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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 3/21/14

Reaganomics is a cancer, and we've reached its terminal stage

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Thom Hartmann
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And Reaganomics is a lot like cancer.

Most people don't know they have cancer until it reaches the later cancer stages, when it becomes much harder to treat.

In the early stages, cancer starts off as inflammation. A few cells grow slowly initially. But then, the cells begin to rapidly multiply, and the cancer begins to pick up steam.

As it picks up steam, the cancer takes on more and more of the body's resources, and starts stealing the body's energy and tissues.  Pretty soon, the cancer completely overwhelms the body and, without treatment, the person dies.

Reaganomics has done the exact same thing to our economy and to the American people, and right now, we're on life support.  For proof of that, just look at the student loan debt crisis in America.

Billionaire banksters and for-profit schools are making a fortune off of America's young people.

The average debt for a 25-year-old American student has risen a staggering 91 percent over the past decade -- and most of that is student loan debt.

Over 38 million Americans have outstanding student loan debt right now, totaling over $1 trillion. Student loan debt exceeds both credit card and auto loan debt in America, and the average is over $23,000.

And, according to a study by Hamilton Place Strategies, by 2023, the average amount of debt that college students graduate with will equal what the median college graduate will earn every year. That's insane!

That same study found that average student loan debt at graduation has increased by over 200 percent since 1993.

But it didn't always used to be like this.

Believe it or not, there was a time in America when the vast majority of college graduates didn't leave campus thousands of dollars in debt.

College used to be affordable for most Americans, and students could easily work their way through college to fully pay for it.

The number of baby boomers with college loan debt when they graduated is virtually nothing compared to the number of students with debt today.

But then Reaganomics started to kick in, and everything changed.

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Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program on the Air America Radio Network, live noon-3 PM ET. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle (more...)
 

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