The majority of college students across the U.S. seem to share a pretty large aspect of life after getting their degree: crippling debt.
It’s something everyone would love to avoid, right? I mean, who wouldn’t want to use their paycheck to comfortably pay for things like a home with four walls and a roof, a weekly Chipotle burrito and a new chew toy for your Basset Hound named Rupert? You may be able to do so anyway, but thousands and thousands of dollars in student loan debt is hanging over your head.
Last Thursday, we learned of a group of millennial activists who want to solve your inevitable future money problems: the members of the Million Student March.
#MillionStudentMarch activists have 3 major messages they want people to hear from them. They are calling for tuition-free public colleges, cancellation of all student debt and a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers.
Seems like a dream come true! There’s just one small problem, though. There is a visible divide between people who fully support the proposals and those who are staunch opponents of them. Needless to say, it has caused a lot of people to butt heads, most notably, liberals and conservatives. So, what exactly do their ideas mean?
Lately we’ve been hearing about states putting a $15 minimum wage on their next election ballot. The reasoning behind it is that it will create a chain-reaction of prosperity, so to speak. If you increase a worker’s salary per hour, they will be a bit more happy to do their job, giving customers a better experience and creating more revenue for that business through spreading good word and gaining new regulars. It makes logical sense, which is why many a victory has been handed out to certain parts of the country. For instance, Seattle has been talked about frequently due to their minimum wage increase; voting to raise it to $15/hour by 2017. That may sound scary to some, until they find out that it’s a gradual increase, not immediate, and that it excludes businesses with less than 500 employees. Those businesses have the ability to raise their minimum wage over a longer period of time (by 2021) to ensure that they stay in business. So far, Seattle has been rated one of the best places to live in and work in as a result of the increase.
San Francisco raised the minimum wage a little differently, and it is where we see the negative effects of the increase. Come the new year, their minimum wage will be no lower than $12.25, and by 2018, no lower than $15. There was a notable casualty along the way. A local bookstore could barely keep its doors open because it could not keep up with the demand of the wage hike.
Because of instances like San Francisco, cities have put the question in the rejected pile. Cities including Portland, Maine earlier this month and Kansas City, Missouri last September, both turned down the $15/hour proposal. There is good reasoning behind that, too. If you raise the minimum wage, there will be more potential to see businesses following a failing path similar to the bookstore in San Francisco. That would lead to laying off workers and seeing a rise in unemployment which is not what anybody wants.
The Million Student March also wants all student debt to cease to exist, and I don’t blame them one bit. Student debt has nearly doubled in the past decade, from $600 billion in 2006 to over $1 trillion currently. We have the forever-increasing average tuition rate to thank for that. Presidential candidates plan on tackling the issue of crippling debt if elected. The infamous bae-of-the-millennium Senator Bernie Sanders calls for the elimination of student debt through free public college tuition, another thing the Million Student Marchers want to see happen. Former Secretary Hillary Clinton and Senator Marco Rubio both have tossed around the idea that they would implement income-based loan repayment plans.
The most skepticism coming from the March, without a doubt, is the notion of tuition-free public college. A fair amount of questions are being tossed around on this topic. The first noticeable hand to be raised came from Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto. If you have no idea who this man is, you probably saw him moderate the GOP debate last week (if you could bear to watch it…I couldn’t). He asked one of the March organizers, Keely Mullen, a graduate student from Northeastern, “how’s that going to be paid [for]”? Her answer was the equivalent of what virtually everyone else deep down feels when he or she thinks about that question: confused and discombobulated. Because how will we actually pay for it? Both Mullen and Senator Sanders have stated that they want to see the top one percent’s raised tax rate pay for it, which is plausible given the fact that they do actually have more money than the rest of the 99% combined (my Bernie 2016 bias isn’t that noticeable, right?). But there is lots of opposition to that plan. It seems like there is a lot more to it, which there definitely is. But I’ll leave a Harvard economist to that task.
So really, the #MillionStudentMarch is doing us a favor. They're getting us to talk about those ideas and consider them. They got me thinking about it for sure. Even if people like Neil Cavuto can bash on Keely on not having a thorough payment plan, give her and the marchers some credit. They have got you thinking about it now, don't they?
