Student loan forgiveness is being taken seriously right now by the bourgeoisie.
The Federal interest rate going near 0% has led to a massive boom in housing construction. Student loan deferment has led to many people saving up for a down payment on a house. The housing market is carrying the US economy right now.
If student loan deferment ends, this space that Capital found for expansion will disappear. There will be an immediate crisis.
Also, the effort to privatize student loans has been a failure. Betsy DeVos has been the Secretary of Education most dedicated to privatization. She killed the Perkins Loan, which has led many new students to private loans.
Although, after her reign, 92% of public student loan debt are still held by the Department of Education. It is unlikely that the Biden SoE will be more successful at speeding up the process. Capital is in crisis now.
Forgiving public debts is a method of privatization in America, where a culture of indebtedness exists. They want everyone with public student loans to take out private mortgages, owned by JPMorgan, Citigroup, etc.
I'm not saying student loan forgiveness is good or bad. It is good for me. But it serves a purpose that we should understand.
If people cannot buy homes the housing market will collapse again. The immediate need is less about maintaining any self-conscious allegiance to capitalism and more about saving a specific market.
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Can't say I fully agree with you. The European comparison is important, and I think the market would be fine with a switch to a more rent-focused model, but that change would need to be slow. That sort of change has to be a long term, intended change, in the same way that housing market was quite consciously shifted to focus on home-ownership as the suburbs were built post WWII. It's similar to the crisis we had in 2008, I think. A lot of homes with people who can't really afford them and a housing/financial market built around mortgages.
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