Democrats Need to Decide: Is College a Right or a Commodity?

The US economy isn’t exactly working for most Americans. Wages for most of us are stubbornly stagnant, while college (the “ surest ticket ” to the middle class, according to our sitting president) has increased twelvefold over the past thirty years . This is a reason why a majority of our citizens still think we are in an economic recession. That’s a problem, especially when our president’s entire theory of economic growth relies on expenditure from a robust middle class. I can attest that I’d be doing much more for the American economy if I didn’t have to siphon off student loan payments each month. That money would be much better served going into local businesses or my savings account. I hope we can all agree that, in a more perfect union, it is not in the US government’s best interest to suck so much money out of the economy -especially when transactions occurring between individuals in our economy are at 40-year lows . WHY IS OBAMA DEFENDING STUDENT LOANS, THEN? The Obama administration seems to disagree. Recently, they released a report which concluded that the “$1.3 trillion in student debt is helping, not hurting, the US economy.” Talk about putting lipstick on a pig. The report states , “It is education, not student debt, that drives the persistent differences in homeownership.” Ok. So if indeed it is the case that education “drives the persistent differences in homeownership,” then why would the US government want to make higher education incrediblyfinancially burdensome for Americans to attain? Am I missing something here? According to the Wall Street Journal, the report also claims that “dropouts” who accumulate student debt but didn’t graduate with a degree “would still be suffering financially even without student debt, suggesting other factors are holding them down.” Talk about washing your hands of any responsibility. “Look, even if we didn’t put a ten-pound anchor around their neck, they’d still have drowned.” This reasoning is,
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