The Indentured Servitude of the American Middle Class
The Great School Loan Scam and the COMPANY STORE: The why, the how, and the “now what?”
CAUSE 1: The GREED and RACISM
We have been trained, over a long period of time since Reagan and before, that “greed is good.” That was always a disturbing long-running meme in our society, but with Reagan and the subsequent rise of the Christian Right, it took on social nuclear proportions.
Like the kick of a leg when the physician’s hammer touches the knee, the learned response citizens had to ANY planning, ANY development of long term goals, ANY work to stop war and pollution (as President Carter’s Energy Plan would have done had the American people not fallen for Reagan’s alliance with Big Oil) results in the knee jerk response, “I didn’t get it, why should he?”
Additionally and foundationally, the long standing racism in our nation caused the mental training of poor white people to block ANY good for their black or brown neighbors lest they be forced to “pay for their black/brown/Asian neighbor’s ANYthing”, thereby inflicting poverty and corruption on themselves for generations.
Misogyny of unrealized proportions also allowed women, mothers, working women, to be constantly attacked and demoralized as a core fiber of our nation’s personality. I could review all the anti-women, anti-POC political memes that have flowed out of the right for decades, but you know them already. It’s part and parcel of our white male dominated society that has hurt white men probably more than anyone.
Women persevered. Got educated. Started businesses. Thrived DESPITE.
Black men, despite the horrific and heartbreaking abuse, have risen.
White men are sitting in their basements on INCEL sites paying video games wondering why they are not “king” anymore, cleaning their guns and counting their ammo.
KC Wells of North Las Vegas, NV wrote and exceptional piece outlining these problems:
*****
LOL @ everyone whining about “But….but…..what about MY student loans that I paid off already”
What the fuck about them???
Look, I don’t super care about what ppl think about this student loan forgiveness thing, or Biden, or whatever. I get it. Debt redistribution, money isn’t free, etc. Fine. There’s good things about it and there’s not so good things about it.
My issue is that there’s no one in this entire world who hates Americans…….more than other Americans.
This country, as a whole, is comprised of just the most selfish fucking society, man. Ppl get all up in their feelings at even the mere THOUGHT of anyone getting anything that they didn’t get.
Raise the minimum wage to a barely livable $15? “NO! MY precious, important job pays me $20, so burger flippers don’t deserve to make anywhere close to what I’M making!!”
Cancel student debt?
“NO! I already paid my loans off, why do THEY get their’s cancelled.”
Affordable healthcare for all?
“NO! I’m not paying more taxes so that my neighbor can see a doctor about his medical condition!!”
We are our own oppressors and we’ve been conditioned to be that. We’re doing their work for them. It’s been seared into us that helping each other is a bad thing. That this country is not actually greater than the sum of its parts. We’ve been told that if someone who has nothing gets something, it’s because they took it from someone who also has nothing. And we believed all of it. Meanwhile, the ppl who have everything are laughing their asses off.
We don’t compromise. We don’t share. We don’t sacrifice. We don’t want to do anything to help the next person. Why? Because no one helped us. So fuck everyone else. Never considering that you deserved help too. It just didn’t come when you needed it, unfortunately.
People don’t want this country to be better. They just want it to be better for THEM. And that’s it. Full stop. Apparently, progress should be measured on an individual basis, not collective.
And then we wonder why we’re being completely lapped by other countries in every major category. Because those places understand that access to healthcare without having to go into debt is better for EVERYONE. Access to education without going into debt is better for EVERYONE. Access to affordable living without going into debt is better for EVERYONE.
Not here, though. We’re perfectly fine with our taxes going to more military bullshit. We’re perfectly fine with debt companies getting rich off of collecting student debts. We’re perfectly fine with keeping ppl below the poverty line because they work a job that we think is beneath us.
Seems legit.
This whole “Why should that person be rescued from drowning when I was forced to swim to shore” bullshit ain’t it. And it’s nothing to be proud of.
- ****
Spot on, KC, it is this knee jerk denigration of our own neighbors and families that is at the core of our problems.
CAUSE 2: MATH AND COMPUTERS AS A WEAPON OF DOMINATION-THE DECK IS STACKED HEAVILY AGAINST CITIZENS
Unfortunately, citizens will never have the math and computational skills of the Oligarchs trying to separate us from our greenbacks or to make us their subservient indentured servants.
Con games similar to the Great School Loan Scam have been played on citizens over the centuries that cause the citizens great and/or lifelong debt, forcing a servitude on them.
In my state, the mob of the early 1900s did this to Italian immigrants. They picked them up at Ellis Island with the message, “We have work!” and put them on a train to rural CO to mine coal. They set up homes and a grocery store that were priced just slightly above what a man could make digging coal for a day. Therefore, day by day these families got further and further in debt. No matter what they did, they could never conquer the “COMPANY STORE.” No matter how hard they worked, until they literally worked themselves to death. Finally, a huge violent uprising put an end to the Company Store and the mob’s mining operations.
SCHOOL LOANS ARE OUR COMPANY STORE. The superior math and computational skills of oligarchs who set this up, intending to benefit financially from this, is a factor we must address. Full accountability and full sunshine on laws, regulations, budgets, is mandatory.
People like myself who know math and politics screamed bloody murder when Oligarchs placed themselves between student’s money and the school payee. They had scoured the nation for instances where they could insert themselves between a transaction and take just a bit off the top as the dollar passed from one to another. They are EXPERTS at this. $2 to get your money out of a machine? Fees, fees, fees. Always, like the COMPANY STORE, just a small enough amount so that no one squeals and they are off to the races.
They hit a bonanza with the school loan system. Immediately, they demanded interest combinations that rose the ‘small fee’ to large numbers. Using MATH against the people who had oversight. They pushed and pushed and realized they had hit a financial gusher.
But then, the defaults began. These bankers could not HAVE a default so they went to congress, demanding an exception in bankruptcy protections for THEIR scam.
I yelled and yelled that this was VERY bad. In return, I heard citizens say, “If you can’t pay back the money, don’t borrow it!” How sweet, how genuine. How honorable. AND HOW MATH AND COMPUTER DEFICIENT these people were.
They did not understand that removal of bankruptcy protections caused banks to eliminate the vetting process, giving unlimited funds to anyone who asked (much like during the pre-housing-crash era mortgages). No matter the quality of school. No matter the borrower’s future ability to pay it back.
The result of this CORRUPTION (please, let’s call it what it is, it is CORRUPTION, aided and abetted by our CORRUPT campaign finance system that demands politicians belly up to the banker’s gravy train) was rising school prices. RAPIDLY rising school prices that were unlimited, too. Use of funds for sports programs instead of education, massive ballooning of administration budgets, fake educational systems set up primarily to steal school loan dollars, and a general malaise towards any budgetary restraint prevailed and prevail to this day.
The result: an entire generation or two of people who lived their lives way below their capabilities due to debt. Smart, innovative, great Americans working retail just to keep their heads above the Company Store. Heartbreaking how many of these people lived in anger and shame for this situation, many literally DYING with debt on the books HIGHER than when they began. The COMPANY STORE. Just like the coal miners.
I won’t delve deeply into the predatory interest systems set up by the oligarchs but suffice it to say if you begin with a $30,000 debt and pay on it your entire life, dying with a $100,000 debt, something is terribly terribly wrong. Math. Computers. Lack of transparency and accountability. Meanness. Greed.
From “The Debt Trap” by Josh Mitchell: “As she piled new loans on top of old loans, the financial counselors at each school reassured her that student debt was ‘good debt,’ an investment in her future.
Month after month, year after year, she mailed off those payments, each check more than $700. After some 160 checks, she had paid $135,603.34. Most of it, $100,000, went toward interest, padding the profits of Sallie Mae. Her balance now sat at $96,820.”
In the last weeks, I have heard horror story after horror story, previously untold due to shame and fear. The story Josh Mitchell outlines is mild compared to many heartbreaking stories I’ve heard.
This Great School Loan Scam has truly been a tragedy of epic proporation for our middle class, happening right in front of our eyes but hidden by improper shame and guilt, by anguish, by fear. I cannot imagine the true total of the devastation.
Our great President Biden’s forgiveness of part of the debt has opened the torrent of discussion as people awaken to the fact that this is NOT about people not wanting to pay their debts. It is the story of a predatory COMPANY STORE that unbelievably stole TRILLIONS from our middle class over decades, ruining families, futures, hopes, dreams, innovation, and weakening our nation.
This action by President Biden is just the beginning, I am sure. Now that people understand they are not alone in their suffering, now that they see the extent of the devastation, now that they see the scam that was perpetrated, it is time for all good citizens to unite to repair our nation.
The hope is beginning to peek out from behind the dark clouds we have lived under.
Hold hands and stick together, there are many more dark clouds, many more horrific challenges coming.
BUT TOGETHER, WE CAN DO THIS. #BetterTogether
