Occupy Wall Street and Student Loans

Speakers
Christopher Coyne,

Release Date
January 18, 2012

Topic

Education
Description

According to Prof. Chris Coyne, one of the main concerns of the Occupy Wall Street movement is the rising cost of college and student loans. If student loans were forgiven, however, it wouldn’t solve the fundamental problem of costly education.

A government program that forgave student loans would improve the finances of people holding student loans, but it would do so at the expense of taxpayers in America. Many of these taxpayers would fall within the 99%.
Furthermore, by seeking bailouts for student loans, the Occupy Wall Street movement is fundamentally no different than the banks and corporations that they’re criticizing.

Occupy Wall Street and Student Loans
Male 1: I know I’m burdened by a large student debt.
Male 2: I didn’t want to go to college, because I didn’t want to pay tons of loans.
Female: I have 30 grand student debt, and that’s on the low end compared to most students.
Prof. Christopher Coyne: One of the big issues that’s come out of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been the cost of college and student loans. One of the typical messages that you hear is that student loans should be forgiven. If we were to forgive student debts across the board, this wouldn’t solve the fundamental problem. Of course the people that have their debt forgiven would be made better off, but it would simply shift the cost to other taxpayers in America, many of whom constitute the so called 99 percent. Furthermore, in seeking bailouts, the Occupy Wall Street movement is fundamentally no different than the banks and corporations that they’re angry with.


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