Apply for student loan debt forgiveness
studentaid.gov
studentaid.gov
Do you think that isn't already happening?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
Congress holds the powers of the purse and this is an executive order by a president a few weeks away from midterm elections. This is going to be litigated.
[0] https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/commentary/can-bid...
https://taxfoundation.org/student-loan-debt-cancelation-tax-...
I cannot speak to all states, but some will offer a payment plan at prime plus some basis points if you can’t afford your tax due at tax time. That’s cheap money to retire a chunk of debt.
My concern would be those folks trying to block debt forgiveness efforts, and their chances of success. Better to get it done sooner and pay some tax versus holding out and possibly getting nothing.
(educational purposes only, not financial advice)
Weird situation for sure but you always want to look before you leap with these things.
Or you can buy high-risk meme stocks. Or crytpo. Or derivitives.
There's a million ways to fritter away money.
1. The universities who got paid.
2. The students who agreed to the debt for receiving the services of the universities.
3. And everyone else, who had nothing to do with the above transaction. Many of this group were working class who never went to school or people who already paid their school debts long ago.
There is no way of looking at that scenario and saying that group #3 should be the one paying. It so deeply wrong that I almost feel ashamed watching people defend the heist.
If the government forcibly clawed back the money from the schools and the admins and the professors and (yes) the fat endowments, the media would howl bloody murder. But it would be relatively fair.
The massive increase in college tuition is totally out of proportion based on wage growth and honestly it's not healthy for the middle class to be forced into an infinite debt cycle forever, growing, like clockwork.
Thankfully you are not in office!
But this was done in the opposite direction, some people made really bad financial decisions. Some people opted not to pursue college degree, precisely because of cost. Why the latter should be paying for the former?
Also, let me ask you this: when you got your degree, did you go to a community college first to pick up some credits and transferred to save some costs?
My father and mother graciously picked up the tab for my studies and he is 76, and should be given a break from indefinite indentured servitude because its too expensive to send your kids to school. My sister went to VT which was more expensive, but at least my family tried to do what they could for their kids.
Sorry if you don't approve but I will literally send him a check for $10K for being such a champ throughout my life right after getting this debt forgiven because I care more about my family and all the hard work that was done to enable me to sit where I am in life, with the freedoms and happiness that have come with having a highly technical education, which lead to several roles at Goldman Sachs and other very significant and impactful developments in my life.
It's not relevant but I made my parents a big chunk of change last year via trading and it makes me happy that they are getting a break.
Fuck the current system.
To answer your questions:
> Why the latter should be paying for the former?
I pay for current Social Security beneficiaries every 2 weeks, how is this different? I pay into my 401k for future Arthur, but he will be happier in 20 years for my contributions. And honestly? going to college probably makes anyone a little bit less of a dumbass than if they hadn't gone. Is that really that hard to fathom? It is worth it in the aggregate. Why bail out banks as opposed to bailing out humans from contracts creating via guilt and literal academic/skillset "FOMO" ?
> when you got your degree, did you go to a community college first to pick up some credits and transferred to save some costs?
I went to a state school, is that better? How much better would it have been if I did do 2 years at CC before going to Maryland? I think that it is crazy that I'm even answering. The first 2 year curriculum at Maryland is much more challenging than the equivalent ar Montgomery College, so I got more out of whatever the equivalent would have been?
No offense but... yes, I got a ton out of my time at Maryland and I am happy that my outcome was positive. Telling people to spend less if they get debt forgiveness is just silly, the outcomes vis-a-vis what you spend are less relevant than your economic impact after leaving school
P.S. I think I had 17 AP credits transfer over from high school if that makes you feel better. Even cheaper than paying for CC!
I also agree that tertiery education should be free, so glad we agree on that more fundamental point. I am biased on this topic but seriously, its super fucking awesome Biden + administration is following through with this. Even if its just for primaries, this is so great for me and I support this.
Next step, make college affordable for all!
How about the gov gives 10k to everyone in the middle class and below?
Some cynics are saying this has been strategically planned for the midterm elections coming up but this has been planned for a long time and honestly, its pretty cool to see something that was a talking point that actually affected me as a citizen that seemed to crystallize before and during Biden's campaign and actually come to pass in the near-future.
And I say resubsidize schools and forgive all the debt. This national economic ball and chain isn't doing me any favors.
i also know that the interested parties already have my info and that i would like the 20k writedown. it really does suck
Most other government sites work this way. I can pay taxes, buy bonds, access Medicare information, etc. from outside the US.
So what’s the justification to make a special case this time?
Those arguing this is a debt transfer, have some sympathy. Things are difficult out there, especially for new grads in this economic environment.
This blatantly unfair debt forgiveness is nothing but a transparent bid to make friends of a subset of the population perceived as more valuable than the subset of which it will make enemies.
Why would you expect other’s sympathies to lie with your partner when this policy takes away from people who have families of their own?
Talked to a guy just today paying over $6k a year just for schools but is childfree. I myself am paying about $3k of my annual property tax straight to local schools yet I do not have kids yet. That's at least $250 every month I'm paying.
Tons of taxpayer money gets paid for all sorts of things we don't benefit from directly. If you're not for any of it, so be it, but if you're not, and you're so against 'policies that take away from people' presumably you mean tax money funding these programs, you should probably be equally angry about pretty much all of these.
I also avoided getting student loans for a while, dropping out of college so I wouldn't take them out, and it severely stunted my salary trajectory because of it, working in places like Wal-mart shipping rooms for $7.50 an hour in my early 20s when I could have had a degree and made 6x more than that.
I eventually did get student loans and finished my degree, and paid them all off shortly before they announced this debt relief. I'm still all for it, as I've seen countless people crippled by student debt.
All of those things are available to me if I get down on my luck so they make sense. And I don’t have to have children — I was a child once and benefited from public schools. If you didn’t, you had it available to you and your parents chose not to.
How is this the same thing? When might I in my life directly benefit from this loan forgiveness like all of those things you listed?
How exactly are we supposed to litigate a “wife’s family vs other wife/husband’s family” debate in these terms? Did the people working low-wage jobs spend time on food stamps? Section 8? Subsidized phone service?
If the answer is no, do you think that people working low-income jobs do not, on average, take advantage of public money in any way?
No, I'm arguing that taking away from the general public to provide for a subset of people requires that the subset boundaries be well justified. Good examples are "people who are poor", and "people who are sick". A bad example would be "people who owe money on their house in 2022". Do those people benefit from debt forgiveness? Of course! And I'm sure they'd be very grateful for it. Meanwhile, people who decided to rent in 2022 or pay their house off in 2021 are footing the bill, for no discernible reason.
> How exactly are we supposed to litigate a “wife’s family vs other wife/husband’s family” debate in these terms? Did the people working low-wage jobs spend time on food stamps? Section 8? Subsidized phone service?
Those are just benefits for poor people. Those are good, and though some of them could stand to be "ramped" better, they're generally the right idea. Again, the problem is selecting a highly arbitrary subset of people while excluding their peers who differ only in the decisions they made (to take out a loan or not, to pay off a loan quickly or not). The boundaries don't even bother selecting for people in real need. 125k/250k household income? Contemplate those numbers for a minute. So you went to college and you have a world-class job in the 90th percentile of the USA and you're getting money from the government to give you that boost you need so you can, what, remodel your home theater a year sooner than you planned?
> If the answer is no, do you think that people working low-income jobs do not, on average, take advantage of public money in any way?
People with no degrees driving our food to us and our garbage away can take public money, yes. Being against any form of wealth redistribution is light-years away from being against this one particular redistribution.
There is a huge industry based around selling people on the value of a college degree. It is very competitive and aggressive and wholly uncoupled from the actual value of a degree. There are quite a lot of poor people working at McDonald’s and Walmart with student debt.
But fuck those people because some engineers might have a slightly reduced monthly payment is your line of reasoning?
A. People that make under $125k get $10,000 of student debt forgiven
B. Nothing happens. Everyone’s debt stays the same.
Are you aware that in reality, complaining about this happening for people that make $124k is exactly the same as complaining about this happening for people that make $15k? Are you aware that by pointing out that this helps people making 90th percentile money you’re also admitting that 90% of people do not make that much?
There phrase “throwing the baby out with the bath water” comes to mind.
You're also misrepresenting "B. Nothing happens. Everyone's debt stays the same." That's not an accurate description. Every expensive program that gets rejected alleviates a little pressure on all the other programs that might be put in place, and the ones that get accepted put pressure on everything else to get rejected. It's not easy to say what those 400 billion would have been spent on if it weren't this, so answering the question of whether I'd pick A or B isn't easy. I personally don't think that a modified version getting passed instead that gives out less money but to a broader set of people (broader in some ways, narrower in others; the income threshold should definitely be lower) is all that unlikely. Frankly I think the version we got is surprising. So I suppose that I would pick B, fully expecting the federal government to spend 400 billion on something else that I probably won't be 100% happy with either, but which I think is more likely than not to be an improvement over what we got.
I am glad that you were honest about picking B. To my earlier point of “fuck Walmart and McDonald’s employees with student debt because some engineers might have a slightly reduced monthly payment” is in fact your stance. By your own admission you actually do not care about the burden that student debt has on poor people, your position is solely about the “wrong” type of person getting help.
I cannot fathom pretending that I care about poor people while also saying they should have crippling debt to suit my feelings.
The way you're talking about this policy could be used to justify literally any wealth redistrubtion to the needy, no matter the amount or criteria. How would you feel if instead a policy were enacted that spent 400 billion to pay of 10k from everybody's mortage, so long as their income was less than 125k/250k (single/household)? I think that would also be a bad policy, because while it would absolutely help people, the selection criteria excludes very similar people who we have reason to believe are more in need (same demographic and same income but rent instead of own). It also includes people who are clearly not in need (high end of that income range is very low on the heirarchy of needy in this country).
Even if you're in favor of that policy as well, I'm sure we could come up with one that you'd oppose, even if it did help a lot of people in need. Maybe the mortgage policy doesn't include a restriction to "primary residence", so a bunch of landlords get to benefit from it as well as long as they're not making >125k. So, by opposing that policy's enactment, are you saying "fuck you" to the people it would have benefited that were actually in need? Or are you just holding your leaders accountable for doing their job better?
> By your own admission you actually do not care about the burden that student debt has on poor people, your position is solely about the “wrong” type of person getting help.
My position--and I think I've been extremely clear about this--is that help should be distributed according to well-justified critiria. Both exclusion and inclusion criteria need to be carefully considered to minimize the degree to which we help people with less need more than we help people with more need. I think everybody probably agrees with that, so it feels silly to state it. I think you're just confused by the way I'm modeling the hypothetical world where this policy is not enacted. By all means, let there be 400 billion dollars allocated to social welfare. I just think this particular policy is bad spending.
Also let me just say that if you're going to frame a reply using the assumption that I am just some evil scrooge who is conspiring to undermine all welfare programs to deprive the needy, and that I'm lying through my teeth when I say I'm fine with the money being spent I just want it to be spent better, then please just don't reply at all. I'm here for discussions, not flame wars.
This is, in essence, transferring the debt from people who graduated college to people who - on average - did not go to college. The most regressive invisible tax hike we have ever had but sure. . . yay.
We're willing to spend all this money unnecessarily on businesses but when it comes to supporting students all of a sudden - its too much and we have to draw the line!
I'd much rather see individuals paid directly than go through businesses and hope they are benevolent enough to use it on their employees.
I am just pointing out that there is no forgiveness, the education expenses incurred by college graduates is now being paid by blue collar workers, and its the most regressive tax we have ever had. That doesn't mean I am against it.
I just want folks to know that the person paying your college off is a guy who wishes he could have gone to college.
We collectively invest in a large number of things that may not directly benefit us. My tax dollars fund programs that primarily benefit people that need the money due to choices I personally never would have made.
But that’s the point of a social system.
The moment that collective investment is about education or healthcare, people seem to apply an entirely different ruleset.
I an all for investing in education. This is not that.
One correction: Student loan debt is incurred regardless of whether the debtors graduated and received a degree.
[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/shut-up-about-harvard/
That would only be true if everyone paid the same amount of taxes. We don't. College graduates pay significantly more taxes than non-college graduates.
This is largely a wealth transfer from the haves-college graduates to the have-nots college graduates. I'm not sure how you've missed the mark so wildly.
This is, in essence, transferring the debt from people who own businesses to people who - on average - do not own businesses. The _actual_ most regressive invisible tax hike we have ever had but sure. . . yay.
That's a good thing.
Sadly we’ve also heard a lot of stories of complete misuse and outright fraudulent use of PPP loans. I’m paying for those unless the government gets that money back (after spending hundreds of thousands in legal fees). Whereas as far as I know student loans can’t be misused, at least not to the extent that many PPP loans were.
Isn't getting their labour for free (well, paid for by the taxpayer) pretty much the same as company owners just being handed that 87k? It's money the company didn't have to spend on wages. Were your employees not able to work? (Not intended as criticism - more of an observation. I don't know the real situation etc).
However because of covid cash flow issues, I would have had to fire half of my employees without the loan and the payback. That would have sucked for all of us.
Frankly, as I see it, the PPP program was better than the alternatives as my employees didn't wind up on unemploymet.
In one way the PPP is a bad idea as it doesn't let the market correct itself as well as it might - perhaps my company is too fragile. However, we then to not like to see people starving and losing their homes. Clutters up the sidewalks.
Taxes are paid on income, not on people.
Income of mid-career is 111,000 (college) vs 43,000 (HS) [2]
Lifetime increase in earnings is estimated 800,000, paying taxes the whole time.
So I think the commenter calling this a one time tax deduction is closer to reality than a "regressive tax". Probably less regressive than the 401Ks many college grads have vs HS.
[1] https://money.com/wage-gap-college-high-school-grads/ [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-many-of-us-are-college-grad...
And if this is a tax hike, then where has the 5-15% APR on many of those loans been going this whole time?
This is transferring debt people willingly took on to get a college degree, to people who did not go to college.
Look, I am not trying to be rude and I am trying to be gentle when I ask this: Where do you think the 'assistance' the government is going to provide comes from?
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/18/61percent-of-americans-paid-...
> Look, I am not trying to be rude and I am trying to be gentle when I ask this: Where do you think the 'assistance' the government is going to provide comes from?
The wealthy and high earners? I pay substantial federal income tax, and I’m not too bent out of shape about this. I’m more concerned about waste going forward, not financial relief for my fellow citizen. The need for this debt would’ve never existed if state and federal funding for higher education had not slowly been withdrawn leaving students primarily to shoulder the cost burden (although I’m mindful of unchecked college spending and the need for cost controls due to the inelastic demand).
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co...
It's also naive to think that relieving debt from the middle class won't benefit the economy in some way. America's middle class goes to college. It's hard to argue that consumers having more money to spend won't drive economic growth.
Like college debt, it was taken on willingly and its hard to argue that consumers having more money to spend won't drive economic growth.
Student loan debt is taken on by literal children with no credit with the promise of a good job and cannot be escaped under really any circumstances. Saying "well you just shouldn't have gone to college" is blaming kids for decisions their parents ultimately made.
There's an easy solution to fix this - tax the rich or super-rich more.