Our governments encourage kids to mortgage their souls by running up forty grand in student loans, then demand that they pay back the loans six months after graduation even though the only jobs available for them are minimum wage service industry McJobs. When a few kids go south on the loans, the governments froth at the mouth about moral degeneracy and then, in what they propose to the media as a conciliatory gesture extend the payback period a few months. The way we offer Latin American banana republics a better financial deal than we do our own children, says more about our social investment priorities than a dozen righteous ministers dithering over the quality of education .