Student loan forgiveness makes my grandson a chump
wsj.com
wsj.com
However, I don't think this will really solve anything. It's will empty our collective cup of debt, but the faucet is still on. Loans will still be made and college will still be stupidly expensive unless we make more structural changes to our education system. How many times will we "forgive" the debt? It doesn't really even make sense to do it until we have a plan in place to make sure we won't have to again.
The more measured position against student loan forgiveness is:
-People in the trades who did not go to college should not be paying for people who did. College degree holders already have high earning power.
-There is a moral hazard that comes from not holding people accountable to their own decisions. People will assume (perhaps logically) that there will always be a bail out. This same thing happened in the stock market for rich people via the "fed put."
-We have inflation at generational highs with extremely low employment - this will exacerbate the issue.
-Forgiveness that is decoupled from fixing the underlying system doesn't actually solve the problem. Will we do forgiveness every X years without making college more affordable? (you correctly made this point)
-Forgiveness is a misnomer - in reality it is a tax we all have to pay and is much more akin to a transfer payment.
-What values are we trying to teach our children about decision making and accountability? Victim mentality is becoming more common.
-Our society relentlessly holds people "accountable" for all kinds of things in all manner of unfair ways. Legally, economically, medically -- people are constantly held accountable. "Morals" will not change because student loans are forgiven. Also comparing rich people bailouts to student loan forgiveness is laughable.
-I'm not sure what the point is here? Also unemployment rate is very very low in the latest jobs report.
-Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good. We'll never solve any problems if every solution needs to fix the underlying system.
-How much taxes do you pay for others' student loans? This is not how taxes work. I'd be interested in your sources here.
-Is "victim" mentality becoming more common or are the injustices of our society becoming more obvious with better communication technologies? Again, our society relentlessly moralizes everything. Forgiving student loans isn't going to change anything but the borrowers economic participation and quality of life.
2. Perhaps then don’t make it entirely free. It doesn’t have to be black and white.
3. We printed money for banks in 2008 and it didn’t result in inflation. As long as people have places to spend their money or the money doesn’t end up sitting in an account, inflation shouldn’t be a problem. Right now, the supply chain is still borked and people like me have been waiting for stuff on back-order for months, which means money that I already ear-marked to spend is instead just sitting in my bank account and collectively causing inflation.
4. This one I agree with. Either it’s free/cheap college education or nothing. Loan forgiveness is a lazy way to say that we want free/cheap education without committing to anything.
5. Don’t care about transfer payments. Many people are already born with insane talent or great circumstances and have life much easier so why do I suddenly care that some people have it harder or easier?
6. Victim mentality happens when someone loses hope and feels like they are in a deep hole. If your student loans are too large to pay off reasonably soon (which any normal young person with hopes and dreams can get themselves into), you talk to your friends who are in the same pickle and this mentality develops.
Now I don’t know if making college free is necessarily the option or feasible but both sides have a point. Nothing that is contentious has one side that is simply right — it wouldn’t be a contentious issue.
What kind of man would want their money taken from them to provide a gift to others?
There is a big difference between selfishness and self-respect.
Corruption, and that's what this is, a money transfer to Democrats' constituency, should be opposed even if it's a small amount.
How much would your individual taxes increase if student loans are forgiven?
I guess I'm a kind of a man that wants everyone to succeed, and not be artificially held back by a bad system.
What about the university administrators with made-up jobs? Student Success Coordinators and Wellness Promotion Managers are getting salaries for doing almost nothing of import, and it's all on the backs of students, mostly student loan borrowers.
And even the categories of university administration growth that aren't whimsical odes to self-licking ice cream cones are due to unfunded mandates from state and federal government. It certainly seems fair to ask taxpayers to pay for costs imposed by their representatives.
I don't know what the right answer is. But here's a proposal:
- Drastically reduce governmental administrative burden. There doesn't need to be a parallel system of criminal justice, for example. If a student accuses another of a sexual assault, it should be investigated by professional law enforcement and, if there's merit to it, prosecuted by a professional ADA. It shouldn't be the subject of a chimerical Title IX kangaroo court.
- Cap administration costs at 20% of the total budget as a requirement for federal funding for student aid (but not research grants).
- Federal student loans should either be made at the Fed rate or dischargeable in bankruptcy. The idea that non-dischargeable debt is as high as 8.5% is absurd.
- Student loan repayment payroll tax. Payments come out of payroll, before income taxes.
- Universal IDR. Everyone is on IDR by default. Every tax filing, your new IDR amount is automatically calculated and transmitted to your employer for appropriate payroll tax.
- Tiered Public Service Loan Forgiveness. 7 years for teachers, military, firefighters, national rangers in receipt of hazard pay, etc. (public servants with significant sacrifice). 10 years for other public employment. 10 years for private employment of particularly high social value (doctors, nurses, family law, farming, safety workers, electricians and other infrastructure folks, etc. etc.). 15 years for all others.
This would quickly fix college cost bloat. Non-discharge of college debt was put into place in 1998. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/28362...
I believe Clinton signed it into law as a perk to the banksters. Imagine having a loan book which can be repaid by seizing a parent co-signer's social security.
You're much better off just taking it easy an mooching off the idiots who work all day.
If mooching is so pleasurable why isn’t everyone doing it?
Because being poor in the US is really hard. Getting government benefits in the US is really hard. And the way a lot of government benefits are structured, with a whole bunch of cliffs because of ridiculous means testing, it’s extremely difficult to get out of a cycle of dependence on govt benefits.
It’s hilarious seeing people, whose college education was almost entirely covered by the government (you could pay your college education working part time at your local burger place because it was so heavily subsidized, and that’s not even including the massive percentage of people who got free education from the govt because they were enlisted in a variety of wars), complaining about the fact that the govt may forgive student loans that students take decades to pay despite being in the top 10-20% of income brackets.
And frankly, if these people were really concerned about those who worked hard and paid off loans being chumps, as opposed to opposing any help for anyone who is not in the top 0.1% (remember that multi trillion tax cut passed not even half a decade ago?), maybe they would propose something else that compensated for the massive decrease in educational support, massive increase in college prices, and the massive increase in the need for a college degree to get a job, by proposing something like tax credits for whatever tuition you paid over the last several years. So, for example, you get tax credits worth 10-(2022-tuition year)0.8tuition, so tax credits for the last 10’years of tuition, at 80% last year, and then reducing linearly till it drops to 0 for tuition paid more than 10 years ago.
Or adjust it some other way that makes sense.
The "easy" solution is to give everyone $150,000 with a string attached, requiring the money to go to your student loans first. Trump showed us that the government can give "free" money to all citizens. This will just be 50x more. Let the citizens decide if their money should be used to go to college, avoid working night shifts, or even go on a year long cruise. This will be a much fairer solution then giving money just to college educated people who haven't yet pay what they promise they would.
Regarding inflation and deinsensitiving working, well if you make a bad law, expect a bad outcome.
Obviously the money is there, let's just stop moralizing every individual while letting this corrupt corporatist system run off with trillions.
For the worthless schools that took loan money and didn't deliver education (for-profit scam schools), those could be forgiven. For all the expensive degrees that have led to jobs that can't pay the loans back, this all shows how inadequately prepared the students were to do basic arithmetic and cost/benefit analysis. That's on their parents.
It’s going into debt is such a bad thing then why do we have it at all?
This is all really about ending the banks risk free gravy train.
I dropped out again, then eventually decided to go back full time on student loans several years later. Tuition was meanwhile shooting up like crazy the entire time and more than doubled when I went back.
I ended up taking out more than twice as much in student loans than I would have if I had just done it in the first place right after my scholarship ran out eight years prior.
I would agree I was a chump for trying to stay debt free to get my degree, although I'm also glad I didn't go nuts with my loans like some people did, even the amount I had was a quarter as much as some people I know that also chose less lucrative majors (but more expensive schools, or out of state).
That being said, I have since paid off my student loans, but would still approve some fairly generous student loan forgiveness. I don't have a "well I struggled so you should to" attitude.
These people were convinced by their parents, teachers, counselors, family, etc that they could do whatever they want, take whatever loans out, and not have to worry about it, and ended up making a poor decision with lifelong consequences based on bad information.
Some of these people have been paying their student loans for 5-10 years and their loans have only gotten bigger because of how large they are and how much interest accrues. I know a couple people that have just given up on paying their loans off ever, and are only going to pay the minimum required the rest of their lives.
Those loans are going to effectively be "forgiven" whenever they end up dying, at a much higher amount than what forgiveness now would amount to.
Yes, the root of the problem should be addressed, but attacking only the root doesn't help the people who have been screwed over by the system.