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With no DOE employees to process defaults?
Nobody should be paying a red cent.
If your choice is draining your entire bank account to the point you can't afford to live or suffering a credit score penalty, then the credit score should be sacrificed.
"but they can..."
Stop. Nothing they can do is worse than starving. Don't pay them. Use your money for your own needs.
I wish more people understood no one can stop you if there is no one to stop you.
Try getting an apartment or renewing a lease with a truly shit credit score.
Oops, you don't qualify anymore, anywhere, your options are now homelessness, much more expensive hopping between motels every 3 weeks, or live in your car, hope you're still making those payments.
Fairly difficult to cost-effectively cook and store food when you're in any of those situations.
If this happens to too many people the economy will suffer. Eventually they'll have to start ignoring credit scores. We're rapidly reaching a point where the system can no longer compensate for the incompetencies and inequality and stuff will start breaking mechanically in ways that can't be easily fixed or routed around
Everything you are describing has been happening and increasing in severity for years.
Usually what happens in an economic contraction is that credit lending standards raise, not lessen.
The free market doesn't give a shit about bad investments, which is what you are if your credit record sucks.
... And the government is basically now run by a bunch of AnCaps and Fascists.
We're looking more likely to become an indentured servitude, debt slave, company town style society, you know, just like the 1890s, that Trump is trying to take us back to, back before the income tax and much of the government actually was funded via tariffs.
I'd love to be as optimistic as you are, but uh hey, when was the last time you fed a homeless person, personally?
America hates the homeless, shanty towns aren't even possible anymore, those are all now 'homeless encampments' that are literally bulldozed away, and all the homeless in them are 'referred' to shelters that are already full.
The easiest propoganda line to have all the media blare at everyone is just that all the people driven into homelessness by losing a job, being unable to pay a debt, serious injury or illness... well they're all violent drug addicts, and really they should all just die, or not be near me, ew.
Trump already called for creating concentration camps of massive tent cities built on the outskirts of cities for the homeless.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-wants-make-homelessness-illegal-1795202
This is the plan, unless an actual revolution of some kind occurs.
Just don't pay. Debt-strikes are far more damaging than a work-stoppage.
It’s most likely that people won’t have a choice. Many people, anyway, from what I understand of USian wages and cost of living.
This works great up until the point where a collection agency comes for your property and/or credit rating. I'm not saying don't strike, but do it with full knowledge there may be repercussions.
It says "Trump’s changes to income-driven repayment plans."
I don't get it - aren't student loans fixed amounts, with monthly payments calculated to pay off the loan after a certain amount of time? How can they just raise the payments?
Not much detail in the article but it does mention Biden's student debt forgiveness plan being blocked and Trump pausing applications for some income-dependent payment thing. Are we seeing people whose payments would have been reduced by either of those suddenly not having them available anymore?
Most people are relying on income-driven repayment due to high interest rates and inflated tuition costs. IDR reduces your monthly payment to a fixed percentage of your income, but it does not scale the interest generated on the principle. The new SAVE plan was intended to scale the interest along with the monthly payment so your debt wouldn't keep piling up due to being on IDR.
Trump is removing all forms of IDR and blocking applications to renew existing plans, which means everyone will be forced to pay their full monthly amount (which is based on a 10 yr payoff plan). A lot of newer student loans are close to ~$100K or more, so imagine trying to pay that off in 10 yrs in the current job market.
Prepare for mass defaults on loans. This is absolutely going to crash the economy, and will very likely be worse than the housing market crash in ~2009.
My mom qualified for, and received, federal student loan forgiveness. Yes, she had to make payments and work in a qualifying job for 10 years but due to her low income the payment amount was adjusted down.
Unless you're in a position that qualifies for loan forgiveness, and you trust that forgiveness will be there when you qualify, income based payment rates are not a good idea. The total amount owed by my mom actually grew over the years because the amount she was paying was less than the amount of interest charged. For a bit when she was 8 years in she had a scare that she wouldn't qualify and was shocked to find this out, despite saying "I've paid thousands!!!".
Your average American isn't very financially literat, or lives in the land of denial, which makes them easy to take advantage of.
This right here.
My partner graduated with a Master's degree and about 40k in loans. After paying on an income driven plan for 10 years, they now only owe 45k!
Good time to point out that only about 30% of PSLF applications are accepted (so working for public sector for shit pay for 10 years has about a 30% chance of working) and (last I checked) only 37 (not %, but total) IDR plans have been forgiven.
You have been sold a lie about college. A degree will not get you a job. It will not get you 60k starting and double it in 4 years. Your field will not be hiring, and if it is, they'll want a doctorate and 10 years experience for barely a livable wage. Cancel student debt. Raise minimum wage, cap maximum compensation, implement a progressive tax rate, and establish social services so people can retire and turn over their jobs and roles to the next generation.
They've basically removed all forgiveness options. Were you on year 9 of 10 working towards PSLF? Did you plan your life around it? Whelp. Enjoy the rug pull.
The US has income based repayment plans for all federally guaranteed loans. By removing or changing the limits in the formula, which is likely what Trump did, people that were paying $50/mo might have to pay market rates for their repayment which is unaffordable to pretty much everyone.
With ibr your interest tends to not increase despite having a much longer repayment time, allowing you to, you know, live and pay your student loans instead of having to choose in most cases.
I'm so glad that I got a surprise letter in January of 2024 stating that the Biden SAVE program had forgiven my entire $320,000 worth of student loans. I had originally borrowed $150k.
Wait, was that all fucking interest???
Also for 150k you better be a fucking doctor, mate.
An rendition of Trump's Greater Depression:
My only hope is that America slingshots back to Roosevelt era policies. Wild that this exact shit happened and what saved us? Oh social programs and high tax rates on the wealthy.
I am reminded again of how we need to organized. A few people here or there defaulting on loans or refusing to pay won't make a difference. A lot of people not paying, but not talking to each other, is kind of a wild card. But if you and fifty thousand of your closest friends went to DC together to tell your reps this is unacceptable, and if they want to sleep at night it will change, maybe we'd see change.
But organizing is really hard and I don't know how to go about it effectively.
Crashing the stock market may be the plan here. Follow me on this ...
Crashing the market and removing 20 to 30 percent of value.
Then at the low point invest heavily into the DOW.
Now support the market and get it back to previous levels.
Fucking rich fucks just made 30% in 1 to 2 years on that investment.
Hey now you're forgetting that they're also going short on everything and making money on the fucking way down too!
Crashing the economy is the point, isn't it. Every crash the richest few scoop up the assets and the peasants (most of Americans) settle for working for whatever scraps they can manage.
Don't pay. Debt strike.
$5000? …A month? A sudden rate increase 10 times the agreed amount? This smells like rage bait. We are not in post-World War I, Germany, yet.
I mean... There's a full article explaining the cause for the increases, it's not like there's no reasoning provided.
My partner was eligible for ~$750 per month repayments under a Biden era plan that Trump scrapped. They now have to pay ~$4300 per month. The headline isn't far off.
Can't recall an education
Quick numbers for those reading:
STUDENT DEBT:
Here’s the report: House Hold Debt and Credit: Q4 2024 (published 2025 by Federal Reserve Bank of New York)