Stimulate The Economy: Forgive Student Loan Debt

by Grace Foster


Sadly, many people, primarily those who struggle to make ends meet while continuing to pay off mountains of student debt, will be left out in the cold. Worse yet, they will be out in the cold with higher tax bills as they struggle to pay for other people's luxury staff retreats, office re-decorations, and foreclosures.

Many of these people I know first hand. They are good friends with whom I went to college, and while we may all be different, we all share one thing in common - we are all paying student loans. We took these student loans out as investments in our futures. It's a slippery and complex slope: you are told to go out and get a degree from a good school, so that you can get the credentials necessary to gain employment after graduation. Unfortunately, this often puts you in debt creating a situation where you have to take a job (any job) just to pay the bills.

Sadly, many of the people I went to college have told me that, if they had it to do all over again, they would have gone to trade school or skipped college all together. Still others, who have a good job and are making ends meet, are still saddled with a huge mountain of education debt that will take over 20 years to repay.

But there is a beacon of hope in all of this, and it is in the form of a Facebook page. Robert Applebaum, an attorney from New York, has come up with an ingenious way to help ease the financial burden of student loans while putting more money into the flagging economy. His Facebook Page, Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy, makes a convincing, common sense argument for why erasing student loans could be a win-win situation for all involved parties.

In a nutshell, Applebaum argues that, by erasing education debt and forgiving student loans, the people who need the money most (hardworking, middle class people saddled with loan payments) will get the relief necessary to create more expendable income every month. After all, a large portion of that $500 that goes towards loan payments could be stimulating the economy trough purchases, vacation, home improvements, etc.

But what about the banks? Is it fair that they should be saddled with canceled student loans? The bailout money that is currently funding the luxury vacations and huge corporate salaries of these banks would be replaced by money used in forgiving student loans. So, rather than getting blank check, the banks would, essentially, be getting a check to make up for the forgiven education loans. It would be money used for good (helping middle class people get out of debt and therefore stimulate the economy) replacing money used for the fiscal irresponsibility that we are seeing now.

The sister site to Applebaum's Facebook page is Kevin Bartoy's petition site called Stimulate the Economy forgive student loans!. At the time I wrote this article, the petition had been going strong for just over a month and already had nearly 25,000 signatures.

The petition will be used to present an argument to political higher-ups, including President Obama, that change is needed - not another continuation of the blank check policy that bails out the corporate elite, but real change that could positively affect the lives of millions of Americans and, in turn, the entire US economy.