student debts - work and no work

A bit off the usual observations this one but I listened to Vince Cable yesterday complaining that students didn't get the fact that the system the ConDems were putting into place only kicked in on repayment when they earnt 21k or above.
It reminded me of my Nan and Grandad. They didn't do credit, not ever. The reason was pretty simple, work and no work. During the 1930's my grandad was unemployed, for a long, long time. He grew food, enough to keep the family ticking, it taught self reliance and resilience, and it taught him to be very cautious about credit. After that, he got jobs on and off, a life of work and no work. Having debt was culturally unacceptable, it was tough enough being poor, but the fear of debt was much much more frightening, as this was something that maintained a constant looming shadow over all aspects of life, threatening your home, and everything you did.
That is what I think Vince and his cronies fail to understand. It has nothing to do with not understanding the deal, it has everything to do with how money works - and it works differently for the poor than it does for the rich. People aren't dumb, they just look at the prospect of 21k (plus all the add ons - and of course they talk to their friends and know that this means a good 10-15k on top) and they see a mountain of debt, which they will have upon them for a long, long time. It isn't enough to argue that graduates will over their lifetimes earn more money, because a) that story could collapse entirely if, and it is an increasingly likely if, the economic growth we are all promised fails to materialise and b) What jobs? Flipping burgers is now a graduate level profession in many parts of the USA, as the poorest drop out of the workforce completely. We are witnessing the fracture point of a story that has run its course. Debt is debt. Credit based living is tough enough when you have money and a regular income, but put it in front of intermittent work, the NINJA generation (no income no job) are making a serious point to politicians who simply don't understand, and they don't understand because culturally they don't get it, they come from a community who has money, it is much easier to deal with credit when you have money behind you. Vince, David and Nick, credit is not the same as money in the bank, it is debt, debt plain and simple and that sucks the lifeblood out of you, makes you dependent on having to find work and often take jobs because there isnt anything else you can do, it is a desperate, predictable story that repeats and repeats, especially when our culture of fear keeps spilling out the rhetoric of economic challenge.