Hacker News Reader

Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

The relief policy has been terribly irresponsible:

* Those who sacrificed and paid off their student debt receive no reward. Those who put 10k in ink or vacations on the books get a 10K payday.

* People are now incentivized to not pay off the last 10K of their debt until there is an answer if relief will be enacted or not

* The policy smacks of "vote us back in or else 10K wont be yours"

In general I am strongly against policies which change the rules on and penalize people who sacrificed to better their life and better those who made relatively worse choices (or choices with known tradeoffs, but then the tradeoffs get mitigated at the expense of those who did something more taxing for a reward). You can tax the wealth out of those who chose to better their income, but you cannot tax the experiences (eg:travel) out of those who dissipated their resources today/in the past.

For example, bad news for those who never had a dream to be a Mech Eng, but did it anyways for the good of their family.

As a general observation being in America the past ~10 yrs I find America has a major problem with policies that pattern match this kind of subsidize the negative side of choices with tradeoffs to the detriment of someone else who made a sacrifice to receive a reward.

View on HN

Bring back the ability to declare bankruptcy for student loans and then market can better price risk. The only stipulation I would think might be good is a waiting period of say 10 or 15 years. This would to prevent say a new dentist or lawyer student from immediately declaring bankruptcy after graduation. By 10-15years on, if the person can't afford student loan payments, then bankruptcy should be on the table.

I think this is a good policy, as long as the universities are made to bear the risk of non payment. They should stand behind the value of their product with their money on the line like every other business.

Why should a college education take 10-15 years to pay off though?

Sure. Why should anything cost anything? Why should anyone have to subsidize people getting useless degrees at expensive colleges? Why can't you go to CCs and then state schools for much less? For most people, the modern college experience is just extended high school with almost zero educational value. Most people are more suited to trade schools. The poor kids already have incredible access to scholarships. It's all just "I want it" thinking.

You'd probably be surprised at how many of the student loans in default came from trade schools. I know the narrative is that all the people in student loan trouble majored in Bulgarian folk singing or whatever, but that's not anything like an accurate picture.

The largest outright student loan cancellation in recent years was for former students of ITT Tech, which was a trade school.

Was it? How many plumbers, carpenters, or electricians came out of ITT tech?

They had drafting and electronics technician programs, both of which would be considered trades, not professional degrees.

"Trade school" generally includes stuff like that. Also cosmetology schools, truck driving schools, and so on.

What happened a lot of the time is people choose the easiest program and it produces a wild oversupply in that field. Meanwhile we will basically always have an under supply of plumbers and septic technicians cause most folks hate the idea of working with sewage.

> The largest outright student loan cancellation in recent years was for former students of ITT Tech, which was a trade school.

I don’t see how A massive fraud is even a relevant argument here. This isn’t a trade school like welders, plumbers, etc. and it certainly doesn’t justify the non-fraud subsidies

Ehh if "I want it" was all it was about then why is the US so hilariously expensive for college compared to other countries? Looking around at my fellow Americans it doesn't seem to be because it makes us smarter that's for sure.

It wouldn't if you get a good paying job. But sometimes the degree doesn't pay out that way and people are left struggling to pay rent, let alone debt.

I fully agree with this. I'd add fixing interest on it. Variable interest rates just shouldn't exist.

I'm a bit conflicted on this. With regular bankruptcy the loaner can take possession of the item you bought. With education the bank can't take your degree, knowledge, network and whatever else you gained from university. I'm not saying this shouldn't be a thing, but it would encourage people with no real property to declare bankruptcy even if they could pay it off.

Not true for unsecured loans and even for secured loans there is no guarantee that the security provided will cover the loan. Which is why the probability of a default is a variable while giving loans. By removing bankruptcy option, government is encouraging subprime loans in education.

> With regular bankruptcy the loaner can take possession of the item you bought.

If it's worth anything, which it may not be.

I'd bet the average amount collected on, say, SBA loans for small businesses is pennies on the dollar, at best.

It will be interesting to see what happens with FHA/VA loans when those go massively underwater oh...about a year from now.

Student loans actually can be discharged in bankruptcy. There’s been this myth floating around for awhile. Yes it is harder and it’s a bit more work for your lawyer but is absolutely doable.

In theory, one can discharge student loans through bankruptcy. In practice, the bar demonstrating an undo hardship severe enough to have them discharged de facto impossible to cross.

Thus, people simply say that they aren't dischargeable.

If you talk to a lawyer on the subject, they will tell you exactly that. Even developing cancer that gives you a 20% chance of living for the next five years isn't a hardship undo enough for courts to discharge student loans.

Source: https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation...

I'm not disagreeing with any of your points, the 10k forgiveness policy is strictly a way to appeal to young voters. But you clearly didn't read the article.

The article is about changes to the income-based repayment program, which was a big change that was part of the same bill. And frankly it doesn't get enough attention for how much of a long-term impact that it'll have on future borrowers, as opposed to the (tentatively) one-time forgiveness that affects mostly college graduates.

Small nitpick: this is all executive action, not a bill or law. That means that it can be undone as soon as a new president takes office.

That's not a "small nitpick" but a huge glaring gap in this entire process.

Not only can it be undone but it can be re-done or changed in any way imaginable short of a court stepping in and saying "no, you don't have the authority to do that" which is unlikely.

We should get VERY nervous when POTUS enacts sweeping changes to "rewrite" laws without actually changing the law.

The fact that the debate has remained on this topic is exactly the political division desired.

It’s correct that the relief will do nothing to solve the overall problem.

It’s also correct that it’s an unabashed vote buying scam that probably shouldn’t even be legal.

But it’s also correct that the student loan structure is truly predatory.

This entire conversation needs to shift from paid relief to “0% interest student loans” or fixed interest (borrow 100k and you will pay back 130k) and/or a pre-income tax option to pay back loans faster akin to a 401k.

The way that interest builds on deferrals for these unforgivable loans is truly nuts based on the people I’ve talked to. Unless there’s a permanent way to do that, it’s all political theater.

I'm not sure 0% interest really helps when (prospective) students still have the ability to borrow an unlimited amount of dollars. The current crisis is caused by colleges raising tuition to maximum amount that students are able to pay, which is essentially only limited by how much they are allowed borrow.

What I would like to see is:

1. Federal student loans capped at $XX,000 per semester, disbursed directly to school.

2. If the school accepts federal loans for any student, then tuition and fees are capped for all students at $YY,000 per semester (where YY is a small multiplier on XX, maybe 1.25).

3. Interest capped at a "reasonable" amount. This might mean simple (non-compounding) interest, or non-accrual of interest while loans are deferred, or something else.

4. Private loans should be dischargeable in bankruptcy after 10 to 15 years.

Fair points all around.

You are missing the worst part. There is no policy to actually fix the problem. Just paying off some debt now won't stop the next generation from taking out the same loans.

The worst part is the link states that the new policy is to always do this in the future.

Eg, no loan repayment for music majors and full repayment for engineers.

This loan forgiveness wouldn't have needed to happen if schools had not raised tuition by insane amounts.

schools wouldn't have been able to raise tuition by insane amounts if the gov't hadn't underwrote all those loans' risk

Nah, that was an opportunity that universities saw to make more money and they took it without thinking of the larger consequences (which is where we are today having to do loan forgiveness). Nothing about government underwriting forced schools to charge higher tuition. They chose self-enrichment (not even profit to shareholders except for scam schools) over easier access to education and a more educated population. Universities should not be behaving like capitalists.

Yes universities took advantage, but it seems clear that the government is who is to blame. They created a situation where a person who is going to be making $40,000 a year could take out massive student loans. It is hard to put as much blame as you are on an organization who has the opportunity to get government money.

Universities could have said "yes, you can take out 40k in loans, but with our low tuition, you won't need to"

That would be leaving cash on the table.

There were consequences for taking that cash, as we see today with the need for loan forgiveness.

If universities had kept tuition low, you might still have had government backed loans, but would not have needed loan forgiveness.

I don't see how people can simultaneously be against government-backed loans existing, but also wanting universities to take as much from that system as possible to the detriment of society.

>but also wanting universities to take as much from that system as possible to the detriment of society.

I don't think anybody is saying universities should take as much as possible, only that it is to be expected. Because it is expected the government should not be enabling it. People have been asking the government to stop with these loans since the beginning saying this exact thing would happen.

They are not acting like capitalists because they don't have to. They offer a low value product for a high price, and the government foots the bill through guaranteed student loans. If they had to take risk on the loans, then they would act like capitalists, which means limiting expenses, and pricing the product where it provides economic value to the customers. If not, they cease to exist, like any other capitalist.

Schools take free government money to produce the right kind of voters. The wrong kind of voters get to pay for it. Win-win.

This is bucket-crab talk. Not getting a reward is not the same as getting penalized; those who paid everything off have an unchanged situation. You might say the action doesn't go far enough and should lift up more people, and there is an argument for that.

This, however, just smacks of "the train ran over me, so it's disrespectful if it doesnt also run over everyone else."

When you say those who paid everything off have an unchanged situation when compared to people who didn't and instead got the subsidy... What precisely do you mean? If money is fungible then the person who didn't pay their debt off and was given an extra $10,000 now has more money than the person who did spend their own money to pay off their debt? This is incontrovertible, right?

If you paid your loans off, you don't lose anything by someone else getting $10,000. That is, indeed, incontrovertible. Imagine I have an apple and you have an apple. If I get another apple, that doesn't mean you now have zero.

Here's a toy model without interest to make this easier for you to grok:

T0: We both have $0.

T1: We both borrow $10,000 and have -$10000

T2-T11: We both make $2,000, of which I pay back $1,000, you pay back $0 per time period

t11: The government pays off your $10,000 loan

At T11 I will have $10,000, and you will have $20,000.

The government pays off my $10,000 and your situation is literally no different. I'm not sure how you're not getting this. If you were locked in a room and had no idea the government gave me that money you would have no idea and remain unaffected.

This is what I mean by bucket-crab mentality. The inability to discern someone else doing better from you doing worse.

> and had no idea the government gave me that money you would have no idea and remain unaffected.

Except we do have an idea not just from the news/knowledge, but also from the fact that taxes fund this scenario.

One gets their tax money (plus some) back. Another pays taxes, but gets none back.

> Except we do have an idea not just from the news/knowledge

This is the crux of it. You're not actually penalized, it just makes you upset. You can choose to not be upset. I'm happy that people who most need help are getting some.

> But also from the fact that taxes fund this scenario. > One gets their tax money (plus some) back. Another pays taxes, but gets none back.

This is false. No taxes were levied on you to fund this scenario.

If you want to count the downstream effects, the deficit is drastically down under the Biden administration, so this is part of a package deal that helps you out (not that the this would raise your taxes anyway even if the deficit were to increase).

Not to mention the effects of stimulus from people who would otherwise be paying money on a loan but can now spend it on other things, which will trickle up to whatever corporation you work for, so from this action alone you may actually come out ahead.

But I contend that you're not interested a full accounting or the dollar amount people are receiving, because if you were, you would be much more interested in the pounds being given to interests that clearly don't need them (military, mega farms, oil) instead of the pennies given to those that do.

The short of it is no taxes are levied on you for this to happen, it really is a win for everyone, and it's ok for these people to get a little bit of help that you're not getting.

> who most need help are getting some.

This is the crux of the point. We're discussing that two people with equal _capability_ to pay, but differing conscientiousness have outcomes that are inverted from a well ordered set of incentives. We're creating (additional) precedents for rewarding irresponsibility with finances in the face of marginal choices between paying back a loan and present day consumption. (not in the choice of degree)

> you would be much more interested in the pounds being given to interests that clearly don't need them (military, mega farms, oil) instead of the pennies given to those that do.

I actually am interested in these, and they're just not the specific topic today. For the record I am against most (all?) forms of market distortion by the government, except when they're breaking obviously distorted economic incentives[1] (and not creating worse ones as is the case here).

> of it is no taxes are levied

Taxes for the most part a general bucket and as such expenditures as such are from taxes paid. Even if it's not my money it's not right for whomever paid them

[1] such as tragedy of the commons

> The government pays off my $10,000 and your situation is literally no different.

No, because you spent $10K on random stuff that he/she did not. Somewhere you have $10K in goods, services, or experiences that he/she does not.

Biden isnt hopping in a time machine to take things away from you. Nothing is being taken from you. Someone else is getting something that you are not, that's all.

The central idea is that the person who payed off their debt will have to pay again to bail out the debtor.

Governments raise money through taxation. 10k of forgiven debt is 10k more than needs to be raised in taxes.

Someone payed their debt, and then will be taxed more to pay someone else's too.

You might say, "but governments don't have to balance their budget", yet the US still has taxes. If money spent (and debt incurred) is irrelevant, why collect taxes at all?

Flip your argument and turn it up to 11...

Suppose everyone else on the planet is given $10B and you get nothing. Why would you be concerned? How could it be unfair? They're just being given something that you are not.

Where does the money come from? It is a pool of money that those who don't qualify for have paid more into and are not seeing the benefits.

A dollar is a dollar. Why are we giving only college educated people that don't have enough money to pay their loans back $10,000?

Ok, so we're agreed that you're not affected at all but instead want to talk about an entirely different concern.

This concern is where does the money "come from?". No money is coming from anywhere, because no money is changing hands. It is debt that is owed that is no longer owed. No money is taken from any pool of money to pay is off, it is simply removed from the books. No government program is paying for this. No taxes are levied on you. You will not see your tax bill go up as a result of this. Levying taxes is a power of congress, no the executive, so Biden could not do this even if he wanted to.

Your next question is why are we helping these people who need it - we are helping them because they need it, because great countries take care of their own. You were able to pay off your loans - that's great! But many others did not fare as well, and it is in our collective interest that they not suffer so terribly for this financial burden. Less money being paid back to these programs (which have terribly high interest rates to begin with) means more money stimulating the economy. It means more money will trickle up to the corporation you work for, and you will see some measure of this benefit.

I would suggest that instead of spending so much time being upset about how some people at the bottom got some help you instead redirect that energy toward the programs benefiting those who do not need the help and are absorbing resources that utterly dwarf students having to pay $10k less - the military, oil subsidies, megafarm subsidies.

As long as we're punching, why not punch up instead of down?

EDIT: As for "why are we only giving to these people who need it" - great question! I would welcome giving more help out. I would agree this measure doesn't go far enough. We could be doing more, and we should demand that we do!

It isn't crab bucket mentality if you have to pay to lift others up.

People who will be getting this benefit have paid or will pay far more than $10k in federal taxes over their lifetime. You can view it as them getting a tax refund of their own money if you're concerned about helping anyone else with your money.

I find that pretty unlikely. They are most likey already federal money recipients than donors, given their income.

It is not a tax levied on you, so you are not paying for it.

Who is paying for it then and why do my taxes keep going up?

Err.. did you just look at your taxes and think, "this must be that student loan forgiveness!!"?

Student loan forgiveness is not being "paid for", because no money is changing hands. It is debt that is being forgiven. The government is not paying money out for this, because it is already spent.

Your taxes keep going up because you are making more money. It's not a bad problem to have.

Federal and state taxes and spending are continually increasing.

Federal spending tripled since 1970, after accounting for inflation and population change. State governments have done much the same.

>Student loan forgiveness is not being "paid for", because no money is changing hands.

My that measure, my bank shouldn't mind if I don't pay my mortgage. After all, new money isn't being spent.

> My that measure, my bank shouldn't mind if I don't pay my mortgage. After all, new money isn't being spent.

That's silliness. Your bank is not going to forgive your debt, so that will not pan out for you. Biden is forgiving the $10,000 in loans, so that will pan out for the recipients.

But certainly if it is no cost to the federal budget, it should be no cost to my banks budget. Why don't they simply forgive me loan. After all, no money is changing hands, so it is of no cost to them?

> It is debt that is being forgiven.

The money had to come from somewhere. At the very worst case it's dilutive printing that is an invisible taxation (via inflation).

Keep in mind the hierarchy of the federal reserve, which is split into banks, which have at least some percent of private ownership. While the government can "forgive" the student debt, it must keep the debt owed to the federal reserve on it's balance sheets (deficits and debts). The Federal Reserve (afaik) is not forgiving that debt. Therefore some where, someday, someone is going to have to pay off the that government debt (and along the way the interest accruing)

Money does not magically appear from nowhere...

It is debt that does disappear if it is forgiven.

Debt is money...

That disappears when forgiven, exactly.

If you loan me 10k, and then later forgive the loan, you are still 10k in the hole. I spent the 10k on goods and services, and you have 10k less that you can spend.

Alternatively, can I borrow $10k from you?

Don't forget that you also don't get forgiveness if you took out private loans instead of federal loans. This topic seems to be missed a lot.

And even if I supported the debt forgiveness, I would still think it's crazy that the president can just unilaterally spend $500 billion like that without any checks and balances.

Esp when inflation is a problem. What should we do? Howabout hand out half a trillion.

> * Those who sacrificed and paid off their student debt receive no reward.

Everyone is sacrificing. This statement seems to imply that people who haven't paid of their debt only haven't done so because they haven't sacrificed anything and are instead taking vacations.

Moreover, the general concept of taxes is that you put money into a government pot, and it goes to things that maybe won't better you in a direct way. I've paid much more than $20k in taxes, why can't I get something out of that which will benefit me directly for once, even if it doesn't benefit someone else directly? My sacrifice is that I don't have kids, and yet I'm paying for the schooling of other people's kids. That's not something I complain about because I know it will help society as a whole.

> * People are now incentivized to not pay off the last 10K of their debt until there is an answer if relief will be enacted or not

The whole point of the policy is that people aren't paying off that loan one way or another. It's not as if many people have $10k-$20k sitting around they could put toward a student loan but have decided not to because of the announced policy.

> * The policy smacks of "vote us back in or else 10K wont be yours"

It's the other way around: the policy is the fulfilment of a campaign promise from the last election; student loan debt relief was one of the things Biden campaigned on. Last time we elected a billionaire real-estate developer and got tax breaks for the rich and corporations. This time we voted the other way and are getting student loan debt relief. That's just the way it works. Anyway, Biden isn't up for reelection this year and is implementing this action through the executive branch, so control of Congress doesn't matter so much as to whether this policy is implemented or not.

It's not as if many people have $10k-$20k sitting around they could put toward a student loan but have decided not to because of the announced policy.

That is exactly what is happening. Sitting around could be defined as parents with $10,000 ready to help but deciding to let general tax payers pay up.

Payments have also been paused for 2 years with no interest. I can say personally I have left the money “sitting around”, because there is literally no reason to pay the loans when you can just invest (or otherwise let inflation devalue the debt) and pay later

If that were the case, there wouldn't be such a clamoring for debt relief. Fact is that student loan calculations already take into account the assets of parents. Schools routinely factor in the help they could give into the total cost, and offer a package of grants and loans to make up the difference. If parents are withholding support it likely means the student can't meet tuition with their aid package.

it becomes a marginally rational choice to defer whatever you're able to though. even if it's only $500, that's $500 more in your pocket.

> Those who sacrificed and paid off their student debt receive no reward

"I suffered, so everyone else should suffer the same way I did!"

Seriously, this is such a self centered and short sighted point of view; it's the "back in my day people worked hard and gave their loyalty to their company" mantra of the previous generation being recycled.

It's not a reward, it's a relief for predatory student loans applied to people at a time where society yelled "get a college degree or you'll never get a good job" into their ears day after day.

If your knee jerk reaction is to feel sorry for yourself, or mad at them, perhaps you should take a step back and instead be happy for them, that they are not being shoved through the same pain you were (a pain which is is being amplified by the rise in the cost of living and stagnated wages).

We should be lifting people up; not saying "grab your bootstraps and pull."

> Seriously, this is such a self centered and short sighted point of view

No, this is exactly the opposite.

The world would be a better place if everyone acted responsibly. People are willing to act responsibly in the form of paying back the money that they borrowed and said they would pay back. Even when in the environment of

> predatory student loans applied to people at a time where society yelled "get a college degree or you'll never get a good job

People still decided to respect the words onto which they signed their name.

And now, those same people see that others get benefits from not acting with the same responsibility.

It's a bug. Incentives should be aligned with the societally-beneficial behavior.

(I'm not an American, BTW. I'm not benefitting from this debt cancellation happening or not happening.)

> People still decided to respect the words onto which they signed their name.

18 year olds. We don't consider them responsible enough to drink alcohol, yet we expect them to take on crippling amounts of life-long debt? We shouldn't. It's setting them, and society at large, for failure just to make a few quick bucks.

> And now, those same people see that others get benefits from not acting with the same responsibility.

For very different amounts of money. People who went to college 20 years ago paid less than half than folks who just graduated. 10 years ago was 75% of today. A lot of people are ignoring this fact.

Society is about helping everyone, not just a few individuals who an individual deems as "responsible".

Yeah I think a lot of people are acting like the system is static and not dynamic. Tuition increases over year in unexpected amounts. Interest rates do too. Student loan costs are similar to a 30 year mortgage cost. If you're expecting 18 year olds to accurately know what 30 years (or even 10 years) is, then you're fooling yourself. They just don't have that experience. They're just relying on what their parents and society told them: "go to college". But this is exacerbated by everyone acting like what worked in the past works today. You can't go in thinking that school can be paid off by working over the summer (like my dad did) as that just isn't going to happen. Schooling is also more difficult now because intelligence has progressed and what students need to learn to stay up to date is a higher bar. This makes working during schooling harder too. The ecosystem is moving at a rapid pace and ignoring this just increases the problems.

Just to add a bit of context here, a vast majority of those who have "crippling amounts of life-long debt" used their money for grad school, and so certainly were not merely 18 when they made this decision.

$40,000, the 2020 average cost of tuition (not including living expenses, books, etc), at up to 14% compounding interest... You'll have to pay over $450 a month just to cover interest.

It doesn't take that much debt at student loan interest rates to be "crushing" in this economy.

>18 year olds. We don't consider them responsible enough to drink alcohol, yet we expect them to take on crippling amounts of life-long debt?

In my country, as in most of the world, 18 year olds can drink alcohol. They can also make many other life-altering decisions.

The current system has existed for long enough that we can observe the results of its incentive structures. We can see that people continue to suffer from heavy student loan burdens which limit their ability to fully (and productively) participate in society, even well after they graduate (or don't) university. The incentives you allude to clearly haven't aligned social behavior away from this outcome, so why should we expect that to change?

Given this apparent reality, what we're considering isn't whether or not to risk negatively impacting the existing incentive structure - which isn't producing an optimal outcome to begin with, but whether or not to assuage the suffering of a significant number of student loan holders. Would you prefer taking a purely moral stand for "personal responsibility" if it meant preventing a measure that could help lots of people live fuller lives and contribute to society at a higher level?

> Incentives should be aligned with the societally-beneficial behavior.

Interestingly you've ignored all of the societal benefits of subsidizing education for all of society's participants.

> The world would be a better place if everyone acted responsibly.

This is way too reductionist. Of course the world would be better if people would just all be personally more responsible. Most developed nations don't have the concept of crippling debt due to education cost. Are those nations being irresponsible too?

The fact that the people arguing against this spend less time arguing against the massive spending increases for the american military is a pretty big hint that the central point is "I want to punish my fellow american, I want them to hurt." and not the actual money amount. They don't care if it's $10,000 or $1. "Personal responsibility" is largely a dog-whistle for "if your situation is bad, it's your fault and you deserve it. FYGM."

>> predatory student loans applied to people at a time where society yelled "get a college degree or you'll never get a good job

> People still decided to respect the words onto which they signed their name.

Sorry, are you defending predatory practices? Most government regulation that are almost universally agreed upon, even by stout libertarians, are making predatory practices illegal. In absolutely no world is a singular person, of any intelligence and experience, a match for a team of lawyers at multi-million or multi-billion dollar institutions. It is the same reason many dark patterns are illegal. Because if trickery is used then informed consent is not actually given. It is a situation that is near universally agreed upon as unfair. I'm sorry, you can't just hand wave predatory practices away. They are not okay. Talk about incentives. If you allow predatory practices to flourish you get Robber Barons. That's not healthy for an economy or a country's citizens either.

The point is that they suffered, and now are being told to suffer again, to subsidize others.

This is a classic example of the ant and the grasshopper. However, This policy codifies that grasshoppers will always be subsidized. Free education for music and drama majors, and no subsidy for engineers.

This directly encourages people to select majors that are not in demand.

That's part of being a member of a society. Your tax dollars also pay for roads you may never use, corn you may never eat, healthcare you may never use, schools you never attended, and so forth. The benefit is that you also gain things from being in the society, like roads you do use. Food you do eat. A healthcare net which will catch you if you're permanently disabled. Schools you did attend.

Being part of a society does not mean socializing the cost of every person's mistakes and desires.

Society is just a tool to offer anywhere from 0 to Total wealth transfers. You are just saying that the society you want has more transfers and claiming it to be the only definition of the concept

By being a part of US society (i.e. being a citizen), you're automatically expected to contribute monetarily to the well being of the citizens of the US (and your state/country/city) as a whole, whether you agree with it or not. It's why you have access to things like safe drinking water. Regulated quality food. Cars that don't explode as a standard. And so forth.

And it's the same for every country in this world.

Yes, but not every need and desire is socially supported. Obviously this is subjective and not a given, as it has never been done before in the US.

There is no comparing the building of roads to the subsidizing of education for humanity and drama majors. They are not even in the same realm of usefulness to society.

How would you react if the government announced tomorrow that they were going to pay all expenses in perpetuity for a selection of people, ~40% of the population forever. Would you still argue that the people complaining and who have to work for to support the governments handouts are self centered if you had to continue working. Or would you think that something was not right.

'It's not a reward, it's a relief for predatory student loans applied to people at a time where society yelled "get a college degree or you'll never get a good job" into their ears day after day.'

I got the same loans but get no relief. I am not mad at the people getting the relief, I am angry at the government for choosing favorites from people that all suffered in the same way and making me and others pay for it; In what is clearly a political stunt. I say this as one that votes democrat.

While i am for government services that help the poorest among us; especially kids, People pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is what makes a capitalist society work. It's what has lifted more people out of poverty than any economic system in the history of the world.

Knocking off 25% of a loan with compounding interest is vastly different than "pay all expenses in perpetuity for a selection of people, ~40% of the population forever".

Conflating one with another is not arguing in good faith, IMO.

And frankly, that would be awesome. Did you know that about 40% of the population in the US is unemployed, voluntarily or involuntarily? The proposal is basically UBI, and that's perfectly fine by me.

EDIT: And why is it fine by me? Because I will eventually be one of those unemployed. Either intentionally or unintentionally, depending on how the die rolls. I'd love to know I won't be forced to panhandle or take up a menial job with a body destroyed by time just to put a roof over my head and food in my body.

Why is it not comparable? Why is there a difference, in both cases certain people are getting selected for free money and the rest are being accused of being self centered and complaining while being forced to pay for it.

A Ubi would be the death of capitalism and in turn the United States into a pauper nation.

It's not "I suffered". It is "I sacrificed"

Your $10,000 sacrifice also probably paid off more of the student loan than the $10,000 subsidy did.

Education costs have risen. 33% on average over the last 10 years. 100% in the last 20. And that is accounting for inflation.

People are discussing same graduation year, same school, same loan scenarios here.

It's more about someone who forgoes something so that they pay off the loan, vs someone who does not forgo said thing, but ends up getting both (the loan and the thing).

Eg: imagine one has an extra $1000 today and 10k of student loan. Could make 10 fun choices at $1000 each or I could pay off my student loan. If I choose to take the fun, I get both the fun and the load paid off. If I do the former, I do not get the fun. It actually becomes more exacerbated if someone did something with a net profit such as putting $10k down on a house for example. Now they have the equity in the asset _and_ the debt forgiveness. Whereas the person who paid off the loan themselves does not have the equity.

Everyone suffering is everyone hitting the same pothole on the road. This on the other hand is people behind you chosen at a random time getting 10k dole and being able to out spend you by that amount which is not a fair outcome.

So they patched the pothole. Are you really going to be mad that you hit the pothole, but some folks behind you didn't?

They did not patch the pothole, they created a second lane and only allowed selected people to use it. Everyone else still has to drive over the pothole. They also have to pay for the construction of the lane they are not allowed to use.

If I paid off my student loans, I've hit that pothole. It's done and past; I'm not continuously driving over it. There is no second lane; the pothole was just filled in a bit (not fully, of course).

You are still paying to build the second lane though. In addition many people have not paid off their student loans but make to much money to qualify, they are being forced over the pothole

I think you could slightly argue that there is a second lane because private student loans don't get a repayment. But even as someone in that "second lane" I'm not upset that the pothole got fixed in the other lane. I'm just happy that less people are hitting potholes. I'd be happier if we fixed all of them, but fixing one is better than fixing none.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com