It’s kind of shocking we haven’t seen more violence and unrest with this sort of thing happening.

I put myself through college, graduating with a reasonable $40,000 in debt and an education degree right into the beginning of the recession. The debt has ballooned, after I’ve gotten halfway through a master’s degree, to about $70,000, despite my paying it back for almost 15 years.

Is there any world where $40K in debt balloons into $70K is just? Fair? Reasonable? If you think so, I don’t want to live in your world.

At this point my payments don’t even cover the interest. It’s so, so far gone. And there’s no getting out of it. It’s like a black cloud over your head.

I’ve met more than one person who just stopped paying their student loans as there was no hope of every amortizing them. Yet another sign of a failed state.

Though I wish the pandemic and the Great Recession a decade ago had never occurred, one feature of crises is that they allow you to see who is all hat, no cattle. It is revelatory. You learn so much, mostly that other people cannot think their way out of a cardboard box with one end open.

I don’t wish these times on anyone. But they are useful to me because I’m not imprisoned by cardboard.