New indentured servitude?

From Mark, in Occupy Detroit:

Is it an exaggeration to say America is returning to indentured servitude?

Student loan debt has exceeded $1 trillion for the first time. Yes, TRILLION. Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the U.S. Department of Education and private sources. Like colonial indentured servitude, the student-loan contract is virtually unbreakable. In the U.S., student loans are enforced by garnishing wages, and, unlike most other forms of debt, student debt is almost never forgiven in personal bankruptcy. By comparison, Finland, Brazil, and Chile remain tuition free, and France, Germany, Austria, Iran and Denmark remain minimal compared with American tuition and fees. Add to this a weak job market, where graduation does not guarantee full-time employment. Even if the financial benefits of higher education are more than the debt accrued for it, the subduing effects of that debt still exist. In a vicious cycle, studen debt has a subduing effect on activism, and political passivity makes it more likely that students will accept such debt as a natural part of life. (source: Get Up, Stand Up, by Bruce E. Levine, published 2011).

"It's going to create a generation of wage slavery," says Nick Pardini, a Villanova University graduate student in finance who has warned on a blog for investors that student loans are the next credit bubble — with borrowers, rather than lenders, as the losers. (source: USA Today, October 25, 2011)

In other related news, state troopers are knocking on your neighbor's door and taking them away in handcuffs for not paying a small $280 medical bill. Not in America, you say? Think again. Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don't pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff's deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP. How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs." (source: Yahoo! Finance, April 23, 2012)