Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans

Chose life, default on your loans:

Years later, I found myself confronted with a choice that too many people have had to and will have to face. I could give up what had become my vocation (in my case, being a writer) and take a job that I didn’t want in order to repay the huge debt I had accumulated in college and graduate school. Or I could take what I had been led to believe was both the morally and legally reprehensible step of defaulting on my student loans, which was the only way I could survive without wasting my life in a job that had nothing to do with my particular usefulness to society.

I chose life. That is to say, I defaulted on my student loans.

As difficult as it has been, I’ve never looked back. The millions of young people today, who collectively owe over $1 trillion in loans, may want to consider my example.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/o...contentCollection=Most Emailed&pgtype=article

 

It's a sound business choice, largely because the penalties aren't all that severe. No different from people making a sound business choice to walk away from a million-dollar mortgage or companies declaring one bankruptcy after another to restructure their debts.

If it reins in the out-of-control industry of student loans, all the better.

 

Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual are asking this dude, "What took you so long?"

 

I get that it's a business decision, but I'm not totally comfortable with what I detect as an increasingly prevalent attitude that people shouldn't be expected to live up to their agreements and obligations.

 

I get what you're saying. But there's a consequence. It's a choice. I look at it like a coach breaking a contract with a buyout.

 

The author mockingly states that the banks from which he took out the loans "have all gone under."

Yeah, deadbeat, because people like you stole money and didn't give it back.

 

LOL yeah that's why the banks went under.

That's a huge old DERP.

 

Vox isn't so sure it's a good business decision:
A New York Times op-ed says you should default on student loans. That's a terrible idea. - Vox

One of the reasons:

 

Yeah. Mostly I just wanted to punch the author in the throat for saying entitled shit like:

 

You signed your name at the bottom of the line. You owe it. You're free to renege on the deal -- and suffer the consequences -- but spare me your rationalization and your preening. And don't think I don't know that you know that someone else is paying your freight.

 

Oh, bullshit.

He made a decision based upon the market within which he operates, within which all of us with student loans operates. Don't want him and others to make that decision? Change the damned incentives then.

Since when does a libertarian get self-righteous about someone making a decision out of self-interest?

You're the one who, days ago, was lambasting anyone who deigned to criticize Woolworth D. Moneybags for donating $400 million to Harvard.