A very sad article from the New York Times, but I can’t say I’m really surprised. In the ultimate irony, in many cases throughout America it is actually parents that are forced to move in with their kids due to the piles of student loans taken out on their behalf. We are officially a nation of unemployed debt slaves. Aren’t you glad we bailed out Wall Street?
From the New York Times:
It has been six years since Ms. Fitzgerald — broke, unemployed and in default on the $18,000 in loans she took out for Jenni’s college education — became a boomerang mom, moving into her daughter’s townhouse apartment in Hingham, Mass.
In the first three months of this year, the number of borrowers of student loans age 60 and older was 2.2 million, a figure that has tripled since 2005. That makes them the fastest-growing age group for college debt. All told, those borrowers owed $43 billion, up from $8 billion seven years ago, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Almost 10 percent of the borrowers over 60 were at least 90 days delinquent on their payments during the first quarter of 2012, compared with 6 percent in 2005. And more and more of those with unpaid federal student debt are losing a portion of their Social Security benefits to the government — nearly 119,000 through September, compared with 60,000 for all of 2007 and 23,996 in 2001, according to the Treasury Department’s Financial Management Service.
The consequences of such debt can be dire because borrowers over 60 have less time — and fewer opportunities — than younger borrowers to get their financial lives back on track. Some, like Ms. Fitzgerald, are forced to move in with their children. Others face an unexpectedly pinched retirement. Still others have gone into bankruptcy, after using all their assets to try to pay the student debt, which is difficult to discharge under any circumstances.
I don’t know how much abuse people will take before they start fighting back. We’ll find out in the coming years.
Full New York Times article here.
In Liberty,
Mike
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How much longer will people allow themselves to be kicked around like this?
‘The great only appear great, because we are on our knees, arise, arise!’
As was understood by the Trade Unionist and Irish Freedom Fighter, James Connolly. Or as Samuel Johnson clearly saw and understood:
‘It is observed that a corrupt society has many laws’
During the British oppression of the Irish people post 1916, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwinney was imprisoned in HMP Brixton in London where he went on hunger strike and later died in 1921. Whilst on hunger strike he wrote the following:
‘It is not those that inflict the most that triumph, but those that endure the most’.
But the suffering has to have an end, as at some point the consequences of resistance are less than doing nothing!
Don’t worry new law passed u only pay 10% discretionary income and after 20yr. Govt tears up the debt Happy happy joy joy