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The federal government has, in recent years, paid debt collectors close to $1 billion annually to help distressed borrowers climb out of default and scrounge up regular monthly payments. New government figures suggest much of that money may have been wasted.
Nearly half of defaulted student-loan borrowers who worked with debt collectors to return to good standing on their loans defaulted again within three years, according to an analysis by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For their work, debt collectors receive up to $1,710 in payment from the U.S. Department of Education each time a borrower makes good on soured debt through a process known as rehabilitation. They keep those funds even if borrowers subsequently default again, contracts show. The department has earmarked more than $4.2 billion for payments to its debt collectors since the start of the 2013 fiscal year, federal spending data show.
[...] Officials at the CFPB say the government should reexamine whether the loan program, and the lucrative contracts it bestows on private firms, is working for the millions of Americans struggling to repay their taxpayer-backed student debt.
"When student loan companies know that nearly half of their highest-risk customers will quickly fail, it's time to fix the broken system that makes this possible," said Seth Frotman, the consumer bureau's top student-loan official.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:04AM (1 child)
No no, it is their moral and character failings! /s
We have a major problem with the boomer generation having had it way too easy for way too long (compared to now) without requiring higher levels of education. We now have a way higher percentage of young people that are quite highly educated, and thanks to the internet much better informed about actual reality. Couple that with a country that has been steadily being robbed blind for the last 40-50 years and we have the problems of stress and depression becoming much more widespread. The older generation, and those who blindly listen to them, are usually not educated enough to understand these patterns and so they find it easier to blame the people. It is a convenient scapegoat which is promoted through media to further the cultural divide.
Go go conservative fucktards! Blame the victims as usual, believe the propaganda which prevents us from fixing the broken systems. At least you lot occasionally have some historical perspective, such as jmorris above who actually had a decent point for once about government making the student debt problem worse. Sadly you're smart enough to see some problems, but dumb / uneducated / close minded enough to believe propaganda. There are liberals who unnecessarily boost the hate train as well, but like it or not the main problem is the conservative population in the US. As a liberal I'm tired of trying to play the compromise game, having my empathy played as some sociological strategy has gotten old. I intentionally added the "liberal hate" sentence above to head off the conservative response of "boo hoo liberals can be mean and stupid toooo!" but make no mistake, conservatives are the ones who won't compromise and have steadily been unable to stop the GOP from passing more and more evil legislation.
Until you conservatives can do the necessary self-reflection and see that your hate is guiding you're reason instead of the other way around we are doomed to major problems. My only hope is that Trump will finally unite a majority and we can reverse the horrifying wrongs of the last many decades. The conservatives that do unite for the greater good will be the ones that do realize we still have massive problems with bigotry and racism, and they will finally stand against their hateful neighbors and actually embody the teachings of Jesus.
For the atheistic libertarians, I don't know what your solution will look like. Maybe just spend a year pretending to be a liberal and researching such viewpoints. You'll probably find a lot of information that isn't partisan but that you've ignored because it goes against your personal beliefs, and then you'll move away from the fringe lunacy of pure libertarianism / anarchy.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:54PM
The alliance is shaky and in group politics the usual response is circling the wagons.
Both parties are going thru a re-alignment.
The D are jettisoning the legacy white limousine liberal types and going full on anti-white racial identity politics while the extremists have exceeded cultural escape velocity and make a great punchline for Trump winning over and over and over.
Meanwhile the R party is in turmoil between the legacy libertarians and neocons who are anti-populist and the right wing populist "just call them nat soc". Right wing populism is a funny thing where the opponents deride the legacy R party for being anti-populist, then the Trumpenfuhrer God Emperor arrives and starts dropping bombs like at that union meeting he called the new Republican party "the american workers party" and the media flipped out. That was awesome... He's not far enough right and not populist enough, but the next guy, whoever that is, thats gonna be a good one.
It seems likely the political borders in the 2020s are going to be something like the white alt-right nationalists vs the aggressively anti-white progressives.