"We must hate our children"

Joan Walsh's "We must hate our children" in Salon.com today offers a scathing criticism of the way Americans have normalized student loan debt -- a particularly trenchant commentary on this day when the federal student loan interest rate officially doubles.  One striking excerpt:

I used to find it endearing when President Obama talked about how he and Michelle finally paid off their student loans after he was elected to the Senate. But in a way, the president’s folksy anecdote helped normalize what should be outrageous: that we expect young people to go deep in debt, well into middle age, to get a good education. Of course, the Obamas’ story should come with an asterisk, since much of their debt was built up paying for Harvard Law School, and clearly, that paid off for them. The assumption that students should borrow money to pay for an undergraduate degree, and that the only debate is over how high their interest rate should be, is seriously crazy.

Read the rest online here.