> (the technical term for that, by the way, is "ruthless default")
Thanks! Appreciate the lesson. That's a pretty cool technical term, btw.
> Have you looked for evidence of defaults in the late 60s and early 70s? Where did you look?
Yes. Semantic Scholar. No luck for things in earlier than the 1980's. Have you found anything?
Later, after reading the paper you cited
`the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education who oversaw the Education Amendments
of 1976 (Rep. James O'Hara) objected to the introduction of a student loan nondischargeability rule. 15 O'Hara protested bitterly that Congress was "fighting a 'scandal' which exists primarily in the imagination" and that the amendment "treats educational loans precisely as the law now treats loans incurred by fraud, felony, and alimony dodging".'"`
...
"The evidence of a lower than 1% discharge rate of federally insured student loans in bankruptcy did not block the nondischargeability provision from entering the Bankruptcy Code - this even so under a comparatively liberal Congress that passed the debtor-friendly 1978 overhaul of the Bankruptcy Code."
So indeed, there was never a real problem, and the law was enacted in the 1970's at the last minute on behalf of frauds and felons.
Thanks very much for the reference. This is an issue I care about deeply (clearly), but my arguments are a bit sloppy.
That being said, it's very much a military tactic being employed by people who want to preserve the status quo to pretend this is a complex issue, when it's really pretty simple.