> Yes, I lived it. I felt the pressure too. I even remember having to endure a phone call with an adult family friend who was practically crying because I wasn't going to college. That was painfully uncomfortable, and illustrative of just how stupid it was getting. But I can also do math... Facts and logic supersede any attempts to pull at heartstrings.

Given your exceptional mathematical abilities, you'll probably appreciate that the median lifetime earnings are $655k more for men with a bachelor's degree than those who only have a high school diploma when controlled for other factors[0]. Of course, that doesn't come all at once, and that only equals a 3/2 in the average American city + maybe one kid.

>I'm not sure this stands up. The majority of people in that cohort did not attend college during that time. Nor did the equivalent cohort before and not today either. You seem to be living in a bubble. Yeah, maybe a small group of people were banished from their parents wings and would have otherwise been left the streets if they weren't able to secure student loans to cover the cost of rent, but this can't be any meaningful chunk of the population. Especially when you consider that college students, statistically, come from the wealthiest families. Furthermore, the recovery from that economic decline is considered to have taken only two years from crash to full recovery. One wouldn't have needed to rack up that much debt at a budget school before they were able to get back on their feet.

This is a view of college attendance that is stuck in 1965. Degree attainment is now far less concentrated in the upper class. Roughly four-in-ten Millennials have a bachelor's degree or higher [1]. This doesn't include those with either an associate's degree or those who didn't finish their degree, so it might not be inaccurate to say that over half of Millennials set foot in a college classroom for a course they paid for. Also, if they're from the wealthiest families, why are they having to take out student loans?

I'm happy for the people who saw the effects of the financial crash end in two years, but $20 says they weren't fresh out of high school.

>Right, so free up mortgage debt, then. It's not great either, but I think we can at least agree that we want people to keep on having homes. We don't want people to continue to waste their time in college. If you perversely send the message that it's okay to waste that time because someone else will pay for it, people will keep on doing it. Bad actions need consequences.

It's not within the Federal government's jurisdiction to relieve a major tranche of mortgage debt. I can't find a statistic for how much of it is publicly held but most mortgages in the United States are held by non-governmental institutions like banks and credit unions. Student loan debt is another story; ~92% of student loan debt in the United States is paid to the federal government.[2] Recent attempts to renegotiate or forgive these loans have been in accordance with requirements on how much of the loan has been paid, among other things. In effect, the US government, with President Biden as its bank president, is willing to renegotiate the terms of student loans it created.

>No, the problem is clearly those who didn't do the math. Even after I warned them[1]! This outcome was painfully obvious even in the 90s. But, okay, explain to me why my sacrifice in skipping out on the fun of college in order to build wealth should come with even more sacrifice so that those who chose fun get to keep on having fun? When is my time to have fun? Why do you want to punish me for doing the 'right' thing?

You keep talking about the "fun" of college, like it's a four-year vacation. It's not. It's splitting the healthiest, most energetic years of your life between working low-wage jobs and doing a full course load. It's walking around like a zombie because you haven't slept for three days because you have end-of-semester projects to do so you can pass your classes. It's not the National Lampoon movies where it's a constant party house filled with cute girls who want to sleep with you. You made a bet that not pursuing a degree would pay off for you. Congratulations, it did. As I mentioned earlier, statistically, you're an anomaly. Most people who don't advance beyond a high school diploma struggle with their careers. It's completely understandable, given this information and the massive social pressure to get a degree, that young people would take out loans to study. Furthermore, this isn't you being "punished". Well, no more than you already are living in a country that, for the last fifty years, has had its government dominated by an entitled, spendthrift generation that has racked up an insane amount of debt while outright refusing tax increases to pay any of it off.

Sorry, the economics of screwing over 42 million Americans so you can stick it to those who believed in "book lernin" just don't work out.

[0]https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education...
[1]https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/02/14/millenn...
[2]https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics