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Comment by oever | Hacker News Reader

That's a tenth of all USA mortgages.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/data/mortoutstand/current.htm

Not comparable at all. The total value of owner-occupied real estate is 2.4 times the total owner-occupied mortgage debt. [1][2] It's not much of a problem having $300k in mortgage debt if my house is worth $500k. I can sell at any time and pocket $200k.

I can't do anything with a student loan. I can't sell my education. I can't discharge the loan in bankruptcy - something that could be done with a mortgage if I were somehow underwater. There's no way to escape it, and it mostly impacts the young who both have lower income available to deal with it and should putting away as much for retirement as possible.

[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HHMSDODNS [2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOOREVLMHMV

And paying on a mortgage yields a house you can live in. Paying on a student loan yields an ongoing exploitation of older generations on younger generations.

one could say the same about housing

Retired people no longer produce anything but they still consume nearly as much. The exploitation of the young by the old is the bedrock of civilization, we only ever fight about best ways of doing it.

Children don't produce anything but consume nearly as much.

The exploitation of the old by the young is the bedrock of civilization. An "old person" invented the computer you post to HN on.

True but this is the first generation where the young people have to pay up front just for the opportunity to work to pay for the old.

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