The New York Times recently published an op-ed that offered defaulting on your loans as a viable way of escaping student debt. Pretty much everyone disagrees with that.

“It struck me as absurd that one could amass crippling debt as a result, not of drug addiction or reckless borrowing and spending, but of going to college,” Lee Siegel, a journalist based out of Rhode Island, wrote in an essay for The New York Times. “Having opened a new life to me beyond my modest origins, the education system was now going to call in its chits and prevent me from pursuing that new life, simply because I had the misfortune of coming from modest origins.”

The best way to fight back, Siegel explained, was to simply default on his loans. Doing so was his way of discarding “a social arrangement that is legal, but not moral.”

“When the fateful day comes and your credit looks like a war zone, don’t be afraid,” he counseled. “The reported consequences of having no credit are scare talk, to some extent.”

Not everyone’s on board with Siegel’s proposal, however (and he does indeed propose this to be a viable path for others, saying that “the millions of young people today, who collectively owe over $1 trillion in loans may want to consider my example”). Some believe Siegel’s argument is disconnected from the economic realities of poor Americans.

Source: One way to pay back your student loans that you should avoid at all costs | Deseret News

Print PDF