Congrats. You’re were out of debt before this. And you’re still out of debt now.
How about we let others at least not be underwater so the too can be out of student loan debt. Which if you bothered to read it is the focus this time around.
Is it perfect? No. Ideally you also shouldn’t have had to work your ass off to pay off these loans. But let’s not ignore trying to fix the current bad state of things just because some people managed to get out.
It’s like saying, well some people got out of a cult mostly fine so why do we bother to go after cults at all?
But I am newly impoverished by the higher taxes, inflation, and/or reduced spending on other government programs that is required to pay for the forgiveness program.
You are trying to justify and politicize the dereliction of personal responsibility on the grounds that others can foot the bill that they aren't responsible for.
do you have dirty laundry too that you want people who have the time to do it for you because you are incapable of taking on that responsibility.
you argument is that because interest rate and inflation is a lot higher than when you took out the loan, you should not share that responsibility (it should be others) which is just lazy and incredibly childish.
Personal responsibility? That’s nonsense ideology. If one has the means, all so-called bourgeois middle-class morality can be avoided, and is by people with the means to do so.
With Biden at least, he's held pretty firm to not raise taxes on the middle or upper-middle class. So like $364k married filing jointly even (my bracket).
If I ever do make enough to get hit with a Biden platform tax hike..I think I'm doing pretty okay :)
> How about we let others at least not be underwater so the too can be out of student loan debt
That is a very selfish statement. I was burdened with student loan debt for almost a decade, nobody cared that I was underwater, so why should we suddenly start caring for you and reward your poor financial decisions? Should we start bailing you out because of your poor crypto investments too?
Why does your financial problems need to be socialized but not others? You are arguing for absolving responsibility. You borrow someone's money you must pay it back.
Many of us had it drilled into our heads that the only way to succeed in life was to take out a big loan and go to college. By the government.
Also, it is kinda ridiculous that at 18 years old it is completely fine that I can take out an almost $10,000 loan, another $10 at 19 and so on and so forth. Making this decision when I am barely an adult, for many people the first time that they had any real sense of financial freedom with no one to tell them no. Differed payments so it's a problem for 4+ years from now and barely any education on what that actually meant.
Trying to compare this to crypto is stupid.
I am fine with paying for my loans, but it is ridiculous that I have been paying or my student loans for 10 years and I am still 2x what I originally took out. My sister is 5 times what she took out.
There is a fundamental problem with our education system and student loans and we need to address both of them. But let's not pretend that student loans are not largely predatory. We just don't call them that because they are for school and by the government.
Not everyone gets out of school and lands a job, or lands a job that will actually pay enough to pay off their loans.
Edit:
Since we really want to focus on "personal responsibility" here, I feel like we should remember that we don't think someone can handle drinking alcohol until they are 21. But by the time they are allowed to drink we are perfectly fine with them having taken out $32,500 in loans for school assuming they take the maximum at 18, 19, and 20.
How do we not see the problem here. I can get in more debt than I will likely ever be in except for buying a house (even a car may be less than that) before I am legally able to drink alcohol.
It sounds like we think that 18, 19, 20 year olds are not responsible, unless it is about getting into a life defining amount of debt that will seriously hamper your financial stability likely into your 40's.
So people suffered. That’s too bad. Others must suffer too. Why not stop the cycle?
And we subsidize corporate profits, and execute innocent people, and kill humans wars. That is fine in our names with our money.
So doing some good for comet students, who contributing and had no choice but to borrow, seems moral to me. But to be petty and moan about how it’s unfair when there is so much that is also unfair, that sounds small.
Not only does this raise cost of debt in the future but investors might become more wary that bastion of American hegemony, her rule of law can be changed now at the whims of its populist prone presidents eager to polarize and divide its citizens.
Just look at Israel. Gets attacked by a decentralized terror cell (its not just Hamas), gets criticized for going after said terrorists around the region (with enough backed by Iran) and the American president concerned with voters low key threatened Israeli prime minister that security agreement can be voided.
Same thing with Ukraine. Believed in US guarantees, now facing a totally different reality from where it was in 2022, with a reluctant American president who has to worry about voters.
All of the above populist policies are the result of generation like parent's comment, selfishly believing that they are somehow more deserving than others while offering no merit for that claim, haven't fought WW1 or WW2 or lived through Cold War or even experienced the War on Terror.
All this does is hurt the very people its designed to benefit in the long run (as always is with populist policies). It signals that they don't care about merit but virtue signaling away responsibility. From this I feel worried that American politics have picked the wrong fork in the road and we are going to see significant curb to our freedom, speech and common sense, globally.
So you don't want to suffer but its okay that others including future generations suffer.
What gives this generation the right to avoid responsibility and burden other generations with their poor financial decision and inability to take responsibility?
Getting out of that debt has ongoing consequences though. Not being able to afford a car and therefore limited job opportunities, having to buy a smaller home and therefore not being able to grow your family, etc. It's not hard to think of more examples.
As someone who paid off their student loans in full, I'm happy for those who are getting loan forgiveness.
Trump's 2017 tax bill gave away trillions mostly to rich business owners. Another trillion was dumped on them during COVID via PPP.
So if we can forgive a fraction of the debt for the working class that came of age when a degree was sold as a requirement for entry into the middle class, then great, all for it.
I know people who were required to get an MS in education to teach. The only option for certain education specialties in the region was a private school. Teaching is hardly a lucrative career, the public service they provide is necessary, forgive the debt via PSLF.
The government makes policy all the time that benefits certain groups, that's reality
Thank you! you have said it the best way that I have seen yet.
No one is talking about removing personal responsibility. However when a pattern has emerged we have to look at how we got here in the first place and realize that there is likely something fundamentally wrong.
If it is found that there is that fundamental issue, the government has stepped in many times to address systemic issues, bailouts, etc. (I fully acknowledge that they have not done this equally, but that's a separate topic)
Besides, if you really just want to boil this down to numbers. People actually having money to spend instead of it just being stuck disappearing towards loans that they will never pay back, will have a positive impact on the economy.
You mean the loans all taken out by young adults, many of whom are never actually taught anything financial prior to that loan stage?
This is a predatory system. You can pat yourself on the back for digging out of it, but you should want better for society. Nobody deserves to be chained to loans for life - not you, not your fellow citizen.
We shouldn’t keep a broken system just because your feelings are hurt.
Oftentimes when I criticize Plutocrats for I am told that I should not be jealous and a rising tide lifts all boats. Perhaps this is the tide lifting the boats of these debtors and you should not be jealous of them.
Another thing that annoys me is they legalized pot. Seems like a good idea in theory. But what about all the people that went to prison when it was illegal. Imagine having served five years in prison for selling pot and there is now guys selling it out of store fronts. How is that fair?
And another is immunotherapy. Someone I know got lung cancer and immunotherapy saved her life. Which is really unfair to my other friend that died of lung cancer twenty five years ago.
Making people who paid off their loans now pay off other people's loans as well (through taxes) is more like sending the first guy back to prison because the second guy is selling it from a store front.
Friend of mine got his engineering degree when the Feds still gave out grants. So he didn't pay a thing. I went to a state school with no tuition I just had to pay student fees and for books. All told it cost me $15k out of pocket. Not per year for the whole 5 years.
The loans being forgiven were issued by the department of education.
If your mortgage lender wants to forgive part of your mortgage, they can.
If the federal government directly held nearly every mortgage in the country, politicians would be tripping over themselves to promise relief every election season.
Only up to a a certain income limit. And the amount that can be deducted is capped. It doesn’t require itemizing though so that’s nice.. but as someone who itemized and makes ‘too much’ money, I’d have benefited greatly if it was treated like mortgage interest
"The president hopes to begin forgiving student debt before the November election."
So, two issues:
1) The door is still wide open for it to not be passed before the election, and requiring him to be re-elected for it to finish being pushed through.
2) Even if it is actually passed before the election, it's still dubious behavior when right before he needs votes, he sprays (taxpayer) money on a subset of the population that he wants votes from.
If you think this is bad policy, make the case and then don't vote for him. If you think it's good policy, vote for him. Politicians constantly do things that have beneficial (or detrimental) effects on different slices of the electorate.
Politicians should not time such things so that the giveaways they propose are conditioned on their getting re-elected. If Trump promised a bunch of people $10-20k on the condition that he’s re-elected, I bet you’d not be quite so generous.
We are keeping track of vote buying all of a sudden? That ship sailed long ago. Our society is literally held together by food stamps (EBT). Shut off that spigot alone and you have blood in the streets and burning buildings as far as the eye can see.
Shall we get into our massive white collar middle class jobs programs...namely the defense industry? There is a fuck ton of fat that could be cut there. I don't want that. Not do I want to stop welfare programs. I like civilized, peaceful society (we are on a bit of holiday with the civility I must admit).
Defense industry will do well irrespective of which uniparty stooge occupies the Oval Office, so it doesn’t really qualify. We’re talking well over a trillion a year at this point all-in. This train ain’t stopping.
but a large chunk of his voter base are people with student loans that cannot/will not accept the responsibility of your own financial decisions.
just like trumps voter base were business owners. neither come with contingencies or conditions but they are clearly are populist policies aimed securing their voter base.
I'm all for making education more accessible but this isn't it. It only keeps kicking the can down the road and signals to lenders that borrowers have higher capacity to borrow and thus will inflate the prices of higher education.
It isn't the perfect solution, but fixing our education system is going to be much harder to accomplish especially with so many colleges being for profit.
It won't be a single thing that fixes it and will instead be multiple things that will take many years to accomplish.
Meanwhile this is an overnight way to address a problem for students that are out of college. If we only focus on fixing school but ignore those that already went through it, that isn't right either.
It feels like we often get too stuck on waiting for the perfect solution that addresses everything when we have smaller things that can be done to improve the current situation. Yes there is a risk that we never go further than that, but there is also a chance that more fundamental changes will never happen regardless. I would prefer a small something happen than nothing.
Incremental solution is absolutely fine. The problem is that is genuinely 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards. It provides immediate relief for the cohort who qualify but others who don't have to pay for them and rewards bad behavior from both for and non-profit universities.
I should clarify. When I say "rewarding bad behavior" I mean it further incentivizes the universities to keep raising prices, faster. There are myriad of reasons why college costs goes up but the biggest driver is the inelasticity of college degree. College administrators can raise prices because they see that the market will bear them. If college administrators and students see that the government will forgive student debts (btw it's not even dischargeable through bankruptcy), then the administrators will charge higher prices ("don't worry prospective students, the government will forgive the debts!") and students will also include it in their calculus for college-decision making process ("maybe there will be another loan forgiveness down the road, I can definitely take the risk"). Think how Tesla and all these EV companies display the car price with the tax break. This is what I mean.
That is very valid, and I don't want to discount the risk of that happening.
However, the way that I see it. If we were to actually put some serious political pressure behind fixing our education system so that was no longer a valid risk. (I mean ideally the idea of price and school for the first 2 or 4 years wasn't even a conversation, but clearly we are not ready for that) than if/when we were able to address some of these fundamental issues, we would do something like this already.
Acknowledge that due to policy failures there are students that went through school before fixing these problems and do something about the debt they are dealing with. At least getting it in line with what a current student would expect to be going through taking years of payment into account.
My thing is though, why wait? Why not do something about it now. Especially given the realities of the current political climate that, frankly I am not convinced we could get anything else actually done.
I fully acknowledge that risk exists and the high likelihood that there have been conversations in school boards or whoever actually makes those pricing decisions about what exactly this means. It's ridiculous that I look at some schools that have a yearly tuition inching closer and closer to $100,000.
The way I see it there is no best solution. Either we do nothing, we keep things as they are, maybe we slow down tuition price increases a bit, and millions of people are still stuck with underwater loans years after graduating. Hoping that we will get the right people with the right political power to actually do something about the school system now.
Or, we do something, we take that risk, we watch what happens. But also giving relief to a lot of people, who will also then have more money to be able to spend in the economy.
I thought about rewriting that sentence a few times and decided against it, I probably just should have.
More that I think that the first 2 or 4 years of school should just be free if you want it. Than even higher education beyond an associates or a bachelors is where you start talking about loans but with that degree you may be able to get a job matching your degree and you can work something other than minimum wage while in school.
But if we can't fix the core issues with school, I am not betting on that one happening either.
Students need to take some responsibility for their own finances and stop choosing the schools that cost $100k per year.
Or, if that's really too much to expect from 18 year olds, then the student loan program needs reasonable price caps. It should probably be limited to the cost of in state tuition.
Fund the community colleges and make everyone filter through them to get to any other university. The need to be accessible, as in free or so cheap that it's negligible. No loans at all. Incentivize industry to require an associates degree for any position (serious tax or workers comp discounts, the same way they do for drug testing). As we do now, tap industry to help with training costs.
This is all stuff we are already half way doing. I think we can find a few billion for federal education grants to state community colleges.
75 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadif we give/forgive one group but not others, what sort of message does this send to the rest who don't benefit from populist policies?
How about we let others at least not be underwater so the too can be out of student loan debt. Which if you bothered to read it is the focus this time around.
Is it perfect? No. Ideally you also shouldn’t have had to work your ass off to pay off these loans. But let’s not ignore trying to fix the current bad state of things just because some people managed to get out.
It’s like saying, well some people got out of a cult mostly fine so why do we bother to go after cults at all?
But I am newly impoverished by the higher taxes, inflation, and/or reduced spending on other government programs that is required to pay for the forgiveness program.
do you have dirty laundry too that you want people who have the time to do it for you because you are incapable of taking on that responsibility.
you argument is that because interest rate and inflation is a lot higher than when you took out the loan, you should not share that responsibility (it should be others) which is just lazy and incredibly childish.
If I ever do make enough to get hit with a Biden platform tax hike..I think I'm doing pretty okay :)
That is a very selfish statement. I was burdened with student loan debt for almost a decade, nobody cared that I was underwater, so why should we suddenly start caring for you and reward your poor financial decisions? Should we start bailing you out because of your poor crypto investments too?
Why does your financial problems need to be socialized but not others? You are arguing for absolving responsibility. You borrow someone's money you must pay it back.
Why? Unsecured loans are servitude. And it just inflates the cost of the thing lended for.
I don't think one can argue for usury from some sort of moral angle.
Credit cards are servitude?
On the basis of nobody being compelled to do labour, yes.
Also, it is kinda ridiculous that at 18 years old it is completely fine that I can take out an almost $10,000 loan, another $10 at 19 and so on and so forth. Making this decision when I am barely an adult, for many people the first time that they had any real sense of financial freedom with no one to tell them no. Differed payments so it's a problem for 4+ years from now and barely any education on what that actually meant.
Trying to compare this to crypto is stupid.
I am fine with paying for my loans, but it is ridiculous that I have been paying or my student loans for 10 years and I am still 2x what I originally took out. My sister is 5 times what she took out.
There is a fundamental problem with our education system and student loans and we need to address both of them. But let's not pretend that student loans are not largely predatory. We just don't call them that because they are for school and by the government.
Not everyone gets out of school and lands a job, or lands a job that will actually pay enough to pay off their loans.
Edit:
Since we really want to focus on "personal responsibility" here, I feel like we should remember that we don't think someone can handle drinking alcohol until they are 21. But by the time they are allowed to drink we are perfectly fine with them having taken out $32,500 in loans for school assuming they take the maximum at 18, 19, and 20.
How do we not see the problem here. I can get in more debt than I will likely ever be in except for buying a house (even a car may be less than that) before I am legally able to drink alcohol.
It sounds like we think that 18, 19, 20 year olds are not responsible, unless it is about getting into a life defining amount of debt that will seriously hamper your financial stability likely into your 40's.
And we subsidize corporate profits, and execute innocent people, and kill humans wars. That is fine in our names with our money.
So doing some good for comet students, who contributing and had no choice but to borrow, seems moral to me. But to be petty and moan about how it’s unfair when there is so much that is also unfair, that sounds small.
Just look at Israel. Gets attacked by a decentralized terror cell (its not just Hamas), gets criticized for going after said terrorists around the region (with enough backed by Iran) and the American president concerned with voters low key threatened Israeli prime minister that security agreement can be voided.
Same thing with Ukraine. Believed in US guarantees, now facing a totally different reality from where it was in 2022, with a reluctant American president who has to worry about voters.
All of the above populist policies are the result of generation like parent's comment, selfishly believing that they are somehow more deserving than others while offering no merit for that claim, haven't fought WW1 or WW2 or lived through Cold War or even experienced the War on Terror.
All this does is hurt the very people its designed to benefit in the long run (as always is with populist policies). It signals that they don't care about merit but virtue signaling away responsibility. From this I feel worried that American politics have picked the wrong fork in the road and we are going to see significant curb to our freedom, speech and common sense, globally.
What gives this generation the right to avoid responsibility and burden other generations with their poor financial decision and inability to take responsibility?
Trump's 2017 tax bill gave away trillions mostly to rich business owners. Another trillion was dumped on them during COVID via PPP.
So if we can forgive a fraction of the debt for the working class that came of age when a degree was sold as a requirement for entry into the middle class, then great, all for it.
I know people who were required to get an MS in education to teach. The only option for certain education specialties in the region was a private school. Teaching is hardly a lucrative career, the public service they provide is necessary, forgive the debt via PSLF.
The government makes policy all the time that benefits certain groups, that's reality
nobody forced you to go and take out a student loan. you did it. politics shouldn't even be a factor here.
we are arguing for basic responsibility that all adults in society must respect not at the whims of populist Presidents who only cares about votes.
if tomorrow Biden told young people to start taking drugs because we will socialize the cost, you would justify it too.
If millions of people do it, there is a systemic problem that needs addressing.
It can be both things at once.
No one is talking about removing personal responsibility. However when a pattern has emerged we have to look at how we got here in the first place and realize that there is likely something fundamentally wrong.
If it is found that there is that fundamental issue, the government has stepped in many times to address systemic issues, bailouts, etc. (I fully acknowledge that they have not done this equally, but that's a separate topic)
Besides, if you really just want to boil this down to numbers. People actually having money to spend instead of it just being stuck disappearing towards loans that they will never pay back, will have a positive impact on the economy.
This is a predatory system. You can pat yourself on the back for digging out of it, but you should want better for society. Nobody deserves to be chained to loans for life - not you, not your fellow citizen.
We shouldn’t keep a broken system just because your feelings are hurt.
Another thing that annoys me is they legalized pot. Seems like a good idea in theory. But what about all the people that went to prison when it was illegal. Imagine having served five years in prison for selling pot and there is now guys selling it out of store fronts. How is that fair?
And another is immunotherapy. Someone I know got lung cancer and immunotherapy saved her life. Which is really unfair to my other friend that died of lung cancer twenty five years ago.
Making people who paid off their loans now pay off other people's loans as well (through taxes) is more like sending the first guy back to prison because the second guy is selling it from a store front.
And the feds still give out grants:
https://studentaid.gov/sites/default/files/federal-grant-pro...
They're the ones that are really getting left with nothing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40015284
Why shouldn't people with a mortgage also receive a $20k relief?
If your mortgage lender wants to forgive part of your mortgage, they can.
If the federal government directly held nearly every mortgage in the country, politicians would be tripping over themselves to promise relief every election season.
So, two issues:
1) The door is still wide open for it to not be passed before the election, and requiring him to be re-elected for it to finish being pushed through.
2) Even if it is actually passed before the election, it's still dubious behavior when right before he needs votes, he sprays (taxpayer) money on a subset of the population that he wants votes from.
Shall we get into our massive white collar middle class jobs programs...namely the defense industry? There is a fuck ton of fat that could be cut there. I don't want that. Not do I want to stop welfare programs. I like civilized, peaceful society (we are on a bit of holiday with the civility I must admit).
just like trumps voter base were business owners. neither come with contingencies or conditions but they are clearly are populist policies aimed securing their voter base.
"But just remember, it was Biden who paid your student loan".
It won't be a single thing that fixes it and will instead be multiple things that will take many years to accomplish.
Meanwhile this is an overnight way to address a problem for students that are out of college. If we only focus on fixing school but ignore those that already went through it, that isn't right either.
It feels like we often get too stuck on waiting for the perfect solution that addresses everything when we have smaller things that can be done to improve the current situation. Yes there is a risk that we never go further than that, but there is also a chance that more fundamental changes will never happen regardless. I would prefer a small something happen than nothing.
The universities already have their money, in my case they have had it for 10 years now.
At best this sets a precedence that, oh we can charge whatever we want because the government will bail the student out.
Which is valid, but I don't see it as rewarding them. The schools are not getting anything from this directly unless I am missing something.
However, the way that I see it. If we were to actually put some serious political pressure behind fixing our education system so that was no longer a valid risk. (I mean ideally the idea of price and school for the first 2 or 4 years wasn't even a conversation, but clearly we are not ready for that) than if/when we were able to address some of these fundamental issues, we would do something like this already.
Acknowledge that due to policy failures there are students that went through school before fixing these problems and do something about the debt they are dealing with. At least getting it in line with what a current student would expect to be going through taking years of payment into account.
My thing is though, why wait? Why not do something about it now. Especially given the realities of the current political climate that, frankly I am not convinced we could get anything else actually done.
I fully acknowledge that risk exists and the high likelihood that there have been conversations in school boards or whoever actually makes those pricing decisions about what exactly this means. It's ridiculous that I look at some schools that have a yearly tuition inching closer and closer to $100,000.
The way I see it there is no best solution. Either we do nothing, we keep things as they are, maybe we slow down tuition price increases a bit, and millions of people are still stuck with underwater loans years after graduating. Hoping that we will get the right people with the right political power to actually do something about the school system now.
Or, we do something, we take that risk, we watch what happens. But also giving relief to a lot of people, who will also then have more money to be able to spend in the economy.
>I mean ideally the idea of price and school for the first 2 or 4 years wasn't even a conversation, but clearly we are not ready for that
What do you mean by this? I don't think I quite follow.
More that I think that the first 2 or 4 years of school should just be free if you want it. Than even higher education beyond an associates or a bachelors is where you start talking about loans but with that degree you may be able to get a job matching your degree and you can work something other than minimum wage while in school.
But if we can't fix the core issues with school, I am not betting on that one happening either.
Or, if that's really too much to expect from 18 year olds, then the student loan program needs reasonable price caps. It should probably be limited to the cost of in state tuition.
student loans + poor decision making = willing and able to pay too much
This is all stuff we are already half way doing. I think we can find a few billion for federal education grants to state community colleges.