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Re:U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B by lordnacho on Saturday February 16, 2019 @02:43PM (#19180539)
The connection is that people who have debt out of college tend to need to take whatever job they can find. This worsens their negotiating position vs a situation where they don't have any obligations.

Wealthy people tend to be owners of businesses (directly or indirectly) that buy this labor, and they have a better negotiating position.

Young people with all the time in the world, an education, and no debt are also in a good position to establish new businesses. Having fewer of those reduces competition.

Re:U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B by ethbro on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:40PM (#19180811)
The secondary effects of this are definitely under-reported (and possible under-appreciated).

In essence, what we're talking about here is a massive wealth transfer from people seeking post-secondary education to those offering that education (sometimes public, sometimes private)... except (critically) the effects are future loaded.

We've indebted an entire generation, but it's an invisible anchor dragging on their economic aspirations.

If you ask me, we should do three things to fix this: (1) haircut absolute public loan amounts to a manageable amount in exchange for public service (more funding & new opportunities), (2) haircut private loans to a manageable amount (too bad, they shouldn't be able to offload risk to the public and keep their profits), funded by new taxes on underperforming (read: abnormally large numbers of deliquent loans) private loan vendors AND institutions generating said loans (both of whom benefited from originating poor quality loans), (3) continue efforts to tie government-guaranteed loan eligibility to positive outcomes (your graduates don't find jobs in their fields, your program(s) are no longer eligible for loan guarantees).