Yesterday Robert Cruickshank had an excellent post proposing the idea of total forgiveness for all student loan debts. There is now over $1 trillion in student loan debt and it is bogging young workers down, preventing them from starting businesses or spending money that could otherwise help the economy grow. Total forgiveness of student loan debt would amount to a $1t stimulus and some of the people who are most in need of stimulus – young workers – would be the immediate beneficiaries.

Atrios goes a step further and calls for a complete debt jubilee. In fairness, he’s been calling for a helicopter cash drop for regular people for well over three years. He writes:

When the financial crisis first hit, one way or another all the banksters got a free money do over. It wasn’t quite as simple as Ben showering them with bags of cash, but essentially that’s what happened. The rest of us, including certain sovereign sates, just need a free money money do over as well. There’s no reason to continue with the endless crises.

This is one of the core points of the Occupy Wall Street movement – that the top 1% get an economy that works for them and a government that works for them in the event the economy stops working, while the other 99% get neither an economy nor a government that works for us. If it’s good enough for the banks and financial elites, it’s good enough for the other 99%, be it students or homeowners or working stiffs who had to use credit cards to pay health care bills.

We have the power to solve our crises and it’s high time that power is exercised.