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Comment by anonymouskimmer | Hacker News Reader

Hey man. Some of us are GenX who took significant opportunity costs to pay down our student loan debt. Don't make us compete for our first house with jubileed Millennials and GenZers. We can't afford to do that and save for retirement as is (though at this point I can't afford to do either. Glad I have a pension).

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As a fellow Gen X, this is such an empathy-free opinion in my reading. There are so many times I say to myself "Wow, I'm so lucky that I graduated college in the 90s when school was expensive but nothing like the insanity it is today, and that I was able to afford housing before housing prices became completely disconnected from wages." And I did have to pay off student loans for years.

To be clear, I'm not really in favor of debt forgiveness, but not because I believe it's "unfair", but because I think it actually makes the root cause problem (the astronomical cost of college) even worse. I think modifying bankruptcy laws to make more student debt dischargable is a much better solution.

Basically I strongly believe that pretty much every generation up to the millennials got a much better deal when it comes to education and housing costs, even if they do get 10 or 20k debt forgiveness. Dude, you were one of the lucky ones (and you've got a pension to boot!!!).

Read my comment below before judging me. Many millennials graduated before I did.

Various of these Millennials and GenZers are in superior financial situations to me thanks to debt forgiveness.

Meanwhile later GenZers are looking at the roll back of credential requirements. Which allows them more options for decent paying jobs without college debt.

Though, yeah, I'm really lucky compared to the early Xers and late Boomers who are sitting on 6 figure debt repayments as they stare retirement in the face.

My pension only came in to play in my late 30s. I don't plan on staying in this job for many reasons, but if I did I would be working into my late 70s to fund it at full compensation. Edit sometime later to add: They also take 9.5% off the top of my paycheck to fund it.

At the same time, your education costs were much lower - through no fault of your own. Why should younger borrowers be penalized for market forces they did not contribute to?

I finished my AS and BS as a non-trad at the ages of 29 and 35. I'm currently in my mid 40s. Debt from my AS was paid by my parents, but the $31k in student loan debt and $20k in credit card debt for my BS was paid by me[1]. Most of that in the past 5 years, meaning that I lost out on the stock market gains by prioritizing the debt pay off. To add insult to injury, my final payment was Feb of 2020, just in time to miss out on the forgiveness (I accelerated payments with the proceeds of a second job).

[1] - When you're hourly, and maintaining a household, it costs money to take time off from work to go to school.

Millennial here, paid off my student loan debt with my own, hard-earned cash. My parents were already bankrupted by medical debt before I graduated high school, so no help there.

I still want my less lucky peers and the zoomers made whole after they were sold a bill of goods. Chaining the better part of a generation to an anchor isn't a winning move for any civilization.

I want the people who were shafted by predatory colleges made whole. I also want the parents of dead or disabled students let off the hook for repaying those loans. I also want disabled students forgiven. I don't want the people with 6 figure incomes, or current household wealth in the mid 5 figures, given a freebie at the relative expense of others in less fortunate situations.

> Chaining the better part of a generation to an anchor

Most Millennials never took on student debt. Or if they did, already paid it off.

Means testing is super effective at increasing a welfare program's cost while reducing its societal impact.

I read these Borgesian lists of acceptable kinds of hardship (which can be and are routinely bike-shedded ad nauseam) as calls for pointlessly increasing government bureaucracy and expenditure. Far cheaper to simply offer blanket forgiveness at some appropriate level.

It's done all of the time prior to now for student loans.

And for income, at least, the IRS should be able to easily do this.

Blanket forgiveness of loans comes with a societal cost for those who are in precarious situations but do not have loans to forgive. By increasing the money available to be spent for non-basic purposes there is almost guaranteed to be a demand-driven inflationary effect.

This inflation would hurt those on the margin the worst. The parent comment that I originally replied to wants this forgiveness, in part, so that Millennials and GenZers will bid up the value of their house in order to help fund their retirement. This is the housing situation we've been in for the last couple of decades. In general it's been to the benefit of current homeowners, but not so much for the rest of us.

>I don't want the people with 6 figure incomes, or current household wealth in the mid 5 figures, given a freebie at the relative expense of others in less fortunate situations.

This is the nuance that we must bring to the discussion. I am pro student debt forgiveness, but in a way that isn’t a massive handout to people like me. I paid off the majority of my student loans with the signing bonus of my second FAANG job. No way would I have any business getting my debt forgiven.

The Biden plan has cutoffs of $125k for singles, and $250k for married couples. As income thresholds these are just too high. Even in urban California. A 20-something couple from an upper-middle-class background with $200k in salary could get $20k forgiven. That's ridiculous. And inflationary, especially on things such as house prices.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

> The Department of Education will provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the Department of Education, and up to $10,000 in debt cancellation to non-Pell Grant recipients. Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples). No high-income individual or high-income household – in the top 5% of incomes – will benefit from this action.

Yeah. These numbers should be reduced by 50% at least, meaning maximum 60k for individuals and 125k for couples. That would be generous enough to not miss some HCOL middle class folks. And it shouldn’t apply to graduate school debt at all.

I also question the need for full forgiveness, and wonder what the inflationary impact would be on something like “everyone’s student loans from the federal government are now 0%. Your minimum payment is 5% of your AGI and your tax returns will be used to pay down the balance until it’s paid off. future loans will be capped at prime rate +.% fixed at time of borrowing”. Leave private loans untouched, but dischargeable at bankruptcy. This would pressure on student loan private lenders to lend based on certain conditions (I.e, grades and academic progress) with a minimum amount lent by the federal government. It would result in a lot of withholding changes, but I think that’s a good thing.

I don't like the idea of a flat tax. Or giving 0% rates to the wealthy (which would encourage the abuse of student loans by people who do not need the loans to attend school).

That’s a good point. Perhaps the interest rate could remain the same for people making over $60k and reduced for those making less, with none of the “capping at x% AGI” for those above $60k either. This would make it more dynamic for, I.e, a person who takes time off because of illness, caring for a family member, or having a child.

More complicated and potentially more room for fraud.

Overall, I think we ought to do something for people struggling. But I agree that nothing should be done for the wealthy.

I’m 47 and on track to pay off my student loan next year. I would be mostly ok with some form of forgiveness but only if it came with the end of government backed or subsidized student loans in all their forms. That’s how things got out of control, there’s no risk to lenders and so the schools can raises prices indefinitely.

I think the original error was making them non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. People still take out private student loans to go to college. I think colleges would have raised rates even without government subsidization. 18 year olds are in an ideal situation to be sold the benefits of taking on large amounts of debt for their future.

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