It takes a lot to get one of us to write these days.  Alpha Man promised me a simple explanation of the crux of the Occupy Movement’s issues and he has yet to deliver.  Me, I am content for the time being just to be part of something.  Looking for an answer beats looking for a job. Probably because unlike a job, I know the truth exists.

However I had to tell you guys about this: M.I.T. is providing free, online education that now comes with a certified credential that exhibits mastery of the material. I am including the link below

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/12/21/m-i-t-game-changer-free-online-education-for-all/

These aren’t taped lectures people! This is a real, interactive experience that captures a great deal of the amazing value of an M.I.T. education.  And it is available to any and everyone for free and it’s learn at your own pace. You could do this at 19 or 59, the latter number being significant given that the fastest growing demographic for taking on student debt is now middle-aged people.

This is the future.  This is how the revolution ends.  This is meritocracy at its purest form, this is what will change everything…and if our generation being regulated to debt slavery forever is the cost of the vicious cycle becoming a permanent thing of the past, I just might be ok with that. I’m not saying we’re going to be sitting at a Thanksgiving table 50 years from now telling stories about taking to the streets like the Civil Rights generation, but that’s ok too.

Hopefully we’ll still have each other.

I am glad Mike Triforce didn’t go to law school five years later, because if he did he would have what I have in my possession: a student loan debit card.  That’s right, in between my student ID and Visa, I have a student loan debit card just in time for Oktoberfest.  You can’t make this stuff up.

So here’s what first came to mind. WWMT.  What Would Mike Triforce Do?  Well, obviously he would steal them.  Imagine how easy these cards would be to steal, and how many cards/accounts could be stolen WITHOUT A STUDENT EVER EVEN KNOWING.  I mean if the card gets stolen who foots the bill?  Keep in mind, the card is linked to the same indebtedness that does not afford you bankruptcy protection. 

Next, I applied my new legal skills.  When analyzing cases I really one ask myself one question: who stands to benefit from this decision? So who benefits from student loan debit cards? Who benefits from students borrowing more money?  The student loan industry had always been a bulk business.  If students are being enlightened on one end with blogs like this one something has to be introduced to counter-act the effect.  Take any harmful product from cigarettes to fast food.  The more people learned about how harmful these things were, the more available the proprietors had to make their products.  Example: in 30th street station the restrooms close certain hours.  The McDonalds does not.  Cigarettes are also given away for so much as taking a survey. 

I can’t help but compare myself to Mike Triforce.  I know that I’m not as likely to get a super firm job as he did, but I honestly feel like I have a better chance of getting out of all this debt.  If student loans are willing to put their money on debit cards…maybe they’ll start accepting online credit card payments.  If they start accepting online credit card payments there will be a period of months before someone invents the obvious fail-safe of only accepting ONE such payment per student per month.  During that time, if one were so inclined, one could apply for and probably obtain 40-50 new credit cards, put a couple grand balance on each one and immediately declare bankruptcy.

I just hope it happens three months after I graduate.

Leave it to Alpha Man to turn something he read on Sweet Hot Justice into a racial conspiracy theory. I have an alternate observation along the same lines of what does or does not constitute “rich” for tax purposes or in terms of being able to travel in certain circles.  My (new job) rich friends make less than my (old job) poor friends. A lot less actually. I am talking 50% on average. How? Why? I find the answer not in any historical patterns but in the age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Click on to read more

Let’s take two people, we’ll call them chicken and egg. For the sake of argument let’s assume you’re a chicken farmer, and a full grown chicken is what you want.  Now chicken either lives at home for a year/goes to community college or goes to whatever state school his parents can COMFORTABLY pay for. Egg goes to college right away, borrows what he needs and goes to the best school he gets into. Chicken works while in school and upon graduation goes to work full-time where he worked in school-six months later he interviews at other companies with a resume that shows several years experience.    Egg immediately goes to grad school. He borrows again for this and upon graduation can find no paid work so he works several unpaid internships. 18 months after graduation his resume lacks any real experience. Chicken who is the same age has been actually working four and a half years full-time and has over six years of experience on paper. Egg then gets a job making twice that of Chicken. For two years each advances on schedule. Freeze – who’s rich? Chicken. Why? Because all along he was chicken and chicken is the name of the game.

Chicken got paid THEN paid his dues. Egg did things the other way around. Now for all you math whizzes out there you are calculating at what point Egg passes chicken aka how long does it take at a double salary to overcome the debt, four and a half years of work, extra taxes, etc. Just on a numbers crunch what I’ve said is true since I am mid-late 20s. Your numbers show things evening out after just under a decade. Now let me tell you why Chicken stays ahead.

While Egg is still in school he feels entitled to no, not what Chicken has, but something the next level up.  So whereas Egg needs to be living at a standard well below Chicken to catch up, he instead insists on living at a standard slightly ABOVE Chicken, and the debt rather than shrinking grows exponentially.  It is the difference between a wound scabbing over or becoming infected.  Even when Egg realizes what he must do, the level to which he must stoop to have any hope of getting out of debt is always just below where he is willing to go.

Eventually Chicken begins to inherit things from family members who didn’t go broke paying for his education.  Egg received all his help from the previous generation while he was in school.  Homes that would have been owned and then bequethed were instead remortgaged and then either lost or sold.  Egg’s only hope to be better than Chicken is to send his kids to a better school.  Egg’s children also get less financial aid because Egg makes more on paper. 

Eventually Egg dies after preventing/ruining his eldest child’s first marriage because the spouse/potential spouse is not an egg. Egg leaves behind minimal insurance and a deep sense of inadequacy as a lasting legacy.  Meanwhile Chicken has saved up enough to pay for his daughter’s wedding because he sent her to state school and is looking forward to grand children.

Don’t be like Egg.

Here at Debtor’s Prison, we’re not big on posting links within articles.  But here’s one

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1275242514-wCTp6UtEV1S1hPtiShkU6Ahttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1275242514-wCTp6UtEV1S1hPtiShkU6Ahttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1275242514-wCTp6UtEV1S1hPtiShkU6A

I could respond to this point for point but that wouldn’t be fair to our readers too lazy to click the link and in order to provide themselves with the necessary context SO instead I will give the opposite scenario so my post stands alone.

Johnny and his parents approached college with a grim determination: to get through the process with as little cost and effort as possible.  Like many parents with their own lives Mr. and Mrs. Johnny were anxious to get another body out of the house and college savings weren’t what they could have been if certain cars hadn’t been leased and certain boats hadn’t been purchased.  But you only live once.  Besides, if Johnny possessed any particular gifts there would be scholarships.  There were no scholarships.

Johnny was going to state school.  But state school wasn’t free.  It ended up being cheaper to set Johnny up in his own place and let him get that Associate’s Degree before moving on to State.  When their friends asked where Johnny was attending school they said he was taking some time off to visit Europe.  Reluctantly, they sent him to Europe for a month to substantiate their story and so Johnny would do well enough to transfer to state after two years.

While getting his Associate’s Degree Johnny met working adults with children who had gone back to school.  After babysitting for one such parent, he’s offered a part-time job in a real office getting real experience in IT networking.  Johnny continues to work there summers after transferring to State and one Winter after his parents inform him they are only paying for three semesters.  Johnny gets college credit for his work and graduates in the same class as his peers. 

On the night of his graduation Johnny becomes intoxicated and hits and seriously injures a minivan filled with the relatives of a fellow graduate from out of state who paid more for a single class than Johnny has paid for his entire Bachelors.  Because Johnny befriended the son of a cop in community college he is able to name-drop his way out of any citation.  Instead the mother of the other graduate is charged.

Johnny goes to work for the IT shop full-time at a starting salary of $65,000.  His parents paid a total of $19,000 for his entire education.  During his college years Johnny was able to save $27,000.  Two years later his company pays for his MBA where he meets Lyla.  They fall in love, date, and eventually get pregnant.  Johnny considers proposing when he discovers that Lyla owes close to $150,000.  He cites that, not the kid, as the reason for their break-up.  He is currently 28, making six figures, and romantically involved with a young medical resident, a local waitress, and a 19 year-old high-school senior who hopes to attend his community college (where he lectures) after finishing summer school.

…Is this the new American Dream?

It is natural to hate people whom you believe have been given more than they deserve. I will be the first to admit that I take comfort in the fact that my loans at least shield me from the stigma that my achievements must be due to Affirmative Action. I get to join the student loan club, a race neutral organization and it endears me to my own people who associate a large part of their identity with struggle. Lonely indeed are the members of the darker nation who know no indebtedness for they are almost universally despised. And that’s a shame.

Recently I received a number of posted and unposted comments from medical types who are getting their tuition bill footed by the family. One of them, rather than being overly defensive simply wrote that it was done for him so that he could do it for his own kids one day and that there was no sense in paying all of that exorbitant interest. I found that to be an interesting notion.  Are we as Americans an extended family?

Again let me reiterate I am not commiting the same crime as I described earlier. I do not want to be in the shoes of a number 1 or number 2 doctor. I strongly suspect they have loans of their own to pay either in who they marry, what they study or where they live OR struggle with feelings of inadequacy.

But if we as Americans are an extended family…shouldn’t we send each other to college? Finance is the great medical fallback and I seem to recall a financial instrument called a bond. If the Federal Government can sell bonds for war why not for ultra low interest rate student loans? As a politically neutral person I see no reason why private non-profits are any better or worse equiped to do this… It’s just a question of efficiency versus scale.

Ebeneezer Scrooge validated himself by growing up poor and making his own way in the world (or so Scrooge McDuck’s portrayal of him leads me to believe). I don’t want to be guilty of not lowering a rope just because I had to climb the wall free-style. I know Benito is laboring over his third draft of a letter to Brittany Spears asking for debt relief and seed money for a scholarship fund… But maybe there is a more dignified, longterm solution to this problem. I’d end the post with some classic Brittany Spears lyrics but I get those confused with early Christina Aguilera. Point is we don’t need a genie in a bottle we just need to decide if we’re really family.

My name is Icarus. I am 30 years old. Last week I met a 20 year-old older than me. Only two years into school was he. Yet he had borrowed more than me.

We were at a concert but he could not hear. The debt reached up to his very ears. A twenty year-old older than me. For I had much less debt than he.

A girl approached him. He could have been laid, but instead he talked about his financial aid. Aid if it can be called that. She turned to me and together we enjoyed the majesty of the concert.

He could not stay for the encore. For he had books over which to pour. Lest he remain poor. Every month new loans reminding him what was at stake. A twenty year-old older than me. For I had borrowed less than he.

Sadly I was able to take no joy in this. For on that day many years from now when he takes the podium to accept an award for excellence in his chosen field he will hear muted notes from the concert he missed all around him. And he will think of the girl. And his student debt unpaid. And the fact that the podium is in an empty room and the award one he gave himself. Then he will return to the temp agency, having never found a job utilizing his degree.

A twenty year-old. Older than me. For I have lighter chains than he.