
Debt Dodgers: Americans Who Moved to Europe and Went AWOL on Their Student Loans - breitling
http://www.vice.com/read/talking-to-american-debt-dodgers-who-moved-to-europe-to-avoid-paying-off-their-student-loans-111
======
ChuckMcM
_" I think at this point I owe about $40,000. I really, truly, honestly don't
want to pay it back. Sure, I realize the responsibility I took on when I
signed the papers and agreed to take out the loans, but I should have never
had to do it in the first place. I feel some sort of civic duty not to pay
them back, as if my small protest will make any kind of difference."_

When I read a comment like that I really want to grab this person by the
collar and shake some sense into them. I know many people of similar age who
are actually responsible and either didn't take loans they couldn't afford, or
are paying off the loans they did take out, and yet they don't get written up
about, instead we leave the rest of the world with this impression. So sad on
so many levels.

~~~
brudgers
I'm sure that if people could discharge their student loans via bankruptcy,
many would. They can't. The basis of our economic system is that fees and
interest offset the risk in a loan. With student loans they don't, they're the
bank's cut of a system that transfers all the economic risk to a cohort in
which desperate straights are the norm.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I agree with this, and I think "Student Loans" are the subprime mortgage
crisis of the hour. I get particularly incensed when we read reports of for
profit universities convincing kids they will have great job prospects if they
get their diploma and will be able to pay off any loans they get now. The
banks collude with them because as you mention they aren't really pricing
risk, there is no risk, they are just taking 0% interest money from the Fed
and converting it into 8% interest money from delinquent student loans.

But that said, I would hope that people have enough responsibility to only
take loans they intend to repay, and to work within the system to repay them,
rather than assert after the fact that the system is broken and so the tax
payers should bail them out.

~~~
brudgers
I haven't had a new student loan since the 1990's so I may be wrong in
assuming that the terms of student loans have not improved, But during the
seventeen years between taking my first and last, there was always a 5%
origination fee on top of the interest. Those came off the top before the
school deducted their cut.

I'll add that as an 18 year old, I had no concept of what borrowing the
money...a whopping $1500 which was half of one semester's tuition at a private
university...meant. I wasn't sober enough to handle that sort of
responsibility for another several years.

The system isn't broken. It's become corrupt. Banning discharge via bankruptcy
was sold by saying that doctors and lawyers were the primary source of
defaults on student loans. That's not the case today, and the student loan
industry is largely built on reselling loans and collections.

The system is designed to leverage massive asymmetry at every point. Even down
to, "why aren't you taking out a loan to insure your child receives the
education they deserve?"

------
methodover
I just finished off paying my student loans. They were around 20k or so. Half
of that with an interest rate of 6.8%. Took me about 7 years.

My initial reaction is, fuck these guys. They're leeches. They agreed to pay
back the cost of thier tuition and they aren't. It's totally unfair that I
paid my loans, but they didn't pay theirs.

------
AureliaDalek
These people seem crazy to me, since 40k is a pretty manageable amount to pay
off in 10 years. Even with interest, it's not more than 6-8k per year, max. I
was expecting this article to have examples of people who were 200k+ in debt.
I'm more sympathetic to those people, under the argument that they were too
naive and should never have been given the loans in the first place. But 40k?
That's reasonable, if you ask me. High, yes. But perfectly possible to pay
back.

------
pantalaimon
Back when there was still the wall, people would move Berlin to avoid
conscription - good to see someone is keeping the tradition alive ;)

