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Comment by PKop | Hacker News Reader

Obviously, but the only solution to this is someone has to suffer. Who is punished for all the bad ideas and bad advice you describe in your statement? Now they get bailed out, so what changes exactly?

In this case, the colleges running the scam (charging astronomical prices for worthless paper credentials, and the administrators feeding at this trough) are the biggest winners.

Even the counselors and advisors are part of this pipeline of moral hazard if you think about it. What is their purpose, and are they fulfilling it? Does bailing out their bad advice change anything?

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You're right, but this is exactly what I mean about pointless hate. Where's the anger about the other bailout - of the financial markets? Where are the lawsuits against that? Why isn't there any legislation in the works to cap the cost of college or reduce predatory lending to teenagers? Why not allow student debt to be dischargeable in bankruptcy so that it's priced correctly by the market?

Well in the base case of no debt forgiveness, the borrower suffers (though I think if it goes on long enough the exorbitant fees colleges are raking in would go down too, solving the other side of the problem).

In the case of bailout/forgiveness, there is the perception that every taxpayer...those who paid their debts for college or those that didn't even go to college, are paying for other's mistakes. So on one hand, the disinterest is on account of the issue not being seen as affecting some people while the bailout brings them into it.

i.e. the anger is "now you're making it my problem, to fix your problem."

In any case, to your point about punishing the colleges, I think is absolutely necessary. It's just that bailing out the debtors does not do that whatsoever, in fact in ingrains the moral hazard and keeps the colleges money train flowing (maybe, unless the government has some common sense to know they have to address the other end of the pipeline).

Maybe I'm more conspiracy theory minded. But it seems like there's a definite propaganda push to demonize student debt relief to distract everyone from the much bigger thievery that's happened to everyone.

Even your response to my comment focused only on student debt relief, though I also asked about stock market relief. Every taxpayer - those who were still paying college loans, those who paid off their college loans, and those who never went to college - paid for that in higher inflation and asset prices. And unlike student debt relief, every non-taxpayer also paid for it!

> those who paid their debts for college or those that didn't even go to college, are paying for other's mistakes

that's how society works though. I didn't have kids and my taxes still go to help support childhood nutrition and education programs, etc. I don't get a choice about funding the military, etc. Societally these are things that we have determined are important and deserve funding.

Everyone benefits from having a highly educated populace, not least because of the prolific lack of critical thinking the public displays in the political sphere. Want less "jewish space lasers" nonsense? Build a society with a good tertiary education pipeline that doesn't leave people horribly in debt, and increase the amount of the populace that has access. In many ways we are suffering the pain of that 80s/90s/00s neoliberal consensus on reduced education funding and privatization right now, this is what you get with 30 years of public secondary education being terrible and tertiary education being too expensive for a large portion of the population to access.

But people really just think about me, me, me. MY taxes. And this is the society you get with that.

>that's how society works though... Societally these are things that we have determined are important and deserve funding.

I always found this to be a non-compelling answer. Society can mean any number of things and changes all the time. You can say the same thing about anything you want.

Obviously "Society" had decided that individuals were responsible for the college debt that they took on until this last year, and then it changed. Never mind the fact that neither society at large or their elected representatives voted on it, just a single individual via executive action.

If you strip away the appeal to "society", it is just an argument that more redistribution is better than less.

People can be upset at two things at once. It makes perfect sense that part of fighting bailouts is preventing new ones.

Try looking at it this way.

If I am already struggling with someone is robbing me, I would still try to fight if someone new wants to start robbing me too.

Just because there is a real and significant problem with existing corporate bailouts, that doesn't mean that other new bailouts should be encouraged as long they aren't as big.

> People can be upset at two things at once

They can be, but they aren't.

> part of fighting bailouts is preventing new ones

Curious that only one type of bailout is ever fought though.

Have you never seen anyone complaining about corporate bailouts?

There are several people in this very thread saying they oppose both, but you seem to refuse to believe them.

Where are the lawsuits? Is it an election issue?

you are shifting the goal posts.

That said, congressional bailouts are usually legal, and therefore hard to challenge.

One major problem is that congress prone to make legislative decisions based on corporate interests opposed to their other constituents. This is a hard problem to solve, but many people still care about it and try.

It is an election issue for many, primarily fiscal conservatives from either side of of the isle.

Another challenge is that fiscal conservatives are generally ostracized from either party. Parties draw votes along culture war.

At the end of the day, most people who object to student bailouts also object to corporate bailouts. If we could solve only one, I think most people would pick the latter, recognizing it is a bigger problem.

> you are shifting the goal posts.

Not at all, I said the same thing upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33438985

And I was addressing the "where is the anger" portion.

hence, people can be upset at two things. I guess we have come full circle.

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