Generosity or system flaw?

The past Sunday, an American billionaire named Robert F Smith pledged to rid the Morehouse College students of their student loans. These students would join the American workforce unburdened by the student loan, which is an obnoxious reality of the American education. But the rest of the American students who have borrowed to pay for their education would join the workforce where they won’t be able to raise crucial questions or question the status quo unless they want to be immediately reminded of how much they need the paycheck the system pays, to pay off the loan. It is a funny system; wealthy parents throw millions to help land their undeserving children in places such as Stanford and Yale, whilst poor yet capable students have to behave as uneducated non-debating souls after they have achieved a college education.

I am personally not enthused by this act of generosity. It is reminiscent of how in a much-covered ceremony, the American president every year pardons a turkey and then right after that so many other turkeys are killed and eaten in America. The very system that creates billionaires, that created the dwindling middle class, created the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor who can’t even live by with their declining wages, is responsible for creating an American student body shackled by debt. The billionaire who pledged to pay off those students’ loans is part of the system that created the situation in which the majority of the American students find themselves in after graduating.

Seeing this billionaire indulging in charitable act should not be seen as a great gesture but rather understood to be a deep flaw in the system. A mind-boggling reduction in income tax for the super-rich has created a class of billionaires which represent the one per cent tiny minority of the Americans. Mr Smith’s fortune is a product of that very system. The billions earned are in part from a provision in the federal income tax law called the “carried interest loophole”. That loophole is projected to cost the US government about $15.6 billion of lost revenue between 2016 and 2025. Undoing that loophole would pay for many students’ education. Tweaking the system would do the job, not pardoning the few turkeys.

One of the disgusting things to watch and read about this news report was the media hailing it as this great act of kindness. In reality, it helps to deeply internalise this concept to take what you can and think for yourself only. In a different country, students would have welcomed the money but felt upset at their fate. The American students felt overjoyed with their sheer luck. It may appear to be an act of solidarity on the surface but in reality flies in the face of it. But that is the whole idea of crony capitalism anyway; creating winners and losers. It does not believe in the equitable redistribution of wealth in society.

Americans who joined the workforce during the 90s were more likely to have college degrees than their peers in other developed nations. That has changed and now the United States has fallen behind. One reason is the humongous cost of getting that degree. Over the last 25 years, average tuition cost has increased by 85 %.

In the wealthiest country on the planet, people shouldn’t have to rely on acts of generosity by the super-rich to pay for their education. Student loan creates a culture of discipline — a word I came to despise after I saw firsthand the intellectually bankrupt American students in various colleges and universities. The mindset is: don’t ask too many questions, just keep your head down, follow the system and you would be alright. That doesn’t sound like education to me, but rather an overpriced certificate of modern slavery.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2019.

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