Give a Man a Solar Lamp

So how many times have you heard the cheap bastards proclaim

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Of course they do neither, but they belittle those who help daily.

Talking about getting useful power to the really poor and isolated people in the world, it occurred to Eli that

Give a man a kerosine lantern and he needs to go out and buy more fuel forever. Give him a solar lamp and he has light for a lifetime

Eli Rabett's Simple Plan to Relieve the Burdens of Student Loans

 Student loans are forever with us, many never are able to pay them off. Recognizing that this sad situation is a result of shifting the expense of education from the public purse (yeah it used to cost only a few buck to go to some pretty good places like the UCs, William and Mary, etc and even the privates were a lot less expensive) to the students' pocketbooks. Especially viscious is the cost of professional education, law,  medical schools, and grad school if there are no grants around to support Research Assistantships.

So comes Joe Biden with a plan to foregive $10K of student debt.Well one good thing that the Bidens have already done is to turbocharge the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program after the Trump, deVos disaster years. Eli's social media feed is full of former students who now see $0 on their balance. As one of them wrote

After 20 years of federal service and multiple tries at getting into the program I was finally approved and have a $0 balance. It feels absolutely amazing to be free of student loan debt.

To qualify you have to 

be employed by a U.S. federal, state, local, or tribal government or not-for-profit organization (federal service includes U.S. military service);

work full-time for that agency or organization;

have Direct Loans (or consolidate other federal student loans into a Direct Loan);

repay your loans under an income-driven repayment plan*; and

make 120 qualifying payments.

 and meet these requirements before the Republicans get back in and tank the program again.

But it looks like Biden is going to also foregive $10K of student load debt per person. That will zero out loans for the third of borrowers who have a debt of $10K and more than halve the burden for the 20% with debt between $10K and $20K.

But what about those with substantial debt. Well Eli has a plan. 

First, inflation is going to help with a bunch of that. 

Second, how about dropping the interest rate on Federally held loans by a couple of percentage points and allowing those with private loans to refinance.

Remember, Eli's simple plans are always best