Mr. Latimer and Mr. Rawles,
While you and the majority of your readers are well aware of the lateness of the hour, some people may still remain unconvinced of the immediacy of the problem. I just received some information which, while a bit obscure, I believe constitutes incontrovertible proof that the economy is about to get worse, much worse. Furthermore, it proves that the government knows exactly what’s about to happen. However, for you to fully grasp the significance of this information, you first have to understand the Department of Education’s Federal Financial Aid program. As a college professor, this is something I am quite familiar with, so if you are interested, I will take a minute or two to explain.
Every year, students who wish to apply for Federal Financial Aid to attend colleges and universities are required to fill out paperwork known as F.A.F.S.A (Federal Application for Student Aid). The amount of financial aid a student receives is based on his or her family’s tax returns from the previous year.
At least, that’s the way it has always been, until now.
I just received information from the Department of Education, announcing that the FASFA for the 2017-2018 academic year will be based not on the tax returns from the prior year (which would normally be 2016), but instead they will be based on the tax returns from two years before, in other words, from this year– 2015.
One might ask, why would they make this change? Here is what I think:
Based on the way the FAFSA system works, the better you or your family’s income, the more money you have to pay for college, therefore the less money the government will be expected to give you in financial aid. The reverse is also true; the less your income, the more the government will be expected to provide.
Now, hypothetically speaking, if the economy were to get markedly better during 2016, then people’s income’s would also improve, and thus people would be expected to pay more for college, and government would expect to pay less.
If, however, the economy were to collapse in late 2015 and 2016, then the average family would make far less money and the government would end up paying more across the board (since the majority of household incomes would decrease, coupled with the fact that more people tend to go to school and stay in school longer under poor economic conditions. We saw this just after the “Great Recession” of 2008). This is clearly what the government expects to happen. They have changed the rules, for the first time ever, in such a way as to ensure that they will have to pay less money in financial aid; but only if the economy in 2016 is worse than it is now. If the economy gets better, they will end up paying more!
Now, one is forced to wonder: how bad are things likely to get, in order to cause the Department of Education to change the entire system under which Federal Student Aid eligibility is determined? The answer is: pretty bad. What’s more, why are they making this change NOW, when the current administration, abetted by the mainstream media, is going to such pains to try and convince us that the economy is getting better? Would they be making this change if they actually thought that things were getting better? Clearly not. Obviously, things are going to get worse, much worse. Moreover, they know that it’s going to happen, and furthermore they are lying about it to the American public. I believe that the announced changes to the FAFSA system constitute incontrovertible proof of this. – Professor