In the US, if you can’t pay your bills, you can declare bankruptcy.

For everything except student loans.

So it is not as simple as you borrow, you pay back. It should/could be, but it’s not.

There is no winner and loser here, everyone is losing.

Regarding the deeper problem here’s an analogy. I have kids. Rules are simple, keep your room clean.

When a kid doesn’t clean their room everyone gets “punished” because the problem needs to be addressed before we can go on to the next activity.

It seems like a simple solution, if the kid doesn’t clean their room - they get left out of the next activity.

But that doesn’t really work all the time.

What does work is finding the deeper solution. Does the kid have too many things? Do they need help organizing? Do they need better skills?

Student loans are a trillion dollar problem. What do these people who aren’t paying need? Government paid “overtime?” Classes on money management? Help starting passive income streams?

And besides - in crypto and in life we tell people not to invest more than they can lose. We tell people not to lend more money than they can gift - how came the government let themselves get owed that much money?

I guess we could just be “hardcore” and start sending people who don’t pay to jail - pay for them to live and eat there - and put all their dependents on welfare… (I know that’s not a solution either)