I believe the question is not to compare student debt with business debt but to determine what we as a nation should be investing in.
Do we want a highly educated population or not? I think it is a good thing for a nation. As such, I believe public college should be paid for through tax dollars and free for students to use. I would suggest that we also create public trade schools that are also paid for the same way. Such that our society is making an investment in our future.
Private colleges are a bit different. I'm not sure how they should be handled but that is a discussion to have.
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But, if you want to discuss education loans vs business loans, let us do that. If the electrician company goes out of business they have assets to sell and can declare bankruptcy. The owner might walk away with nothing, but he walks away.
The student has no assets to sell off, no collateral against their debt. Worse, in most cases the debt is not discharged through bankruptcy. The student can never walk away. It is there forever unless it is paid off.
And with rising education costs, these loans stay with people for decades. Restricting their purchase power and hindering their forward momentum in life. All because they did what the grown ups told them they were supposed to do.
These education debts have economically crippled a couple generations now and it's only going to get worse.
I think the most pathetic thing is that the right wing wants college debt to be crippling. They don't want kids going to college because being educated is usually not a good thing for the policies the right wants to promote. So they find all manner of other excuses and poor comparisons to try to justify killing public education.
