A writer and professor’s thread about student loan debt has inspired people to talk about the debt they’re facing, and the amount is truly staggering. Lacy M. Johnson, whose PhD is in creative writing, revealed that despite making timely payments for over a decade to pay back the $70,000 loan she took out, almost equaling the amount of the loan in the first place… it hasn’t gotten any smaller.

The responses to her thread tell the same story: after decades of trying to pay back their loans and getting absolutely nowhere due to rapidly and unpredictably increasing interest, people feel almost like they are being punished for life just for getting an education.

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Disturbingly, a person from a wealthy family with enough in the bank to pay for university tuition at face value pays less, while those who don’t are forced to spend years after graduation dumping their money into a black hole that can expand to twice the size of the loan itself.

And as you can see from the stories that keep pouring in as responses to Johnson’s tweet, people in the US are accepting that they’re never going to buy homes, get married, have children, or retire because of it. They’re certainly not enjoying the benefits of the careers they had to get a higher education in order to gain access to.

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Johnson, who started the Twitter thread, stated her support for presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren. The candidate has proposed a plan to cancel or majorly reduce student loan debt for most borrowers based on income, funding the cancellation by driving up taxes on ultra-millionaires.

She’s not the only US presidential candidate looking to fight this problem—Bernie Sanders’ goal is to completely erase student loan debt by taxing stock transactions.

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Proponents of forgiving student loan debt believe that it would reduce social inequality, incentivize higher education, and enable more people to buy homes and start businesses.

With the US presidential election coming up, people who are being held back by debt will likely turn to candidates who consider solving it a priority.