I am almost certain there are people in this country who want to ensure an entitlement generation. I find Lee Siegel to be one of these people.
Last weekend, Siegel wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans.” In the piece, he whined about the debt he owed and made excuses for why he couldn’t or WOULDN’T pay off his student loan. He complained that when he and his mother took out his first student loan, he was congratulated “as if I had just won some kind of award rather than signed away my young life.”
Mr. Siegel should’ve considered himself so lucky to even go to college – and that loan allowed him to do just that. He whined when his mother took out a second loan for him, his father declared bankruptcy and his parents divorced, leaving him to transfer from a private college to a state college in New Jersey. *gasp* God forbid! He writes:
“Years later, I found myself confronted with a choice that too many people have had to and will have to face. I could give up what had become my vocation (in my case, being a writer) and take a job that I didn’t want in order to repay the huge debt I had accumulated in college and graduate school. Or I could take what I had been led to believe was both the morally and legally reprehensible step of defaulting on my student loans, which was the only way I could survive without wasting my life in a job that had nothing to do with my particular usefulness to society.”
His writing is anything but useful to society.
Siegel bragged that the Department of Education still pursues him after 30 years, but to no avail. After all, as he said, “My mother, who co-signed some of the loans, is dead. The banks that made them have all gone under. I doubt that anyone can even find the promissory notes. The accrued interest, combined with the collection agencies’ opulent fees, is now several times the principal.”
Hey, why not leave it to the taxpayers? The country is already $18 trillion in debt, what’s an extra $1.2 trillion for those who owe on their student loans?
In what could be deemed as “gross journalistic malpractice,” Siegel encouraged others to do the same as he did:
“Get as many credit cards as you can before your credit is ruined. Find a stable housing situation. Pay your rent on time so that you have a good record in that area when you do have to move. Live with or marry someone with good credit.”
Seriously?
Siegel argued that when the day comes, “…the reported consequences of having no credit are scare talk, to some extent… Our economic system ensures that so long as you are willing to sink deeper and deeper into debt, you will keep being enthusiastically invited to play the economic game.”
He’s basically saying there will always be someone there to bail you out. And we wonder why there is an entitlement generation emerging?
Compare Mr. Siegel’s irresponsible way of handling his student loan debt to that of Republican presidential candidate, Marco Rubio. Ironically, the SAME paper that ran Siegel’s reckless Op-Ed, had the nerve to go after Marco Rubio, because of “the persistent doubts about his financial management.” Guess what? Rubio, just like millions of others who owe on student loans, faced financial strains starting out of college, but that didn’t keep him from defaulting on his student loans. He paid his off, unlike Siegel the deadbeat.
In comparing Siegel and Rubio’s student debt issue, James Taranto wrote in The Wall Street Journal:
The younger Rubio, one should note, faced exactly the same dilemma Siegel did—his career of choice was less remunerative than others that were available to him. Early in the Florida House tenure—a part-time gig—he also worked for a law firm, the Times reports. But he wasn’t able to do both jobs: “Even as his government career took off, Mr. Rubio’s financial picture grew grimmer and the demands of the Legislature endangered his work for the Florida law firm, where his bosses became impatient with his lack of focus.” Yet during all his adversity, Rubio never defaulted on his student loans.
In the ultimate comparison between Siegel and Rubio, Taranto ended with this zinger, “Our favorite part of the story is that Rubio finally got his finances on solid footing by selling a book. If you’re Lee Siegel, that’s gotta sting.”
