Is there not an impeding student loan crisis in America. If not, why not?

[SamuelRSmith]

Well, we have multiple problems at play, here:

1) Why are graduate jobs not hiring

2) Why are people still opting for college when they know these problems? We've been hearing about this for years now. Surely this should cause demand to fall, and thus result in falling prices. But, it seems like the reverse is happening

I think the answer with the first part is that /nobody/ is hiring, at just about any level within the economy. Hell, I know that even the banks are cautious about hiring at the highest of levels, let alone bringing in new people. At the end of the day, the only reason the unemployment number has been going down, is that people are stopping looking for work, not that they are getting jobs (the official unemployment number only counts those who are "looking" for a job... if a person gives up, they are counted as "out of the labor force" and thus not unemployed... makes sense in good times, because people /do/ opt out of working for other reasons that they shouldn't be counted... a two-working household might drop down to , if one partner's income rises substantially, for example).

Graduates feel the brunt, because if there is a job going... there will be countless people who have the exact same degree, and some of them will also have years worth of experience behind them.

We've discussed why the job market is so shit numerous times before. Don't need to revisit that.

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The second question, however, is more telling of attitudes in the first place. Time preference is pretty much non-existant. People would rather get into tens of thousands of debt today, rather than work and study, or work, save, then study. This is very analogous of many of the West's problems today... the housing bubble, obesity, Government debts and deficits and unfunded liabilities, why people still choose to smoke, etc.

Why is it like this? I don't know. I think it's, in part, because of flawed thinking and misunderstanding, and, in part, because the price system is so fucked by Government manipulation, that costs don't mean anything, anymore. Even people in this thread are demanding a bailout for this action... in fact, I bet others expect it to happen at some point (and they'd probably be right). The costs are socialised, and nobody pays the full brunt of their actions.

It's like owning a puppy, and not bopping it on the nose with a newspaper when it chews your wallet.