The Obama administration is working on putting aside the federal student debt of almost half a million disabled citizens. Apparently, the law already provided for the discharge of the debt but until now it was up to each individual to figure out how to apply for relief. Now the process is being made automatic, based on Social Security disability status.
Wouldn’t it be better if there wasn’t so much debt to dismiss?
Let’s talk about college tuition!
We’re due for an update. The last time I worked out how bad tuition has become was about nine years ago. I compared the cost for me as a Washington state resident to attend the University of Washington for three quarters in 1967, to the cost it would have been in 2007. Then I adjusted for inflation.
I found out the tuition had increased by three-fold in terms of actual spending power.
Surprise! It’s worse now. By a lot.
In just nine years, the cost of in-state tuition has surged by 60 percent more, even after adjusting for inflation. In terms of spending power, students today have to put out 4.8 times as much money for college as I had to 49 years ago.
I like to bring this up from time to time not because I want to gloat about how easy I had it, but because I want people to get angry about it.
I want people to say, “No fair! That this crazy columnist guy got to go to college for four years, even though all he ever had was a live-in job that paid $50 dollars a week, even though he never had to take out a student loan, while I’m still paying for mine and will be until I’m dead twice over.”
I want people to take that anger and turn it around.
I want people to demand to have what I had.
Why shouldn’t you?
Aren’t you worth it?
Ask yourself, why isn’t tuition now as low as it was when I was 18? What changed? How can we change it back?
We make a big deal here at Real Change about homelessness. Homelessness is bad. OK?
But it’s important to step back now and then and realize that we are all getting shafted. The same forces that are eradicating affordable housing everywhere in Seattle are also jacking up tuitions and forcing the students from working-class families to take out loans that they will be paying off for decades if not for the rest of their lives.
It’s not that funding for housing and education couldn’t be found, it’s that the funds that might have gone to serve those needs get used to build more prisons and to keep insurance company profits up. Priorities are skewed.
Every dollar that is spent on creating housing and educational opportunities earns a return.
You can’t go wrong investing in people’s futures.
There’s no downside.
Homelessness is bad, not just because it’s bad for the people who are homeless and have to go through it. It’s bad because it’s a waste.
We are literally wasting talent. We’re wasting human potential that could be invested in for the benefit of everyone. The same exact mistake we make when we don’t invest in higher education.
I asked what changed.
I will tell you the main thing that I think changed.
In 1967, as few as 200 students at the UW were Black.
As the numbers grew, due to civil rights gains, interest in subsidizing higher education happened to drop.
In 1967, neighborhoods were more divided by race than now. As people of color moved into traditionally White neighborhoods, White people wanted costlier neighborhoods.
The higher costs of education and housing are there to erect barriers to replace those that the civil rights legislation tried to end.
Tuition and housing are up, to try to keep out people who used to be kept out by decree.
That is, those who haven’t yet been locked up.
Racism is destroying this country.