That's not what usury means, because it's not illegal and it's not unreasonable high rates of interest. My highest student loan, which is private, is about 6%.

Also, who are you to tell someone that they can't go to a school if they can find someone to lend them the money to do it?

> My highest student loan, which is private, is about 6%.

If you're in the US and you don't think that rate is unreasonable, I'm curious as to why. We're talking about loans that cannot even be discharged in bankruptcy, in a 0% interest rate environment.

2007 was not a 0% interest rate environment.

Oh, that's an old loan. My sympathies.

But I'm paying roughly the same for loans taken out in the last five years. It's irritating.

Maybe the problem is not with the financing but with the product itself. Billions of dollars wasted on zero-sum games is a tragedy no matter who I am and no matter how legal it is.

If it is a zero-sum game, then you should be just as happy to not have an education, as long as you can live in a country where no-one else has one either. If you want to talk about billions of dollars, why don't we get rid of primary and secondary education too?

Speaking of primary and secondary education, I heard that in America people try to move to expensive neighborhoods when they have kids because those have the best schools.

That part is also a zero-sum game, because all parents work harder to afford the best neighborhoods and that makes the price of living in those neighborhoods go up, leaving everyone right where they started only they now work two jobs instead of one.

Decoupling property tax from school funding can help with that. In Universities, a system that is free but only accepts the people with the best grades, IQ, or some arbitrary qualification can help, but brings its own problems.

6% for a US private education loan? How does 9% sound instead?

My best investments are the raises I get when paying off my student loans ahead of schedule.

For the sake of one-upping you, mine were at 10%. Those were the first thing I attacked once I got out of school.

Except that most loans are for things that you can liquidate if you get into financial trouble.