White House officials planning to cancel $10k in student debt per borrower | Hacker News Reader

White House officials planning to cancel $10k in student debt per borrower

washingtonpost.com

4 pointsCSMastermind11 comments

It's unconstitutional. Congress is supposed to appropriate money. Can a Republican president "forgive" up to $10K in capital gains taxes?

A republican president (Trump) kind of started this whole thing by reducing interest rates on federal student loans during the pandemic to zero.

Only the courts can decide what is constitutional, but Biden could virtually cancel $10k in student loans by continuing to set the interest rate at 0% for that portion indefinitely.

So I would reason if that power is constitutional, canceling it is too.

Disclaimer: I think it is a terrible idea.

I can't imagine this is going to help curb inflation, which is the number 1 thing on everyone's mind right now.

I know there is a subset of borrowers that really need the help so I fully support it for them. I wish there was a way to single them out rather than giving it to all. Some of whom are more than able to repay the loan.

Not solving the underlying problem.

No. But the underlying problem is even harder. This is something that helps actual people today.

At the expense of others and hurts more people in the future.

The underlying problem is simple. Stop having government backed student loans

If you do that, college loans will be given only to the risk-free people. It's good for the country that some people go to college and fail to become wealthy off of it. That's why the government got involved. It's wasting human potential, and keeps poor people poor.

So it's not simple. Realistic solutions that promote the country as a whole involve balancing different goals. One of them is avoiding the way colleges use the loans to increase prices without increasing education.

On the other hand, non-government backed loans will cause the tuition costs to drop precipitously...which then would cause the risk-assessment to be easier.

I don't think it's good that poor people get stuck with insurmountable debt, especially when a lot of college degrees don't result in well paying jobs.

College loans are pointless because college is pointless.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com