Student Loan Debt Is Unimaginably Huge
Reporting live from the wavering edge of the Student Loan Bubble: congratulations, collectively impoverished college students and recent graduates losing hope week by week! You've managed to achieve what many pointy-headed "Economics" professors might have called "inadvisable" or even "insane:" the highest student loan debt levels ever recorded. Huzzah!
The amount of student loans taken out last year crossed the $100 billion mark for the first time and total loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion for the first time this year...
Students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation, the College Board reports. Total outstanding debt has doubled in the past five years - a sharp contrast to consumers reducing what's owed on home loans and credit cards.
The best part is the fact that we're rapidly increasing our burden of the one type of loan that we can't discharge in bankruptcy. At least if we'd kept binging on credit card debt we could have all gotten together at some point and collectively declared bankruptcy and told the credit card companies to go to hell. Whereas education, and its debt, is forever! A good investment, when there are no jobs with which to repay that debt. I foresee this working out well for everyone.
Related: the price of college is going up. The government can't afford to subsidize frivolities like "higher education" any more. But don't worry—your ballooning student loan debt is helping to provide badly needed employment in the collections, bounty hunting, repossession, and corrections industries! And hey, at least you're not as bad off as some people. Yet.