March 18, 2015
Page 7
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O PINION
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What do we
Americans
truly value?
M ARIAN W RIGHT E DELMAN
What do we stand for
as a nation and who do
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speech at the University
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Kennedy correctly wor-
ried too many used our
nation’s wealth as the
standard of greatness rather th
than
the human values that should mat-
ter most.
Our Gross Domestic Product
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many things for us not to be proud
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how well America is doing on the
things that should matter most—
the well-being of our children and
families and the quality of justice
and life in our communities and
nation?
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Among high-income countries
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in the number of billionaires, and
second worst in child poverty rates
– ahead only of Romania whose
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t than ours. It is a na-
t tional disgrace that
c children are the poor-
e est group of Ameri-
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l living in poverty.
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military spending —
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military weapons exports.
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people incarcerated and worst in
protecting our children against
gun violence. A black boy born in
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going to prison in his lifetime and
a Latino boy a one in six chance of
the same fate. Children and teens
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likely to be killed by gun violence
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come countries combined.
We are 30th in preschool en-
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math scores for our 15-year-olds.
Nearly 60 percent of all fourth and
eighth grade public school stu-
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those same grades could not read
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rates, 31st in infant mortality
rates, and second worst in teenage
births – just ahead of Bulgaria.
If we compare black child
well-being in America to child
well-being in other nations, the
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exceeds that in 65 nations includ-
ing Cuba, Malaysia, and Ukraine.
Our incidence of low-birth weight
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other nations including Cambo-
dia, the Congo, and Guatemala.
The United Nations Conven-
tion on the Rights of the Child
spells out the basic rights children
should have everywhere and is the
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international human rights treaty
in history. For years the United
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no recognized government, were
the only United Nations members
that had failed to ratify the con-
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only with new U.N. member state
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despite recent progress, in still
permitting
life-without-parole
sentences for juvenile offenders
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Court has banned capital punish-
ment for crimes committed by ju-
veniles but America remains one
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capital punishment for adults. In
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est number of executions — after
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and North Korea.
If America wants to be a truly
great nation on the world stage,
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of our success. The litmus test I
propose is that of the great Ger-
man Protestant theologian Di-
etrich Bonhoeffer, executed for
opposing Hitler’s holocaust, who
said “the test of the morality of a
society is what it does for its chil-
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president Nelson Mandela agreed
with him and believed “there can
be no keener revelation of a soci-
ety’s soul than the way in which it
treats its children.”
On the Bonhoeffer-Mandela
measure of success, we must do
much, much better.
Marian Wright Edelman is
president of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.
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The time bomb
of student debt
C HUCK C OLLINS
There’s a gener-
ational time-bomb
ticking — and the
student debt crisis is
the trip wire.
Adults under 35
disproportionately
bear the brunt of es-
calating inequality.
America’s educated youth are
graduating into an economy with
stagnant wages and a torn safety
net. Federal and state budget cuts,
meanwhile, have spiked tuition
costs and cut public services that
aid young workers, such as trans-
portation and affordable housing.
A rumble of legitimate dis-
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million Americans saddled with
student debt totaling $1.16 tril-
lion — a number expected to
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College debt now touches one in
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total credit card indebtedness.
The most frustrated students
are blocking highways over tui-
tion hikes. Others are launching
“debt strikes” by refusing to pay
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them.
Many more are defaulting af-
ter facing the stressful realization
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enough to repay their debt. Over
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half of outstanding student loans
are presently in deferral, delin-
quency, or default.
The student debt debacle has
h
huge
implications for the
f
future.
The average col-
l
lege
graduate is now almost
$
$30,000
underwater, with
s
some
on the hook for over
$
$100,000.
This debt keeps young
p
people
from starting fami-
lies
lies, b buying houses, and taking
risks on new businesses. It also
exacerbates the growing problem
of wealth inequality and declin-
ing social mobility, since it gives
debt-free graduates from wealth-
ier families an enormous head
start over their peers.
Many baby boomers without
kids in college don’t fully appre-
ciate how the economy is tilted
against the rising generation —
or how much higher education
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vious generations.
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have risen over 1,000 percent,
while state funding of universi-
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And the proportion of young
Americans with education debt
more than quadrupled, from 5
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The powerful student loan
industry lobbied for — and got
— draconian laws that penalize
student debtors more than people
holding mortgages, car loans, or
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nish young graduates’ wages and
disability payments to get their
due.
And not even bankruptcy can
cancel out these loans.
In some states, student debt-
ors who fall into default can lose
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and even their driver’s licenses.
Imagine borrowing money to get
a nursing or cosmetology degree,
falling behind in your payments,
and having your source of liveli-
hood revoked.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Other countries have offered free
public higher education for de-
cades.
In the 30 years after World
War II, the government expand-
ed access to debt-free college for
millions of Americans. These in-
cluded GI Bill recipients, but also
millions of men and women with-
out military service records who
attended the great public univer-
sities of our land, paying a tuition
bill they could afford with only a
summer job.
Lawmakers should reverse
the cycle of state budget cuts in
higher education that shift tui-
tion costs onto students and their
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states are considering creating
“opportunity trust funds,” capi-
talized by state estate taxes on the
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free public education.
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movement calls on Congress to
spend an additional $15 billion
a year to make public education
free. They could accomplish this
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and the parasitical college loan
industry, and by simplifying the
existing labyrinth of education
subsidies.
The vast majority of college
debtors still suffer in isolation,
viewing their struggle as a per-
sonal problem, not a societal is-
sue. But this is about to change.
When college debt borrowers
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muscles, they’ll be a force to be
reckoned with.
Chuck Collins is a senior
scholar at the Institute for Pol-
icy Studies and co-author, with
Bill Gates Sr., of Wealth and Our
Commonwealth: Why America
Should Tax Accumulated For-
tunes.
The Law Offices of
Patrick John Sweeney, P.C.
Patrick John Sweeney
Attorney at Law
1549 SE Ladd
Portland, Oregon
Portland:
Hillsoboro:
Facsimile:
Email:
(503) 244-2080
(503) 244-2081
(503) 244-2084
Sweeney@PDXLawyer.com
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