But these kids are living in a good economy. College isn't "an education", they already have one. College is additional education that doesn't teach you many skills that will help you find a job. Some majors do, but most don't. If you pick a major that doesn't lead to gainful employment then you are buying a luxury product.
If they were living in a good economy then there wouldn’t be 1,000,000 student loans going into default every year.
Sure corporations are making record profits, but wages have been stagnant for 30-40 years, workers have never seen a higher wage gap, and the economy has the lowest social mobility of any 1st world country.
> the economy has the lowest social mobility of any 1st world country.
I'm not disagreeing with your general point here, but an interesting dimensions to this fact:
There's some recent evidence that social mobility net of transfers in countries at the top of these rankings are no better than the US's. Now obviously the redistribution itself makes a big difference to QoL, but it's an interesting wrinkle in the claim that inequality is driven by skewed access to good schooling, childcare, parental benefits, etc. It seems theoretically obvious, but the data apparently doesnt support it: either a counterfactual Denmark with US policies would have much lower mobility or these investments are ineffective.
I'm still in support of all of these policies, but it is pretty troubling that they don't have the effects you'd expect.
>If they were living in a good economy then there wouldn’t be 1,000,000 student loans going into default every year.
Why? Going to university doesn't guarantee success. They clearly made a bad decision when they took those student loans. In a country where education is subsidized many of them might not have been able to go to university at all.
