First, I completely get how some people feel this way. It's valid.
However, as someone who's almost paid off their own student loan, I would not feel punished by student loan forgiveness. I would be glad to see it. The money I have repaid is already gone; yes, if I could turn back time knowing it would be forgiven, I needn't have repaid it, but if I could turn back time there are lots of investments or choices I would do differently. Student loan forgiveness would take a huge existential burden off an entire generation. It would do so much for mental wellbeing of so many of my peers. I can't think of something I'd rather see. And the truth is, I've almost paid off my loans because I'm doing alright. I'll be fine.
Now, the fact it got this bad to start with...doing student loan forgiveness without also making serious reforms is just promising it will happen again. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't help people who are suffering today.
You might be fine right now, but what about all the people who scrimped and saved for years to pay off their student loans. Are their efforts for nothing?
Many working class 18 year olds will be punished for making what they thought was a pragmatic choice.
So would having you pay my mortgage.
Forgiving debt isn't about you, it's about unburdening an entire generation of working people so they aren't forever under the thumb of financial institutions. Undoing federal guarantees is also about rightsizing academia, which has bloated itself on these ever growing loan numbers.
Another reason that loan forgiveness would be unfair. And what about people who learned a trade instead of paying for an overpriced college? Or poor people who didn't go to college because their underfunded neighborhood high school didn't prepare them for college?
America has already had too many bailouts to save the privileged from the consequences of their own decisions.
You're helping to make GP's point. You are saying that those who owe money are more important to this conversation without knowing anything else about them.
People with massive, life-ruining debt are more important for us to help than people who graduated debt-free or who got jobs/careers that let them pay off their debt.
If you can divorce yourself from a kindergarten-esque "fairness" complaint, it's pretty obvious that yeah, we should (unfairly!) help people who are being destroyed by debt.
If they went to school, got a degree, and a job, then they got what was promised and need to pay their commitments.
The plans are to forgive 10K of debt per person. There is a crazy suggestion of forgiving 50K of debt per person but let's just ignore that (it costs more than a trillion).
People who owe 100K are still fucked. They did go to better schools, though, so they have better jobs. Many also have good connections, because they have an easier time networking with their connections.
Wanna know who is more fucked?
Many people who didn't take loans and went to no-name schools and are working low paying jobs and have few social connections.
If we give money to either group it's a handout. For these politicians to pretend it's not a handout because it's forgiving a loan is disingenuous.
Elon Musk isn't wrong to poke fun at Elizabeth Warren. Let's just hope it doesn't result in another Trumpist president.
Which is why I think forgiveness should be an option ~7 years after leaving school. You still have to convince a bankruptcy judge that you can’t pay but wrecking your finances at 30+ would discourage most from going down that path.
It costs money to forgive loans, which either could have been spent elsewhere or must be raised in new taxes.
The analogy is if you build a house with plumbing, and your neighbor builds without, then the city uses tax money from you to pay for their upgrade.
Anybody currently holding student debt is required to pay the US government an interest rate exceeding what the Fed gives banks. Student loan interest a tax on the poor levied by the US government. My wife and I have the same degree from NYU: her parents paid her tuition, I took out loans. Over time I pay more for the same degree because of interest.
Furthermore, we already do wealth redistribution via corporate welfare of all varieties. There's countless subsidy programs for all manner of environmental harmful activities that will pass huge financial burden to my kid. A small fix to loan interest isn't much to ask.
If you are going to focus on other people getting windfall they don't deserve, there are much better places to focus your energies - I am sure anyone here has a few candidates, but in UK we had government award multimillion dollar contracts for COVID supplies to companies started a month ago, who copied their terms and conditions from a pizza delivery company.
I don't think this 'zero sum' view is helpful, but what I have a real problem with is when people only apply their 'beliefs' selectively - you have to logically consistent.
If this is your view, surely you should be More offended about extremely rich people paying zero tax, getting government bailouts when they mess up, than you should be concerned about poor people being slightly less poor? Is this actually a view you believe in, or is it just an excuse to keep poor people down?
This is like 'pro life' people not supporting healthcare, or 'freedom' libertarians supporting civil forfeiture and surveillance or 'personal responsibility' people making up excuses for why executives shouldn't be charged after they make a decision that kills several hundred people.
"elevating the people that have behaved less responsibly"
We don't actually know that, maybe person A was on track to pay off his student debt, and then someone in his family had cancer or got hit by a bus. Person A might actually be more responsible, being able to solely focus on your career is a privilege that some of us don't get
And consider this other view: It's not a perfect analogy but imagine that the federal government decides to give $10k to every white man. Of course everyone would scream that was racist and sexist. But nobody is being punished by giving a reward to one race and gender and not the others. There are obviously issues with the analogy, but it might at least show another angle of why some people don't want others to get loan forgiveness when they get nothing.
This is such an incredibly lazy answer. Why reply if you're not going to even attempt to interact with the points put forward?
The owners of corporations already pay more taxes than most of the so-called "working class." In fact, if you earned over $118,000 in a year, you pay 70% of the tax burden in a country where better than half of the adult residents pay no income tax at all.
Owners of any corporations pay a variety of taxes, some paid regardless if you turned a profit, such as property tax and employment tax. They also pay state/fed income tax on profits, regulatory fees, and a host of other liabilities that get paid to the state.
To wax on "corporate welfare" is to say you really don't know how it all works.
If student loans were made dischargeable in bankruptcy, I don't foresee many people with good jobs quitting those jobs just to declare bankruptcy. Furthermore, that feels like the kind of thing a bankruptcy judge would see right through. Rather, those borrowers will continue to service their debt as per their agreement.
It's the people who are unemployed or underemployed that would be in the position to declare bankruptcy, and them doing so will result in the true value of their loans being made apparent to the bondholders. And for the cases somewhere in the middle, it will help with more voluntary restructuring (due to a real BATNA) which won't involve the courts at all.