If students are saddled with huge debt

[applegrove]

when they go to university will they become adults who resent paying taxes a great deal while they pay off their student loans? I‘m actually wondering what the reason is for such high debt burden these days. Is it social engineering if young to mid aged adults, who are no longer helped much with college costs by government, see and resent taxes for a government that didn‘t help them? I mean they‘ll look at their pay stubb bi-weely and see it all going to pay off loans and to pay taxes. That is free ‘advertising‘ for the GOP cause. Bi-weekly.

[Warpy]

1. The reason for that high debt burden is because their parents saw their wages depressed

over the last 40 years thanks to the policies of conservatives in both parties who blamed labor for inflation.

Now 1% of the population has grabbed most of the wealth away from the middle and working class, nudging each down a class in the process and making it impossible for them to send their children to a state college without having them incur a great deal of debt in the process.

Graduates these days with that enormous debt burden are going to find their working lives governed by debt peonage, unable to do things we've taken for granted like buying a house, quitting a job and taking their time to find a better one, or even marrying and thinking about having children.

Revolutions throughout history have come because the bulk of the population has been forced into debt peonage. The revolution wrested wealth (and sometimes heads) from the most egregious aristocrats to cancel the debt and the whole process started again.

We're due for one here. Let's just hope it's another peaceful one, the violent ones don't often work all that well.

[applegrove]

2. Oh I don‘t think for a second there

will be a revolution. The public is getting wiser to the GOP , ALEC & the think tanks plans for a permanent GOP USA. People are waking up and ready to vote that way.

[Swede Atlanta]

5. I hope you are correct but.....

as long as Citizen's United stands the 1% will continue to control the debate and our government.

Despite what can be seen as defeat in the 2012 Presidential election, they are just fine-tuning how they will continue to dominate the public debate and direction.

The 1% will continue to fund nearly all of the federal campaigns and in key states the races for governor and control of the instruments of state government.

They will buy the airwaves and newspapers so reasonable, rational debate is drowned out.

They will buy influence with lobbyists and congressional junkets.

I do hope the American people are beginning to wake up but I fear the conquest of our political system by the 1% is nearly complete.

[Warpy]

6. Yes, but will the Democrats be allowed to be Democrats?

That's the revolution that needs to happen, not just a switch of mascot on the campaign literature.

The Third Way/Wall Street Democrats represent business as usual, and don't forget it.

[Gravitycollapse]

3. Arizona State University had its public funding cut by 40% in a single year...

Want to know why our debt burden is so high? Our university stopped funding our education. On top of that, as a result of the cuts, our tuition has increased by 100+%.

Our only feasible option is to take out more student loans. And as the price of our education goes up, as we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into an unresolvable crisis, we must dig even deeper hoping that one day we break out to the other side.

We know the enemy: They are the Republicans who took our fiscal support structure away.

[Recursion]

4. I think it's just that that's where the money is

We subsidize higher education in a particularly stupid way that doesn't give colleges any incentives to keep costs down.

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. Neo-feudalism.

Put yourself in the place of an owner and think about it. You're young and educated and have (hopefully) acquired the knowledge and thinking skills to achieve a measure of freedom. Free people make decisions about how they wish to live and many of them will choose to do something other than what the owners want them to do.

California built one of, if not the, best education systems in the world and made it free to residents for a generation. That one generation of Californians changed the world in virtually every field. Philosophy, Medicine, Sociology, Science, Technology, Politics, Art, Literature, etc. They intruded on and forever exposed a world that had been the exclusive province of the ruling class. Worse, they rejected just about all of the notions that that system of authority is based on. They proved that the commoners were not only equal in capability, but that through sheer numbers produced more and better leaders than the established ruling class. One generation from one large state threatened the entire social order.

So what better way to control the young, than to saddle them with large, inescapable debts that will force them to limit their options?