Letters to the Editor
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mortgages, student loans
I agree with Stellaa that job creation is a better way to spend the money. I think the cliche "give a man a fish, teach a man to fish" needs to be taken to the next level, where that guy who learned how to fish can then buy a boat, having that much broader an impact on the economy.
It seems fairly recent that students who graduate from colleges come out with crippling student loans and, at the same time, we have the lending organizations making amazing profits. Higher education was previously largely subsidized, but now there seems to have been some major policy shift to force the middle class (and poor) to bear the burden of their own education so that they can then compete for jobs serving the wealthy. Perhaps the tax money is being diverted to military adventures (again, serving interests of the wealthiest, while the real cost is paid by the poor and middle class who actually get killed).
If markets were more local, it might matter that most of the population gets the short end of the stick--people who went to college and work real jobs still can't afford both an education and a car-- but the markets are global. And, besides, if you are in the business of lending money, it's probably just as well that they system keeps people in debt. It seems like I read about this in high school history class--how the landowner would rent land to the sharecroppers, but force them to buy seed and supplies on credit, and at the end of the year, the sharecroppers were somehow always in debt.
People talk about how the USA is killing off its middle class (calling it "Brazilification"). Well, it doesn't hurt the wealthy at all if this happens. The only thing that would stop it is a major political action. The New Deal only happened because the rich were terrified that, if they didn't do something, the USA would go communist. I'm not saying communism is the way to go, but you gotta scare the wealthy if you want results.