{"id":1550,"date":"2007-04-17T20:17:32","date_gmt":"2007-04-17T20:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2007-04-17T20:17:32","modified_gmt":"2007-04-17T20:17:32","slug":"a_pound_of_fles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1550","title":{"rendered":"A Pound Of Flesh"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always considered myself a mainstream progressive in most regards. I think free trade is generally a good thing. I don’t have a fundamental dispute with our market-based economy. However, it does seem as if the profit motive is creeping into our daily lives a little more each day and usually not for the better. The unfolding story of the improprieties in the private student loan market<\/a> is a case in point. When I was a law student, I benefited greatly from the federal Direct Loans program. But restrictions on the amount of federal loans that an individual can take out force many students, like my sister, to turn to the private market. And because the private market is largely unregulated and because they are the source of last resort funding for many students, these banks can charge interest rates that will keep these students in debt for most of their working lives. When my sister graduates, she will have the kind of debt load that once could be only be acquired when buying a house. <\/p>\n

A college degree is the most reliable guarantor of higher earning power and a life safely out of poverty. We should be encouraging every kid with the desire and the potential to continue their education. Instead, we expose them to the cold machinations of a banking industry that most definitely does not have their interests at heart. The federal government cannot do everything, but I trust it more than Citibank to provide students with loans that have reasonable rates and repayment schedules.  We should be able to agree that corporations shouldn’t be able to make a buck off the educational aspirations of our citizens. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always considered myself a mainstream progressive in most regards. I think free trade is generally a good thing. I don’t have a fundamental dispute with our market-based economy. However, it does seem as if the profit motive is creeping into our daily lives a little more each day and usually not for the better. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-p0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}