Not long ago I met a cool and personable college student who was studying at Starbucks, she attends the local State University for 4 years here. Well, I thought she was a nice and polite college student until she started talking about her politics. Let me give you a rundown on all of this because, as a baby boomer, I’m frankly a little appalled at the sense of entitlement kids have in college these days.
You see, he told me he wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders because he liked what he promised about free healthcare and free college education, meaning Free College for All. Granted, a lot of people feel this way, but isn’t it a little selfish to vote for someone to get free stuff that everyone else will have to pay for? Of course, this vote-buying game is something Democrats engage in early and often, and socialist-leaning candidates around the world use this strategy when they come to power as populist leaders.
Since Hillary Clinton is the candidate now, he said; “I’m definitely going to vote for Hillary!” and “I like what she stands for with gays, minorities, free health care and college,” plus she is a Democratic candidate. I asked her what she thought about how Team Clinton and the DNC worked to exclude her former favorite candidate, a very deceptive and dishonest move. She told me; “That’s politics!” Really, a college student suddenly thinks she knows everything about politics? Besides, where the hell is her loyalty? There is no loyalty as long as you get free college tuition and don’t have to pay student loans here.
And guess what, this feeling is not uncommon. Did you know that college loan defaults have skyrocketed since Democrats started talking about “free tuition” during the 2016 presidential election? True, it jumped more than 10%. The Wall Street Journal in an article titled; “Over 40% of Student Borrowers Are Missing Payments: New Figure Raises Concerns Millions of Them May Never Pay More Than $200 Billion Due,” by John Mitchell, April 2016 Well, thanks a lot Bernie and Hillary, thank you for your undermining another important sector of our society. The article said:
“While most left school and joined the workforce, 43% of the estimated 22 million Americans with federal student loans were not making payments as of January 1, according to a quarterly snapshot of the student loan portfolio of $1.2 trillion from the Department of Education,” and “About 1 in 6 borrowers, or 3.6 million, were in default on $56 billion in student debt, meaning they had gone at least a year without making a payment, 3 million more who owed approximately $66 billion were at least a month behind.”
Since many of these student loans are taxpayer-backed and the rest happen to be part of citizens’ stock portfolios, we are shifting all current costs and past defaults to older Americans. Finally, I would like to add something here. Every time the government helps create a “bubble” in any sector of our economy, it always doubles down and makes it worthwhile, it doesn’t rectify the problem, this is going to be a disaster.
Also, if college tuition becomes free and if the government is involved, believe me; that’s all it’s going to be worth. And the Democrats are busy attacking Donald Trump for his Trump University? Give me a break. It’s time for the Democrats to clean up this mess they’ve created and stop promising things they can’t do. Didn’t they learn about ObamaCare?