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It's still a given that a college education means bigger paychecks over a person's lifetime. But as people take on ever greater amounts of student debt to fund school, the wealth they accumulate over their lifetimes is drastically less than people who didn't have to borrow.
A student who takes out $53,000 in debt, the average amount for those attending a four-year public university, will experience a a lifetime loss of wealth totaling $208,000, according to a new report from the think tank Demos. It dives into the long-term costs of rising student debt and finds that for those who carry the $1 trillion in total student debt, their lifetime wealth loss will equal $4 trillion.
Following last week’s report showing that Ohio students who graduate with student loans hold an average debt of nearly $30,000, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) will outline a plan that would help Americans saddled with costly, private student loans refinance to more affordable options. During a news conference call today, Brown discussed how his bill would help individuals reduce their student loan debt by refinancing at no cost to taxpayers.
It's time for the real estate industry -- one of the true 900-pound gorillas in U.S. politics -- to join the battle to reduce student debt burdens. Why? Because the bread-and-butter of that industry, young people who buy new homes, is increasingly threatened by soaring college loans which leaves these potential customers too maxed out to join the "ownership society."
Yesterday, Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker wrote about the new changes in how the Bureau of Economic Affairs calculates GDP. In short, as Bernstein and Baker explain:
The next big campaign finance case to go before the Supreme Court began in February 2012 in the grand ballroom at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel during the "Ronald Reagan Banquet" at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Fast food workers in Detroit and Flint, Mich. participated in the week of rolling fast food strikeson Wednesday, the third straight day of labor activism in what now appears to be the largest industrial action in the industry’s history.
The next big campaign finance case to go before the Supreme Court began in February 2012 in the grand ballroom at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel during the "Ronald Reagan Banquet" at the Conservative Political Action Conference.