Wednesday, May 31, 2006
(11:09 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Frontiers in Bullshit
On NPR News, I just heard that student loan interest rates are going up a second time this year, ending a decades-long trend of low interest rates. This story provides some details, though without citing the reason that NPR gave for the increases: an attempt to reduce the deficit. Yes, that's a sure-fire way to fix this deficit problem -- squeeze a few hundred more dollars a year out of some recent college graduates just starting their lives as independent adults.At this point, one might be better off taking out a normal bank loan, because then you can at least declare bankruptcy. If student loans are not going to have significantly lower interest rates than commercial loans, then the much more stringent terms -- most notably the utter inescapability -- are arguably no longer worth taking on.
It's too bad that raising taxes on the rich or cutting military spending would contradict certain important laws of physics, or else we could get rid of the deficit with broad-stroke methods rather than nickle-and-diming debt-ridden people who are living hand-to-mouth.
