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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

> 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."

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> 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.

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