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Students marched through London to protest against tuition fees and student debt. Matthew Chattle/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
“student Loan Advocacy: Organizations Fighting For Borrowers’ Rights”
For many people, that debt is the biggest drag in their adult life. It prevents them from buying a home, starting a family or investing in their future. They are stuck in a perpetual loop.
Alt Ac(tivism) Presents: Loan Tran
This crisis has led to calls to cancel all that debt and free an entire generation of Americans – which I instinctively support. But when you start thinking about all the obstacles and trade-offs, you quickly realize how politically risky such a proposal would be. Is there a fair way to do it? What about the millions of people who took decades to pay off their loans? And what about people who don’t go to college because they don’t want to be in debt – how will this place come to them?
So I reached out to Astra Taylor, documentary filmmaker and author of the 2019 book Democracy may not exist, but we’ll miss it when it’s gone. Taylor has become a leading advocate for debt forgiveness, and she considers it not just an economic issue but a minor democratic one. We talk about why that is and how it shapes her argument.
If you’re looking for a big picture of the broader debate surrounding student debt forgiveness, read this full essay by my colleague Emily Stewart. Here I want to focus on the case
Student debt forgiveness and why Taylor argues it’s just part of a much deeper struggle for a just society.
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‘s German Lopez is here to guide you through the explosive policymaking process of the Biden administration. Sign up to receive our newsletter every Friday.
Your argument asks us to think of debt less as a financial instrument and more as a form of top-down power. How is that?
Debtors have to worry about making their next payment. It is a source of anxiety and stress. It changes your mentality. If you do not pay on time, you will be severely fined. Your credit score gets trashed, and that limits your options as to whether you can rent an apartment or secure a job. The stakes are very high. In some places, if you default on your student loans, your license can be taken away leaving you unable to even do your job.
All of this forces us to think very narrowly about education. When you enroll in college and are saddled with huge debt, it changes the way you think about what you need to do. It makes you think about the need to get a return on investment. That is the discipline function. If you’re young and want to think about how you can best contribute to society, if you want time to pursue your curiosity, you’ll think: “Wow, damn it, I can’t do it because I have to be pragmatic and pay the price. all this debt back. This distorts the whole framework for education. You go to school knowing you have a load of debt and you shape your education around the sole goal of being able to pay it back.
What’s Next In The Fight Over Student Loan Forgiveness
Ronald Reagan famously said that the state shouldn’t be in the business of subsidizing curiosity, so the question is, “Well, what should the state be in the business of?” And right now, it’s the business of lending to students so they can then have the opportunity to socialize. But that compact was completely broken. That myth has been sold to us for decades and it has fallen apart.
I come from a tradition that sees social change as a struggle. It would be great if we lived in a political reality where we only need to make the best arguments and propose sensible policies. I think there is a very strong argument for education as a public good, considering health care as a public good. But that’s not how politics works. It’s not really just about persuasion and deliberation. It’s about strength.
Debt has become a discipline of power. Over the past few decades, when debt has exploded, it has disowned people. Every time we sign a loan agreement, it feels like a personal act, but that obscures the fact that it is part of a broader social and economic phenomenon. We tend to see poverty and debt as personal failures, but it is really the product of failed policies.
We say in the book Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay that “The problem is not that we are living beyond our means. We were denied the means to live. You are in debt because your salary is not enough to cover your daily needs. You’re in debt because what you’re offered are student loans, not public education. The reason you have to put medical bills on your credit card is because there is no universal healthcare. So under these conditions, we think it’s reasonable for the debtors to push back and revolt. And so economic disobedience is a way of saying, “We must push back, just as civil disobedience repels immoral laws. Civil disobedience is being an accountant and saying, “This may be the law, but to enact my values, I may have to break it.”
A Strategic Blueprint To Give Student Debt Relief A Fighting Chance
Biden has offered to write off student loan debt of up to $10,000 per borrower, which would remove the burden for about a third of borrowers. That’s a good start, isn’t it?
That’s Biden’s promise, and it’s important to acknowledge that he would never have promised anything if the debtors hadn’t organized over the last 10 years to get this resolved. Because Joe Biden is on the opposite side. He’s the one who famously pushed for the removal of the limited bankruptcy protections that student borrowers have around private loans.
So Biden campaigned for the immediate cancellation of the $10,000 minimum. And that’s for everyone, for any borrower, on the whole. Then he also promised to write off all college student debt for people who attended public colleges, HBCUs, and other things. But he didn’t do these things. And he really has the power to do it.
But $10,000 isn’t enough sadly because the average Black borrower owes more than $50,000 four years after graduation [and that’s 2016 data, so things could get worse] . The average student graduate with about $30,000 in debt and this number grows every year. So for many people, many of whom have six-figure debt, $10,000 is a drop in the bucket. It won’t make an important difference in their lives. And I think the question of justice arises when we say, “Well, what’s the point of leaving the rest of this debt?” And instead of accepting the burden of rationalizing its removal, I asked, “What’s the rationale for leaving it there?”
Who Really Benefits From Student Loan Forgiveness?
Eliminating student debt is something the Biden administration has executive power to do. So it doesn’t look like some kind of constitutional violation. This is an authority granted through the Higher Education Act of 1965. Congress has given the Secretary of Education the ability to cancel student debt. But apparently it’s one of those executive moves that you can’t undo once you’re done.
I’m trying to see this from the perspective of someone who has spent years paying off debt, or someone who wants to go to college but decides to decline precisely because they don’t want to take on the debt. These aren’t necessarily arguments against doing it, but it’s part of the political calculation, isn’t it?
Yes, but I think a lot of these concerns are raised with malicious intent. They are raised by people who work for conservative consulting organizations quite often. And they pretend to be suddenly worried about fairness and whether student loan forgiveness disproportionately benefits the privileged.
My main answer to these concerns is that they still think the problem is personal, which is how debt makes us think. We sign a loan agreement and then we are responsible for paying it back. But there are broader social benefits to clearing student debt. Instead, some of the money currently transferred to the federal government will circulate in the broader economy. It will allow people to improve their economic circumstances, take more risks and become more entrepreneurial. It would also go a long way in bridging the gap between rich and poor between races.
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Finally, I will say that student loan forgiveness is very popular across the political spectrum because it impacts people across the entire political spectrum. That’s one of the things where I can imagine a world where you’re going to lead with that, where you’re going to lead with social good, where you’re going to lead with the fact that it’s universal even with Republicans and articulate those broad social interests.
But not all of those arguments are bad news, are they? The main objection I hear, even from those who sympathize with
Of debt forgiveness, which is a recession, not progress, because incomes are higher
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