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Comment by drcode | Hacker News Reader

> Somebody getting a break doesn’t bring you down, it just brings them up.

Well, the assumption here is that the money to "bring them up" can just be materialized out of thin air and doesn't have to be taken from other people, in turn.

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The converse of this being the assumption that having a huge number of people stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is not itself a drag on society that eventually comes out of other people's pockets one way or another anyways.

"I survived a bad system" is not justification for the perpetuation of that system.

Similarly, people who survived the system should have just as much access to remedies as people currently in their own difficulties.

Absolutely, but if we have to deal with the burden while ensuring future students don’t have to suffer (because let’s face it: short of Jesus Christ coming back and demanding it, I don’t see private loan forgiveness in our future), I’d rather do that. I just want SOMEONE to have a break. It doesn’t have to be me.

Economics not being a zero sum game, it can actually work that way. We can all be better off, and it's only win/lose in the most myopic of viewpoints.

In order to invoke the "not a zero sum" defense you have to also give a rational argument as to who specifically should hand over their money to pay for this and why their interests have less societal benefit, so that the sum of the transaction does indeed end up positive. Additionally, you have to explain why debt forgiveness does not lead to a "negative sum" scenario due to moral hazard.

So who was losing 20 years ago when you could pay for school with a summer job?

It was the state tax payers (they were funding universities more aggressively), but we also didn’t have many fancy perks on campus back then (so kind of students also).

But who was really losing 20 years ago were underemployed administrators. There were much fewer of those cushy non-teaching non-research admin jobs.

You're begging the question. I don't follow the assumption that anyone's interests have less societal benefit. Let's go with one example, taxpayers bail out student debt in tandem with some legislation that prevents moral hazard from being an issue. If that bailout prevents value destruction through economic collapse, or frees graduates to pursue vocations appropriate for their degree that could generate larger economic returns in the long run, there you have a rising tide lifting all boats. That scenario is loaded with assumptions, but my only aim is to open your mind to the possibility of a net win, not to describe an implementation.

And for the record, I get the feeling you've assumed that I support debt forgiveness. I don't, and the moral hazard involved does bother me. But I won't let that stop me from considering strong arguments in favor of it.

Shared profit can negate shared costs, particularly those brought on by systemic issues that need solving or individuals that didn't do so well in the health/job/birth/intelligence/etc lottery.

Or would you rather a non-society where everyone fends for themselves?

Most consumer debt is not in the form of a hard money loan (actual dollars) but rather by the money creation mechanisms (money multiplier) of our fractional reserve system. The money created by the loan was effectively "materialized out of thin air" although the debtor does enjoy enrichment from the receipt of the money.

Banks, on the other hand, won't be suffering if reforms are made; they will simply not be able to realize as much interest from the loans they issued.

Taxation has been around forever. Society gets to vote and decide how to divide up shared resources. I’m perfectly fine with tax dollars going to education (coupled with drastically-reduced tuition, like it used to be a short couple decades ago). I’m curious why everyone thinks it’s so impossible to have affordable education, when not even a generation ago we actually had it in the US.

It is still possible today. There are schools that are an extremely good value. I've even seen some state schools where you can graduate pretty much debt free working a part time minimum wage job during the school year and full time during the summer. If people were acting rationally they would be flocking to these schools. Instead they are taking on massive debt to go to expensive schools. So basically to answer your question, the reason education is so expensive is largely because of the way we loan money to people to go to school.

But who sets the price of tuition? The Boards of Regents/Governors/Trustees. Tuition used to be cheap _even at brand-name schools_.

Yes but if one school starts upgrading their dorms, student center, etc. kids starting spending their loan money there which makes the other schools try to do something a bit better. When there is almost unlimited money there is a race to be the top in spending on creating a cool college environment to attract more kids and their loan money.

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