The Inaccessible American Dream

to the American dream. All they needed was to go to college. Because that's what we were all told, right that if you wanted better opportunity and more opportunity and a lucrative job, then you needed to get a four year degree and then after that potentially get another two or three year degree to up your chances at living

the American dream. Well, Low and behold. As decades have passed, college the cost of college went from being a couple of hundred dollars a year or a couple of thousand dollars a year two in some places, fifty sixty eighty thousand dollars a year we tell people that the better the institution that you get into, the better the opportunities accept. The better the institution, the higher the cost. Forty five million people in this country are drowning under student loan

debt that is in the trillions of dollars. Now, when we say things like trillions, it's hard for us to readily wrap our minds around it, because, I mean, frankly, once we get past hundreds of millions, or even into the billions, most of our eyes glaze over because that's money we'll never know, we'll never see, we'll never be able to comprehend. There are people who wanted to become teachers, veterinarians, lawyers who are struggling under six figures worth of debt.

There are older people. We think about this crisis as something that plagues the young. Well it doesn't just plague the young. Because you graduate from school roughly at twenty twenty one years old, you get into your first job, and immediately you're hit with that letter that says you

need to start paying back your student loans. Well, if you get the bill, and the bill is one hundred thousand dollars and you're twenty one, chances of you being able to pay more than a couple hundred dollars out of your paycheck, after you pay rent, after you pay a car note, after you pay your cell phone bill, after you pay for transit to get to the job that is helping you pay these things, you only have

a little bit that is left over. Well, Blake zeph an investigative reporter, after dealing with his wife's own six figure worth of debt and the struggle that she was going through to pay that off after wanting to procure a psychology degree, decided to get to the root of

the route. Took to the road travel cross country in his new documentary Loan Wolves to talk with Americans of all persuasions, of all political backgrounds about their crushing student loan debt and the lie that they have been sold that they will have access to the American dream if only they're willing to, you know, work hard. You'll see

some familiar faces in Blake's documentary. Our friend, doctor Christina Greer, who is a professor at Fordham University, will talk about the fact that young people who she talks to on a regular basis say, well, their dreams are already dashed. These are young people that haven't even left undergraduate yet, who believe that their dreams of going into a profession that was going to be their passion, their drive no longer makes sense, not with the debt that they're incurring.

Now they just need to go in and make money. That's devastating. And what does it say for generations to come if they are hip to the idea that their parents are still paying off their student loan debt, then they're trying to go into further debt to pay for their children, to help support them in some way, go to college to incur more debt. Well, then guess what there's going to be a generation of young people that decide, yeah, maybe colleges inform me? What does that mean about our

competitiveness as a nation? What does that mean about the future of this country, our economy, our output? If people can no longer access the American dream, if it really is just something that you can hold onto at night when you're asleep, and not something that you can readily access in the day, what does that mean for our future collectively? Coming up next, my conversation with investigative reporter and the man behind the documentary that is airing on

both MSNBC and Peacock. Lone Wolves Blake Zef Folks, I am very excited to welcome to WOKA after Daily for the first time investigative reporter Blake Jeff who has Blake zaff excuse me? Who has captivated me? It's not often that I watch commercials, Blake. I'll tell you on MSNBC, I kind of you know, I'm that person that will flip back and forth. You know, as soon as commercial goes up, I'm like onto the next station and the documentary.

Your documentary Loan Wolves. I the trailer was so thrilling, So folks, Lone Wolves documents a cross country adventure uncovering the effects of the student loan debt crisis. And you investigate Blake exactly who is to blame for the crisis that we're in, and you you know, it kind of signals to me and I, you know, and we'll jump right in that this was purposefully done. That the fact

that we have a student loan crisis. This isn't like COVID, like we don't know where it came from, right, and we just have to kind of deal with the effects of this. You know, we were sold and I mean as the American people were sold this idea that everyone needs to go to college, and if you go to college, you will come out with a good paying job, you'll be better off than your parents, and you know, and

the psycho will progress well. Over the course of I don't know how many decades, college went from being affordable where states were largely flipping the bill if you were going to a state school and if you had the means or you got a scholarship to go to a private school, God bless you know, good for you. Then over the decades, college went from being readily affordable to putting mostly black people of color, low income people in six figures worth of debt to get a four year degree.

So I just want to I want you to tell to tell us you know why you decided to do this, is what prompted this cross country investigation, and then give us a little bit of insight into some of the things that you heard. Having me, let me say, I I agree with everything you just said. It really started

for me. I saw my wife. You know, she grew up in middle class family and she went to grad school to become a psychologist to help veterans with PTSD, which is a nice thing, right, something thinks that our government, society would want to encourage. But she ended up graduating

with two hundred thousand dollars of student debt. And I saw her dealing with the student loan companies, and it wasn't just the numbers, Daniel, which the numbers are bad enough, right, two hundred thousand dollars, two thousand dollars a month we're paying, but they're really sketchy the way. And you know, your listeners who deal with student loans will know this, they'll

recognize this. There's a lot of fine print. You get these notices claiming you didn't pay when you did pay, a lot of that kind of stuff, really sketchy stuff. So the journalist in me started to smell a rat and I thought to myself, well, we're dealing with this, and there's forty forty five million Americans who have student debt. This has got to be a huge, massive issue. And so as I started to look into this more and more and more, it kind even worse than I ever

could have imagined. I mean, you talked before about how you know this was a man made crisis, a disaster. It's not like COVID this was the people who represent us in Congress. Politicians are supposed to work for us, are supposed to help us. But I found as I dug deeper and deeper into this, that they were doing the exact opposite. I mean, you know it what is

so heartbreaking? And this came up in you know, in a couple of the people that you interviewed, that they were sold a lie, right, that they were sold a lie. And it isn't even just about the fine print in terms of the actual loans that they are taking out. They were sold a lie as to what this degree right was going to be able to offer them. And I can tell you I have two younger cousins who are much much younger than me graduated. One of them

decided to was able to graduate six figure debt. The other one had to leave school because he could no longer afford it. Still has considerable debt, which I know is also a large part of this as well, which is people that go into higher education and then part way through can't afford the tuition, but still are now

paying off the degree that they didn't get. So talk about some of the things that the themes I guess that came up in conversations and again this is striking all Americans, not just one particular group, and talk about what they said. Well, broad theme, say this movie one is what you just said, the complete live the quote unquote American dream. Like you said, people are seventeen years old, eighteen years old, what are you told in this country?

Work hard? And if you work hard, whether you grow up in poverty or in the middle class, whatever you might want to do to have a good life, if you work hard, study, go to school, you'll get a good job when you graduate, and you'll have a good life. Well, it turns out that for most Americans who can't afford college, some colleges right now, Danielle cost eighty five thousand dollars, which is in santeen eighty five thousand dollars. It was eighty five thousand dollars for the four years I would

still need, insane amount. Eighty five thousand years is crazy. Okay, So you could we tell these people, these young people seventeen years old, eighteen years old, better yourself and work really really hard. And what happens is they do that and then they're handed the stack of loan papers that you know, even at h Now, I wouldn't understand half the things. There's something called compounding interest, which basically says,

if you're behind on a payment, you're interesting. You know, they could do compounding interest, which means, you know, like when you take out a loan, you'll pay the principle and then there's a little bit of interest. Compounding interest is interest on the interest yea, So that if you're behind, they'll start compounding your interest to the point where your

loans just get out of control. So we talked to one guy was a teacher, first in his family to go to college, and you start off with thirty five thousand dollars in debt, and after missing a few payments, they kept compounding his interest to the point where now he's got one hundred fifty thousand dollars of debt. And we talk about this in the film. You've seen it. He's considering. He was considering suicide because it's you can provide for his family. He felt like a failure. And

this guy did everything, excuse me, did everything right. He was a first in his family go to college. He's a teaching it's a great job, he's serving society. But it's that American dream is just not true for many people. The other thing I want to mention about the big theme is about our democracy, and I kind hinted at this in my last answer, which is the politicians are supposed to be looking out for us. In a way, they helped cause this crisis and have done nothing to

stop it. In nineteen ninety eight, two lines, and you know this, I'm watching two lines were added to a massive education bill. They were snuck in these two lines that said student loans are basically one of the only debts who can't get rid of through bankruptcy. And not that everyone is dying to. Yeah, but it's a way

out for some. But the other reason that it's important is if the loan companies the student lenders know that there's not even a potential threat of bankruptcy, they will just lend out tons of money to anyone, whether they can pay it back or not. And the colleges know that, so they'll just raise their prices at will. And that's why tuition has gotten so high, because there's nothing checking the colleges or the college lenders because they know the

repayment is guaranteed. So this system is totally out of control. And it needs absolute reform. So you know a lot of people are for canceling student debt. That's great, but that's like a backwards looking solution. That's where people already have the debt. You still also need to fix the structural problems in the lending system because people will start having new debt tomorrow if you cancel the debt. And

so we get into that. But the government was the one who did that, And in the movie, I try to track down who was the one responsible for it, and it takes me on this journey that I never would have expected, and ultimately confront the person about it, and we have a very heated conversation. You know. It's it's so unfortunate because you know, when we think about bankruptcy, right, bankruptcy is a tool of the rich. Bankruptcy is you know, just to remind people, it is a way to wipe

out your debt and be able to start over again. Right, And to think that somebody would have six figures worth of debt, that is a teacher, blake, That is a team John. We know in this country we love to applaud teachers, but that's about it. We don't pay them, right, So to have six figures worth of debt to get into a job where you're not in most places, not

making six figures is basically setting up a trap. And so you know, one of the things as Joe Biden Biden administration came out is we're waiting on the verdict visa the courts because of Republican governors deciding to sue the Biden administration. And I want to get your thoughts on that. Joe Biden says on the campaign trail, we need to do something about student loan debt. Everyone should have access to the American dream, and student loan debt is not allowing people to be able to do that.

So he cancels up to twenty thousand dollars worth of PELL grants, ten thousand dollars of other grants to give people a fighting chance. Now, to the person that you spoke about in the film, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of debt, if you can even take away thirty thousand dollars, you know, that doesn't seem like a whole large sum, but it is something, right, It is something that is significant. And now you have an entire political party that has decided to sue so that people

can suffer. How do you make sense of that, blake. It's cruel, it's political, it's unbelievable. So in the film where we have Republicans trull, we've got this guy named Wayne Johnson who this is unbelievable. I think most most people listeners won't know about it. If I didn't know about it, and I really studied this topic. Wayne Johnson appointed by President Trump to overseein the student aid program

for the government a couple of years ago. He quit his job because he couldn't believe how messed up this system was and how it was hurting so many people. He felt it was ruining the fabric of America because it was putting these young people in life altering debt.

By the way, not just young people, we should talk about this too, it's parents, parents sometimes, you know, parents and grandparents are co signing on these loans, or in other cases just people who have had these debts for so long now they're older in life and they still have it. So he's seen generations of people who are being put in this position, and he quit his job after six months. He's like, I can't take this anymore. And he this Republican serving Donald Trump has now come

out in favor of canceling student debt. He came out for canceling more student debt than Elizabeth Warren did even And I mentioned this to say that there are people of good conscience who when they see what is happening and they actually are really involved in here, like this is unbelievable. Problem is that politically, this has become so politicized that you're right, You've got the Republican Party simply because Joe Biden wanted to do something, it became very political.

And so Biden did this debt cancelation and right away they had to try to sue to stop it in court. And we've got a very political Supreme Court. I don't have to tell you that, and that's who's going to be hearing this case. And so this is just a few months from now, the Supreme Court is going to be ruling on this. And if you're the Biden administration, you can't be too optimistic about what's going to happen there.

So m to answer your question. It's highly political. It's highly partisan, and it's not about the substance because people of all you know, political when they look at this, yeah, and they're they're also as you're saying, it's it's not just democrats web student debt. There's forty five million people in this country, you have it, right, So they're very constituents. They're more people probably in red states who are student

now then in blue states. So it's really one of these situations where the politicians are not representing their content their constituents interests, you know, And I think about to a lot of these sept Nigerians actin Nigerians that are representing us in government. And when you know, literally one hundred years ago when they were in college college who was either free or it was really like a couple of hundred dollars for a four year degree. So to even you can't even um equate, oh well I paid

back my student loans. Well, you were never going to incure a six figures worth of debt um And I think that you know, what is what is really terrifying with regard to the weaponized Supreme Court that you mentioned is that you know, the majority of the Supreme Court is wealthy, right, these are these are wealthy people. I want you to be able to talk talk about too, Who is making money off of this? Who is making money off of forty five million Americans suffering in this country?

Did a couple of really good points there. First, I want to tell the first point you made though about the older generation is so important because I've never seen an issue, Danielle, where the impact on Americans was so severe and punishing, and yet the ability of the powerful people, the policymakers, and even the media to understand it was so low. There's such a gap between what is happening and what is perceived the older people. We've We've a

professor in the film named Chrissy Greer at Fordham. She's a friend of the show and a friend of mine. Okay, okay, awesome, Well let's give her a plug day. Yeah Greer from Fordham, who's awesome, is in the stone and she says, oh, you know, the older generation says I paid for my colleague or whatever, and she's like, yeah, college back then was two thousand dollars a year. Now it's like sixty five thousand dollars and you haven't even bought a book yet.

She talks about how she's nervous and feels bad about assigning books to students because she knows how hard it is to afford even the books, because the tuition is so much. And she says she has students who say to her, they've already given up on their dreams. They're in college, they've already given up on their dream jobs because they have to do something that will pay, because they're already in such a day that is so messed up. That defeats the whole purpose of going to college. It's

really really horrible. So in terms of your other point about who benefits from this, there are college lending companies. There's a whole industry as student loan industry banks who are making so much money, and they love when he can't declare bankruptcy on your students. That's great repayment for them is totally guaranteed. It's a great system for them. By the way, who do they give money to the politicians?

So they donate money to the politicians, by the way, it's happening on both parties, and these politicians no skin off there. They just give the student loan industry what they want and as a self perpetuating cycle, and the victim are the American people. This is not at all working in a way that benefits the people were supposedly

trying to help achieve the American dream. I mean, like, it's such a horrific cycle, right to your point that even this canceling of student loan debt even a little bit, is not doing anything to fix the student loan situation to begin with. Right, the cycle will just start over again for the next group of Americans that want to get a higher education. What is the solution and where

is the hope? Right? Like, does this does it just mean that we're going to have a generation that isn't going to go to college because they're going to say, what the hell is the point? Right? I might as well just go and start working, because at the end of the day, I'm getting six figures of worth of debt to go try and get a six figure job that I'm going to spend the entirety of my professional career trying to pay down this debt, not being able to buy a home a car. How does that even

make sense? So what is the long term crisis look like if it's not disrupted and fixed by the very people that cost it three good day? It's the ultimate question. I think something's got to give I think the system

is going to collapse under its own weight. You cannot have a situation where we tell young people that in order to have a decent life, you've got to work hard and go to college, and then we make college totally unaffordable, and in hid this crushing we're not talking about two thousand dollars debt, five thousand dollars that I mean, there's almost two trillion dollars worth of student debt in this country. I know, when you hear a number like that,

it just feels like monopoly money. So let's break it down. There's about forty five million people who have it, so on average ends of being about forty thousand per person. That's not the nightmare scenario. That's the average. Okay, when you look at when you look at people go to grad school, and you know, we're telling people nowadays go to grad school that that's a competitive advantage. Sometimes a college degree is in even enough for a lot of jobs.

Right there are people who are struggling the job market. They have a bachelor's degree. Plenty people don't even have that, right, but people of bachelor's degrees are having trouble getting certain jobs. They go to grad school to have an even better chance, and they end up with these just one hundred thousand dollars debts is very very common, right, and some of these jobs, I mean, I gotta tell you, I wonder if we're going to have these jobs anymore veterinarians. This

is like a random example. I know people are like, huh, it seems like obscure, But veterin arians, I think we all agree, like that's a good thing to have in society. If you have a pet, you want to be able to take your pet to the doctor. They have very high suicide rates veteran arians, very high. And one of the reasons they have been academic studies about this. One of the reasons is they have such terrible student debt. The average veterinarian average not worst case, has almost two

hundred thousand dollars in student debt. Because it's a very expensive degree. They've got to go to undergrad they've got to go to grad school, and they don't make a ton of money. I know it's expensive to bring your dog or right, but they're not They're not raking in tons of money, and so a lot of them are really struggling financially. Of course they also, you know, it's

very hard to treat dying animals. I'm sure that that takes a toll too, but I just mentioned that as one example the kinds of jobs that we just take for granted in society. But they've literally done studies about why is the studicide rates a high among veterinarians, and they found one of the causes, not the only, but one of the causes of student debt. This is it leads to divorces. Student debt for moving on from veteran

arian sound just regular average folks. There's I saw wednesday, it's something like one in eight divorces because of student debt. Because there's couples and families are crippled by this. People are getting married later, they're having to move to out of state, away from their families because of it. It is upending people's lives in ways that you would just

not believe. So to answer your question, I have to feel that there is a reckoning coming at some point where their system is going to have to be reformed because it is shaking the country to its core. Blake, I can't thank you enough for for this film, for this documentary, because you know, we all and it's and it's crazy to say this because I'm saying it like

it's a virus. We all know someone, family members, friends, colleagues that are one of the forty five million right that are living under crushing debt, that are trying to do the best that they can and they're drowning and no one is throwing them a lifeline. And I think that what you have done here is extraordinary because you're showing the tapestry of America and how this crisis is upending the American dream and so what does that look

like in generations to come? These are the questions that our politicians, those representatives that we elect to represent our best values, not the best values of Wells Fargo and Navientt and you know and whomever, to do something about this. So Blake, please tell people how they can watch Lone Wolves where it is, because because everyone everyone should see this, let me say before I tell you exactly where to watch it. This is not all like a SOB story or boring. I went we try to make it funny.

There's a lot of moments in there that are just silly, ridiculous. We show politicians looking insane, so you know, you can sit back, get your popcorn going. You're gonna have fun. Believe it or not. It's gonna be one of those movies where you learn stuff and you're mad at the best guys, but you're also going to have some fun. You can watch it. It's streaming on Peacock right now. If you've got peacock super easy to just go ahead

and do it. Or it's going to be on MSNBC this Saturday night, that is I believe, the seventeenth of December at ten pm, the seventeenth of December Saturday night ten pm on SNBC or streaming on Peacock. And Daniel thank you so much, not just for having me on, but really giving a spotlight to this issue because, like you said, it's so important and it's affecting so many people. Thank you. I really appreciate you and this work and

everyone check out Lone Wolves. That is it for me today, dear friends, on Woke a f as always Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.