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Comment by conk | Hacker News Reader

I’ll happily pay taxes to help other Americans achieve an education that allows them to contribute to society. Seems like a much better ROI vs other federal programs.

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My primary concern with student loan relief is that it doesn't resolve the underlying issues. Student loan relief should probably be coupled with some kind of educational system reform in order to escape the vicious cycle. Otherwise in a few years we'll basically end up in the same place.

This is a valid concern. Of course, the problem is Congress is dysfunctional so a strategic fix (universal public higher ed) being enacted is potentially many years in the future (if at all). This is immediate, tactical relief for people who are suffering financially. In the same way that someone bleeding to death on the pavement doesn’t care about dysfunctional healthcare policy at that moment; they want to get stabilized.

(I hit the highest marginal income brackets and support this policy; good policy is the interaction of compassion and pragmatism at scale)

I don't understand why people are pushing universal higher ed. Based on everything I see and have heard the first 2 years of college end up recapping everything you should've learned in high school. So we'd be served just as well by making high school optional and actually focus on teaching while not forcing students who don't want to be there to be there. It's accomplish the same thing but not cost nearly as much.

Depends on the high school doesn’t it ? I didn’t have Computer Science in my high school so it was all new to me Anyone who was good in any subjects would have taken a College Course or AP classes to skip the classes you’re talking about.

Good for you.

I worked and saved to help my kids go to school, and they worked jobs to pay for their education.

I’m it paying for your kid’s education as well.

The right way to deal with this is go after the schools and get the money refunded, not force others to take on the debts.

You would, but what about others? Do they get a say?

I’m already playing in full for my kids college. Why should I have to pay for another person’s education too?

What about useless degrees that have zero ROI?

But we probably could have developed 1/10th of a really cool bomber with that money.

In the last 15 years the US spent something like 700B on modernizing nuclear weapons. I can see how freeing people from debt so they can do things like buy houses, have kids, buy stuff benefits me. I can't see how the US's vast nuclear arsenal benefits me at all. What's the US going to do with them, kill 500M Chinese? Allow some religious nutter politician to cosplay the end times? No thanks.

The very principle of erasing loans that students willingly made a promise to pay rubs me the wrong way.

You entered into an agreement and then borrowed money. But now are expecting the country to pay your loan back?

I would’ve been ok with erasing the interest. Just not the principal.

What other options and choices did the system make available to them? For many the choice was take on loans and go to college. Or not go to college. With everyone and his dog telling them to pick the first choice.

Also if one knows how it all works it's obvious it's just a give away to the banking industry.

I can’t find the source so please refute the following but you find evidence suggesting otherwise, but a non-trivial portion of the loans were for graduate degrees which are totally extra and unnecessary in the sense of “what choice did they have”

But again, I’d personally like to find that source to verify if this is true. And if it is, those loans had no business getting forgiven.

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