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Comment by aaomidi | Hacker News Reader

You design a system for the citizens you're representing. Not for citizens you ideally want to be representing.

Are these debts using people's ignorance about financial terms to make money? AKA Are they predatory? - If so then that's a bad thing.

You might not care - but I care about the well being for people I'm sharing a society with. I don't want people taken advantage of. I don't want education to have capital associated with it. I want people to be able to get education without "oh will i be able to pay off the loans for this education."

So you might think you did a good job working your ass off affording education. People like Sanders and I think that getting a quality education should be completely unrelated to "working your ass off."

I've also worked my ass off to afford my education. I still think it's a bad system and I don't care if my taxes are rerouted from killing people in foreign countries to helping my society get stronger and better.

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> Are these debts using people's ignorance about financial terms to make money? AKA Are they predatory? - If so then that's a bad thing.

They are predatory by definition, since they involve interest (usury).

It could be made fair that the debtors only pay back what they owe, without interest.

I guess the real question is if people are willing to pay those higher taxes needed to cover this expense.

We already pay a ton in taxes - let's see if he's ready to divert funding from other places.

I think most people who also think they'll have kids would also be fine with a percentage point or two increase if it means there won't be any more loans.

If you essentially aim to make all education free you'll have Nordic level taxes as a consequence.

Not if you don't implement the rest of the Nordic model.

Denmark used 13% of its combined government budget on education in 2017. 44% was used on welfare.

Permille combined public budget of Denmark in 2017 (in Danish): https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/bagtal/2017/2017-08-31-hvord...

Translated: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=da&tl=en&u=https%3...

From what I understand the US tuition fees are significantly higher than what the Nordic countries spend per student at colleges. Making all US schools free would likely incur much larger costs than they do in the Nordic nations. Welfare is also a part of the free education promise in the Nordic countries as students are paid a monthly student allowance for studying.

Imagine asking the tax payers to pay students' Ivy League education tuition fees. Tax raises would be unavoidable.

You don't need to make all schools free. Just public schools.

If any school wants to be free, they need to implement the federal pay bands.

Get rid of subsidized student loans as well. There's no reason we should be subsidizing predatory tuitions.

Is a case by case thing, some maybe predatory, some ignorant, but some are not. You can’t just say everyone gets off Some bad apples are there

Right, but who cares!

Why do we want to preserve this system that doesn't allow everyone to have a fair chance of progressing? Why does education need to be artificially limited?

It's not difficult to imagine a world where education isn't limited by the amount of money in someone's bank. Think about all the possibilities if everyone can go learn whatever their heart desires without worrying about paying something back?

> Think about all the possibilities if everyone can go learn whatever their heart desires without worrying about paying something back?

They can do that online and or in a library. Once you start paying someone to teach them, it starts costing money and that money has to come from somewhere.

A bad apple would be somebody who could pay back the loan, but doesn't. But if you have income, the IRS will take some to pay your loan. So, no bad apples.

I, too, care about the well-being of people I'm sharing society with. This is why I'd rather have my money spent on realistic things like educating kids about management of personal finances and passing legislature to curb ridiculous tuition hikes instead of cancelling debt for people who should've done better job planning and screwing everybody else over for doing everything in their capacity to be a good citizen and pay off their debts.

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