>Sadly, every culture has had a slave or slave-like underclass. Even the US has one - anyone with 50K in student loan debt, working a minimum wage job, with the

>Sadly, every culture has had a slave or slave-like underclass. Even the US has one - anyone with 50K in student loan debt, working a minimum wage job, with the debt growing faster than the payments, can tell you it feels awfully close to slavery. Some would probably even prefer being beaten once in a while, than to have no hope of ever getting free of the debt after a decade of trying. This is not slavery nor is it slave-like. You diminish the evils of owning people when you jump on your anti-pay-back-the-money-you-borrowed hobby horse and claim it's slave-like. Stop reading here. $50,000 is an outlier for student borrowers. The mean debt for a graduate in 2023 is around $30,000. For someone a decade ago it was 20% less according to a brief search. A person a decade into their career who has $50,000 in debt and is working a minimum wage job needs to take a hard look at their choices. The majority of borrowers have less than $20,000 in loans to pay back.