everything, but they don’t have to pay for it. At one time, there would have been a certain amount of shame in such behavior. Now people don’t care.
And here I am, someone who paid back every penny of my loan. I must be stupid in his eyes. Actually, I’m not a thief.
As I have posted before, without integrity social institutions will not function. I don’t know what the threshold is before the wheels come off but I suspect that we are just about there. Check the thread on Cars of Section 8 housing. I have a feeling we may only be weeks away from seeing the folks who scream about social justice discovering there is an aspect of social justice they never considered when they decided to drape themselves in it...
It's worse than that. They think they have a right to benefit from others' labor.
“Pretty much. When everybody figures out that they can walk away from their obligations and cannot be made to honor them, hell on earth.”
Look at America today. Many lawyers are engaged in the practice of helping clients avoid their contractual or societal obligations. Hence OJ walks the street a free man, business deals once executed on a handshake now require hundreds of pages of documents and an army of attorneys.
Look at other instances of people walking away from moral or legal obligations:
- No fault divorce.
- Corporate bankruptcies for the sole purpose of offloading pension obligations on the government.
- Males impregnating females and shirking the parental role as well as the monetary responsibility
- Politicians voting against their campaign promises and contrary to the well being or wishes of their constituents.
Multiculturalism and secular liberalism have destroyed values and standards once embraced by the general population and essential to social order. The eradication of these values has resulted in a less civil society, the politicization of almost every human relationship, and is resulting in a descent into anarchy.
We’re not lost yet. The jerk who abused a nice woman at C-fil-A is still jobless and nearly homeless. This jerk who defaulted on his loans because he’s completely amoral may yet receive a similar form of justice. I’m worried though. They actually feel like they can spout their evil in public, and some people are sympathetic to them. We have to work on properly guiding our children and grandchildren before leftism becomes a majority value system in our country.
The loan defaulters only manage to come out ahead until they default on a loan to the wrong guy. In the old days it was Vito and Rocco who came a callin. Today it is Sergei and Ivan.
I’m 73,,,and I got my college education with the help of driving a bus, being a janitor, being a soda jerk and with the help of a student loan. Took me six years to “work through college” at Indiana University. I didn’t even go to the graduation ceremony because I had a new job. But a day I remember most was 3 years later when my new wife and I walked into the bank with our final payment on my student loan. We handed it to an officer of the bank and he shook my hand and gave me the “receipt.” Looking back over all those years...that moment is one that is still crystal clear. That was the first financial commitment I had honored. And it set a precedent for my life that I used for a lifetime. People who default on a student loan default on life, forever being theives and wards of the state. They think they are gaming the system, but the system now owns their souls...lost forever. They try to sound “proud” of it...but they are feeling an emptiness I have never felt. Defaulting on a student loan is an early default on life (as I knew it).
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