The 13th amendment abolished slavery and "indentured servitude" except as punishment for a crime. The United States succeeded in abolishing slavery. An economist might look at the vast realignment in the past 40 years not just of wealth but of debt and conclude that indentured servitude has made a comeback.
In 1999, near the end of the Clinton administration, the residents of only three states (Hawaii, Maryland, and California) had average household debt that exceeded 1.5 times household income. By 2008, the last full year of the Bush (43) administration, the household debt-to-income ratio was above 1.5 to 1 in 40 states, and above 2 to 1 in 20 states. The fortunes of American households improved under Bill Clinton Barack Obama [thank you, Diana H.]; in 2016 only two states (Hawaii and Maryland) were above 2 to 1, and 30 states were above 1.5 to 1. Household debt to income improved under Trump; in 2020 only Hawaii was above 2 to 1 and 21 were above 1.5 to 1.
What is astonishing about the statistics is not that household debt-to-income ratios improved somewhat under the Trump administration and through the pandemic, but how much the burden of household debt has increased since the Clinton administration. It's from that fact that I derive my theory about indentured servitude: the debt burden of the average American household is what compels many adults to work two jobs, to be unable to save, and to accept low wages. The heads of households are effectively in indentured servitude: compelled to work in order to pay interest on debts without making progress on the principal. The genius of private student loan programs is that they have extended indentured servitude upward into the college-educated classes. Not just the plumber but the psychologist must work to service debt and feed the creditor class.
It's perhaps for this reason that the republican party so stridently opposes President Biden's forgiveness of student loans, and the concomitant lessening, however slightly, of the financial ties that bind the graduates to their corporate overlords. Heaven forbid that the masses should be able to pay their bills on time.