We’re From The Government And We’re Here To Help

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Student loan fraud has nearly doubled since 2009. Something about 2009 sounds familiar. What happened in 2009?

Oh yeah, that was the last year private lenders made student loans. After 2009, the federal government took it over as part of Obamacare, so the interest paid by students would offset health care costs for poor people.

Either this is a government-run program that’s twice as corrupt as a private-run program, or half as competent. Who could have seen that coming?

joe doakes

Who could have seen it coming?

Less than 47% of the people, unfortunately.

8 thoughts on “We’re From The Government And We’re Here To Help

  1. I wonder if anyone has done a study to see how many of these fraudsters vote DFL? Wouldn’t that make a nice news story?

  2. It seems a bit much to charge indebted grads 6.8% when the Fed lends money to Wall Street for next to nothing. But other than that, this program is not near the top of my list of where I would choose to spend my tax dollars either.

  3. I search my pocket constitution in vain for any hint of a reason for the federales to be financing the cost of attending college outside of the GI Bill.

  4. Nothing says “Federal government overreach” better than the Department of Education.

    Gotta love the libs: let’s turn a firehose of money into the US educational system and then be surprised when costs balloon beyond reason. Sure, the old system wasn’t always meritorious with legacy admissions, but the present system of chaining poor folks to debt slavery to get worthless degrees is worse than what we had before.

  5. My take here is simple; in an age of people getting a quarter million dollars in debt to get their degree in gender and ethnic studies, now more than ever we need each prospective student to have the opportunity to demonstrate to a real, live, free market loan officer why he thinks he’ll be able to repay that loan.

    It’s worth noting that student loan defaults have shot up since 2009 as well, and my take is that it’s for the very same reason Joe notes. No green eyeshades, you’re going to have trouble picking out the bad investments.

  6. Doug, even the Washington Post thinks comparing student loans to bank loans is silly. The interest on student loans is $50 billion now, more when interest rates return to normal. That income was a critical part of Obamacare funding – it was how Democrats claimed taking over the health insurance industry was not only revenue-neutral, but actually would save money. This rate hike was part of the plan all along, agreed to by every Democrat, opposed by every Republican, properly laid squarely at Obama’s feet.

  7. Good point, Joe. And it stands to reason too, as all student loans are by definition provided to middle class and poor students, that it is yet another regressive tax by the Obama administration and the “liberal” Democrats that “care so much about the poor.”

    They care so much about the poor, they’re taking 12-16% of borrowers to the poorhouse by providing student loans not dischargeable in bankruptcy to kids who have no chance of paying those loans back except under duress. More Obama Recovery!

  8. I disagree about tertiary eduction if only because a record large fraction of the population has a college degree nowadays, but very few of those degrees are actually being used in the graduate’s work. College has become a baby-sitting exercise, a self-justifying industry, and a way for lazy personnel managers to sift though a big stack of resumes.

    I can agree in deploring the large number who drop out of high school, but rather than say that they should finish high school and go on to college, a better option for most of them would be to shift into a trade school for their last two years of high school, and graduate with a associate certificate or the like, indicating that they are qualified for a job in some skilled trade.

    We are cranking out more MBAs that we could possibly ever need, often to the detriment of American business, and yet those MBAs have to pay several times their own hourly hourly rate to get someone to fix their car or plumb or wire their house. The education industry says “we need more funding for universities”, but the marketplace says “we need more skilled trades.”

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