Wage inequality, which has led to flat family incomes and has led to $115 billion in federal loans for college. These college loans equal $7 million in student loan defaults and this in turn had led to a new industry which feeds off student loan debt.
The companies are debt collectors who make calls for government contracted debt collectors. The companies making these calls are just one part of a system feeding on federal student loans. There are also debt services, refinance lender firms that help former students avoid defaulting on their loans and for profit schools that makes money as borrowers try to repay more than $1.2 trillion in government backed education debts.
The beneficiaries of the loan programs are for the most part not the students, they are companies like debt services like Affiliated Computer Services Inc. Now part of Xerox Corporation and Education Management Corporation, which operates for for-profit colleges and whose largest shareholder is Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The GOP ensured these corporations will not be bothered by lawsuits or be cheated out of their profits by making it illegal for students to file bankruptcy.
Just think, if all of this money was just used to pay for free education and not to for-profit schools and debt collectors the students would get an education and come out of college debt free and have a chance to get a good paying job and be able to pay taxes and not paying back inflated student loans, which just makes money to Goldman Sachs’ people and Wall Street.
When people start out in their working life straddled with huge debts to repay they cannot purchase anything for their credit is zero. It is like starting out in a foot race and everyone gets a three-year head start. The chances of you winning are against you.
This must change and just chipping away at the problem will take too long. We need to elect people who will change the way things are done now and not engage in slow walking. We need and deserve free education, free healthcare, a $15 an hour minimum wage, the right to form or join a union and card check now.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could be our last hope for a real change before it’s too late.
There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...
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