Sanders proposes canceling entire $1.6T in U.S. student loan debt | Hacker News Reader

Sanders proposes canceling entire $1.6T in U.S. student loan debt

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18 pointscyrksoft38 comments

Here [1] is what happened when Sweden tried a similar tax. Multiple other countries have tried it Sanders style and obtained similar market destruction.

He really should check what his plans have done historically. They’ve all been tried many times, and not made long term policy, for empirical reasons he routinely ignores.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transactio...

Because he doesn't care about facts or economics. It's pure populism to attract young people. This greatly damage the US economy.

In the old days a politician just needed a single wealthy donor (say a George Soros or one of the Kock brothers), now with crowd sourced fundraising, you just need 1M people to give you $20 via your website or app.

So yes, all you need do now is to appeal to the masses! [much to the chagrin of the wealthy -- see Schultz' attempted presidential run]. However, representing the masses vs a few special interests is definitely a step toward greater democracy.

>However, representing the masses vs a few special interests is definitely a step toward greater democracy.

Unless the masses don't understand how/why some systems work and want to tear them down. Many systems in modern life are complex enough that most don't understand them, and such systems, if simply ran by popular vote, would make life worse, not better, for the masses.

This is how we get rent controls (which ultimately hurt those it is supposed to help), it's how we get anti-vaxxers, climate change denialists, those who would tear down modern banking and replace it with a gold standard (despite ample evidence this is a terrible idea), we'd block all sorts of medical advances, we'd block human rights, and on and on.

The masses is not a very good deciding factor in running a modern world. They should feel represented, and have some say, but certainly they need protected from really bad decisions. I'm not sure the best way to do it, but it's pretty clear the masses would run things terribly in many cases.

Sometimes having representatives try to get good advice from experts and follow it is a much better solution.

Populists historically have appealed to the masses like this, and they have a pretty bad track record.

An old quote has some truth to it: “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

I hear what you are saying (tyranny of the masses) ... but you can't have a democracy when it's "all are equal but some are _more_ equal than others".

What about us fuckers who saved up and paid for their tuition up front?? Now I get to pay for someone else’s tuition too?

I paid off my loans over a decade ago. I'd rather see a war on student loans than a war against Iran. It would be a better use of tax money and a massive economic stimulus.

It’s not a binary option unfortunately

Be happy about your situation and go about your biz. Then again, I live in a country where education is paid for by the state, along with money for living while studying.

Levy a tax on the wealthiest to repay the loans of anybody who had to take one out over the last 50 years.

Get over it I guess?

So if I paid off my loans do I get a check? Or does the dollar keep getting devalued because of policies that sound good?

The dollar is already worthless. It because fancy Monopoly money after we scrapped the gold standard.

This kind of populist pandering makes me upset. What about people who didn’t go to college? Or people who killed themselves to pay off their student loans? This is nothing more than wealth transfer to a specific demographic (young, educated) to buy off voters. This isn’t how a democracy should function.

> What about people who didn’t go to college? Or people who killed themselves to pay off their student loans?

I think you're misunderstanding the goal here. It's not to create equal outcomes. It's to stop the ongoing harm to students and to society from these abusive practices. Personally I think it would be better if these debts were capped at some non-zero number instead of being erased entirely, with the difference directed toward some of the other groups you mention, but at least this starts the conversation. Negotiation 101: start with an offer that's more favorable to you than where you expect to end up.

> This isn’t how a democracy should function.

This is exactly how a democracy should function - with proposals, then discussion, then votes. What about the back-room deals that have inflated college costs and created special regulatory exemptions for student loans? Anyone who complains about "populist pandering" without at least acknowledging the anti-populist pandering that led to this is being a bit disingenuous.

It’s not “back room deals” that have made tuition prices balloon, it’s the government loans themselves.

It's both. The availability of both grants and loans has been a huge factor, to be sure, but so have the direct subsidies to schools, and the special rules that make such loans more appealing to lenders, and all the "little ways" that regulation drives up either demand or cost for a college education. But it doesn't even matter, really. Whether they were made in the front room or the back room, many of the deals contributing to the debt crisis were made to benefit a few at the expense of the public. Decrying one kind of pandering while denying another never leads to good policy.

> I think you're misunderstanding the goal here. It's not to create equal outcomes. It's to stop the ongoing harm to students and to society from these abusive practices. Personally I think it would be better if these debts were capped at some non-zero number instead of being erased entirely, with the difference directed toward some of the other groups you mention, but at least this starts the conversation. Negotiation 101: start with an offer that's more favorable to you than where you expect to end up.

Which abusive practices are you referring to?

Oh, where to begin? It's a complicated racket. Here are a couple of quick hits illustrating the way that the government has made special rules for student loans that make them unusually attractive to lenders.

http://www.collegescholarships.org/research/student-loans/ http://www.healthcareadministration.com/college/

For a longer treatment, covering the schools' role as well, it would be hard to beat Matt Taibbi's expose.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/the-...

My original comment was primarily directed at the lenders, but the other parties deserve their share of calumny as well.

The main problem here is people taking these loans. Why would anybody take out 150k to study something 'useless'? It's entirely their fault.

Of course the loans made education more expensive, nobody argues that. But the main focus should be on people taking the money for the sake of taking it and then realizing they screwed up.

> Why would anybody take out 150k to study something 'useless'?

Who are you to say it's useless? Such hubris. They do it because they've been led to believe it's necessary, and in some cases it actually is. Kind of hard to become a doctor or lawyer without a degree. Even if that weren't the case, that doesn't absolve the people who take advantage of them. Victims of fraud are acting voluntarily, but that doesn't make it OK to defraud someone else.

> people taking the money for the sake of taking it

You can't even know others' motives, and yet you choose to assume the worst possible ones. That says more about you than them.

> Who are you to say it's useless? Such hubris. They do it because they've been led to believe it's necessary, and in some cases it actually is. Kind of hard to become a doctor or lawyer without a degree. Even if that weren't the case, that doesn't absolve the people who take advantage of them. Victims of fraud are acting voluntarily, but that doesn't make it OK to defraud someone else.

That's why I wrote 'useless'. By that I mean degrees without real job prospects.

> You can't even know others' motives, and yet you choose to assume the worst possible ones. That says more about you than them.

I'm not judging anybody. I know people who took 30k loans without needing them just to pay for a new car, new computer and other non-necessities. They were studying art at a community college. There are many people like that. That's entirely their fault and their debt to pay.

> I know people who took 30k loans without needing them just to pay for a new car, new computer and other non-necessities.

It's interesting that you know multiple such people, but what matters is the statistical reality. Do such "frivolous" loan-takers represent anything even remotely approaching a majority of all who have loans, to justify a sweeping generalization or affect policy?

I never said everybody or a majority of people did that. I just wanted to point out that those cases existed.

83% of student loan debts are lower than 50k. I don't see a problem there. If you made a bad career decision or decided to go to a more expensive college it's your burden to carry.

This is just another bad idea I can't get behind.

Yeah, because throwing tons of "cheap" loans with no accountability has worked so well to this point. /s

I think the best proposal I have seen is instead of the US Taxpayer being left to hold the bag, schools should have to guarantee the loans for students they accept.

Force them to have some skin in the game. We might get some better discretion about who gets "easy" money and schools might be more incentivized to keep costs reasonable was well.

I think the problem is the high cost of education. There should be an alternative way of getting the education you need without being seriously in debt.

I mean, there are. Community college is super cheap. After two years transfer to a state school. Work a part time job. I guarantee you that if you do all of these things, you won’t have any debt.

There already are:

https://discoverpraxis.com http://www.mikeroweworks.com

There are others. This myth that you are worthless if you don't worship at the alter of "higher education" is a false crisis.

Can I take out a large student loan for living expenses and tuition right now, pocketing everything I don’t spend on tuition? I’m confident that this is ultimately going to come out of my pocket somehow, so might as well gamble on my own enrichment.

Of course he could have started with some real-world solutions, such as restoring the tax-deductibility of student loan interest lost in Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. He could have gone a little further, proposing aggressive tax credits for those who are paying their loans back or perhaps government programs, where, in exchange for working in an 'at-risk' area, the government makes your loan payment. No instead, Bernie promises something he'll most likely never be able to deliver. This is almost as bad as the current guy in the White House, who screwed all of the student loan borrowers with his tax 'act.'

Those are great suggestions. Bernie loves to make big proposals, but turning proposals into results is a skill he seems to lack. He has been in the senate a long time and IIRC only sponsored two bills that became law - one of them something symbolic like renaming a post office. Some first-term senators already have longer lists of accomplishments. We need more realistic proposals to improve the situation going forward, not his mere primary-vote-buying.

Does cancelling actually mean paying it off on behalf of the debtors?

Maybe the creditors get a big fat tax deduction...

Does cancelling actually mean paying it off on behalf of the debtors?

A large percentage of student debt is so-called "direct loans". This is money loaned by the US Department of Education. This money comes from the Federal government, not from a bank or other private financial institution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_the_United_St...

For those loans, "cancelling" presumably means adjusting some ledger entries.

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