IceMetalPunk

As someone who graduated with $60k in student loans, thank you for mansplaining to me how student loans supposedly work.

Some loans go directly to the schools. Others do get disbursed to the student. But you said a key phrase in your own comment: "as long as you stay in school". Money is fungible. If I get paid $5,000 in student loans and use that to buy a computer, but then I have to pay $5,000 out of pocket for tuition, that is identical to me paying for tuition with the student loans. The second I decide to stop paying tuition, the loans stop as well. So it doesn't matter what a student spends the check on directly, as long as they're using that money and paying tuition, the student loan is being used for education.

Do you live on a deserted island alone? If not, then why do you seem to think the opportunity cost of other people being uneducated -- your neighbors, local business owners, motorists driving by your house, voters, politicians, etc. -- is only a cost to them, and doesn't affect your life?

Credit card debt can be for anything. Student loans are only for education. No one's trying to subsidize your new car, only something that's important to society.

Let's hope not, or hope that at least some regulations can be put in place to fix that if it does happen.

Let's be clear what you're suggesting here: universities that are doing well on their current tuition, and would still be making the same money in the case of government subsidies, would spike their tuition costs by $10,000+ / year just for extra profit "because they can", despite not needing to, and screwing over everyone in the process.

I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying that paints a dark picture of humanity and its almost certainly doomed future if it does and isn't corralled.

(BTW, I wonder how the European countries that offer socialized university have countered that effect?)

Who said anything was hidden? Most high school graduates in the US understand that going to college almost certainly means a lifetime of debt. But they also recognize the opportunity cost of being uneducated, which they deem a greater cost than the financial cost of loans. And please don't claim that's invalid, because (a) I agree, which is why I did it, and (b) claiming it's invalid implies that money is the only thing of importance in a person's life, which is kind of dystopian a view.

> Because this money is not free. It comes from the blood and sweat of other tax payers.

Care to take a guess at how much money -- sorry, "blood and sweat" -- this will cost a taxpayer?

$200/year.

How much is annual tuition in the US?

$8,000 on average, $2,000 at my local public college.

If this paves the way for future policies to forgive new loans similarly, that $200/year will decrease as the backlog of existing loans are out of the pool. At which point, every single taxpayer could get the same education for less than $200/year as opposed to $2,000 - $15,000+. ($2,000 being the cost of my local public college, $15,000 being the annual tuition at the school I attended; the + meaning I understand there are more expensive places.)

This is not "the blood and sweat of taxpayers". This is 2 weeks' food bills spread over 52 weeks with the potential to give those taxpayers an education along with everyone else who they're paying taxes for.

> And goes to clearly morally bankrupt portion of population. Those who over spend with debt money.

So you can't think of any reasons someone might have student loan debt other than "they made bad choices and are immorally expecting other people to pay for it"?

> Where education fails is teaching people how to think.

I disagree with this, and in fact, it's my point.

I did study philosophy -- at uni. But I didn't learn about contrapositives in that class, I learned about it in a dedicated Critical Thinking course -- also at uni. I also took a couple of formal logic courses and a few psychology courses there, all electives, and none related to my career (except maybe tangentially in the formal logic of computation). I learned so much in these courses about not only how to think, but common ways people incorrectly think and how to notice and avoid that. I even learned theories of the neurology behind why some of those common mistakes happen, and the importance of each step in the scientific method regarding which of these fallacies each attempts to counteract.

Public K-12 education may fail to teach people how to think, but high-quality universities do not. Which is my point: higher education is so important and should be as accessible to as many people as possible if we're to create the best society we can for ourselves and others.

It's not about feeding people with a degree. It's about reducing the punishment they had but shouldn't have. Ideally, higher education wouldn't cost extra, or at least not excessively so. But since it does, these efforts are to counteract that existing punishment, nothing more or less.

Too late to edit my previous reply, so I'll just add my correction here: I misunderstood and thought the $300 billion was an annual estimate. Well, not so much "misunderstood" -- that's what the article explicitly says. However, the source they cite for that says, and I quote:

"We estimate that a one-time maximum debt forgiveness of $10,000 per borrower will cost around $300 billion for borrowers with incomes less than $125,000. This cost increases to $330 billion if the program is continued over the standard 10-year budget window. Eliminating the borrower income limit threshold produces a 10-year cost of $344 billion. Increasing the maximum amount forgiven to $50,000 per borrower increases the total cost to as much as $980 billion."

Meaning it's a figure over 10 years. So let's use the main source's numbers instead: $330,000,000,000 / 10 years / 144,300,000 taxpayers = $228 per taxpayer per year. Even better.

And just for fun, let's look at the same calculations using the analysis for "no income cap" and then again for a $50k forgiveness cap:

No income cap: $238 -- only $10 more per person per year.

$50k max forgiveness: $670 per person per year. Obviously more significant, as it's forgiving 1/3 more money on average, but still. Imagine if this policy were put in place for new loans going forward. Everyone in the country could attend college for $670 + tuition excess over $50k, which means most people could do it for $670/year flat.

And of course, these estimates all account for the initial massive cost of existing loans; if it were set in motion to apply to new loans, the cost would decrease over time as those old loans are done and only a smaller number of new loans are created.

I said that if it proves the feasibility of larger. government subsidies on student loans, it could pave the way for future government policies that subsidize new loans. Banks don't care if they're getting paid by the borrower or the government, as long as they're getting paid.

We have the internet now, arguably even more information and more accessible than the library. And yet, how many people end up more ignorant after "doing their research" online than they were before they started? The problem with self-education is that there is at least equal parts information and misinformation available. Part of a structured education like university is both filtering out the cruft and teaching people how to filter out the junk on their own. It's not only about being exposed to facts to memorize.

The concept (and truth value) of a contrapositive is something I learned in a university elective class. It's amazing how higher education might actually provide more value to both individuals and society than job opportunities, isn't it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On the other hand, if my other buddy Alice was unable to pay her loans and struggling to pay for food without debt collectors knocking at her door, and now doesn't have to deal with that anymore, that'd offset my ire.

In fact, in a case like that, you should be pissed off at Jeff, not at the people helping everyone which happens to include Jeff.

> People taking out a student loan voluntarily took on that debt.

When people say this, they are implying that choosing to get a higher education that creates student loan debt is equal to some other choice that wouldn't incur that debt. But of course, this is untrue; the benefits of a quality education are not equivalent to other options. It's not just "student loans or no student loans" in isolation.

To make your analogy somewhat more accurate (though probably still imperfect): it's like the teacher says "study chapters 1-5 and I'll give you a 90% guarantee in the class, and those chapters will be on the test", then the test ends up being only chapter 3. Yes, you spent the extra time studying you didn't need, but you still got the 90% guarantee in the class, so the time debt paid off even if the people who didn't study as much got to hang out with friends more, since they didn't get that 90% guarantee.

Why do so many people think "I had to do something before, so if people don't have to do it in the future, that's punishing me"? You'd have paid those loans whether this policy is put into effect now or not; it's in the past.

Smallpox was basically eradicated, but vaccines didn't "punish" people who died from it before they were invented.

It's a mix of both. Some people will have some money they'd be paying towards loans -- even if perhaps not enough to cover their monthly payments -- and that money will become liquid.

Because despite your assumptions, there are many reasons someone might be in debt beyond "not knowing how to handle financial responsibility", especially when it comes to student loans. Why do you think financial numbers are a good metric for whether someone "deserves" to survive without excessive struggle/pain?

Don't buy into the contrapositive of the American Dream; the Dream isn't true, and so neither is its contrapositive.

$300 billion / 144.3 million taxpayers = about $2,080 per taxpayer. When I did the math in another comment, I was under the impression that was the per-year cost. If it's over 10 years, that means it's only $208 per taxpayer per year. The cost of public tuition near me is about $2,000/year, the average yearly tuition in the US is $8,000/year. So basically: this cost to the individual is nothing compared to the cost of tuition to the individual that created the debt.

As for it being used elsewhere, sure, it could be used elsewhere... but it's not. It's currently money that's just sitting around being debt accumulating interest for banks and the DoE. So it may as well be used to help people out.

Sounds like it applies to all loans currently in repayment at the time this goes into effect, so if yours are in repayment, they will probably be eligible. (Or I guess, would be in repayment without the current pause.)

I'm not sure anything I've studied is "useless", but the most boring (for me) was geography.

Here, if you prefer specific, actual numbers rather than an example of the concept, I will do your homework for you.

There are 144.3 million taxpayers in the US, and 329.5 million people. Using the still-accurate numbers of 8% of the population being in college at any given time, and the average college tuition in the US of $8,000/year, we can do the same calculation:

(0.08 * 329,500,000 people * $8,000/yr) / (144,300,000 taxpayers) = $1461.40.

In other words, by subsidizing higher education with taxes, every person in the country could attend college for about 1/5 the cost, as opposed to "only people who can afford at least $8,000/year can attend college, and it costs them 5x as much as it otherwise would."

Those are real numbers. Does that make it feel less "hand-waving" to you?

1) For many people, "more affordable public school" is still out of reach.

2) The quality of education at public schools is very often lower than that at more expensive schools. I have at least two data points of my own experience to back that up, along with the public perceptions. Acting like getting a better education is a "bad choice" because privatized universities overcharge students is not only an oversimplification, but one that punishes people for trying to better themselves, and for trying to be better contributors to the society we all share.

3) From what I've read, it is legal, via the HEROES act of 2003.

...If you read past the first two letters, you'd see that I explained why what you said is not an "objective, truthful fact", but a misrepresentation of the actual facts.

Or you can read a single word, ignore the rest, and tell yourself you're superior without actually knowing what I said shrug

Also, thank you for reminding me that mathematics is "handwaving". It's good to remember that math is useless and doesn't actually show anything real. We may as well not teach it at all in schools, since it's all just "handwaving".

That I don't know. Apparently they're using a 2003 act, along with the current pandemic, to bypass the need for congressional approval, so it may just be impossible to kill, especially now that it's been announced everywhere. But I'm no politician, so there could be more factors at play that could stop it before the disbursements.

Your defense is "I, notch656a, know that I misrepresented the facts, and I'm okay with that"?

I disagree. $20k is 2/3 of my entire checking and savings account combined, 7 years out of college. It is quite a lot of money to have. I do agree that it's also a lot to owe, prohibitively so.

If you received any Pell grants and make less than $125k, then $20k is forgiven. If you didn't receive Pell grants and make less than $125k, then $10k is forgiven. That's what I've read so far, at least.

I've also read the estimated cost of this is $300 billion, and doing the math on that and the number of taxpayers, I've calculated that the cost to each taxpayer is about $2k, which is less than the cost of tuition for one person at public colleges (or at least, less than the tuition at a public college near me). And this is to pay for the forgiveness for all student loans for these people that have accrued over decades.

Tiny cost to help stop punishing people for wanting to learn in a society literally built upon knowledge, in my opinion. Especially if it acts as a proof of concept that paves the way for future policies applying to new loans -- which would be much cheaper than this all-at-once batch iteration.

I'm in the group of people who would qualify for this. Do I care personally? Not really, I've spent the last 7 years factoring my loans into my budget and I guess I'm content with the sunk cost fallacy now. But do I care as a member of society? Absolutely. This is a wonderful step in the right direction.

EDIT Correction: the $300 billion figure I read is not, as I first thought, annual. It is an estimate over 10 years. Which means the taxpayer cost is actually more like $208/year, not $2k. Even better!

> College students have been begging for loan forgiveness for a decade. It is quite literally a handout.

I guess it depends how you define "handout". Usually that term connotes something undeserved, which is where I disagree with you.

> Admittedly I am quite upset because I sacrificed years of my life and potential income to do the responsible thing and pay off my loans. This is the ultimate slight at me, and everyone like me, because with this $10k-$20k there is no punishment.

Imagine if a parent said "I grew up poor and starving, so I'd be quite upset if my children had enough food to eat." That's basically what you're doing: you were punished by a broken system, and now you are mad if other people aren't punished the way you are. That's just selfish and petty.

> It is quite literally, by definition, another example of helicopter money to people who made a choice and now don't even have to live with it.

You're describing this "choice" in a way that seems to imply all choices are equal. That anyone can choose to go to college or not and have the same outcomes in life, that there's no benefit in choosing one path over another, that there aren't other factors influencing such a decision or the availability of these decisions in the first place, etc. "Don't even have to live with it" -- do you realize that sounds like you're implying lifelong debt is a punishment for education? Something that must be "lived with" if you get said education?

> There is not a single skill I have learned applicable to any job I've held in the last decade.

Why is that your metric? More importantly, if that is your metric, why did you spend 3x the usual amount of time at university if you weren't getting anything out of it?

> We should not punish the people who chose not to go to college in order to "help" the people who chose to go into absurd levels of debt for a credential. Fix the system that is convincing people that this is the only way. 300B dollars is a lot of money to look to stylish.

You're not being punished. Your debt would be the same with or without this policy. The cost to the average taxpayer is less than the cost of tuition at a public college. So guess what? If this policy paves the way for future similar policies that apply to new loans, you too can get free college education and make that tax money work for you, if you can't bear to let it work only for others.

It's not about "looking stylish". It's about the importance of education and acting as a proof of concept that it's feasible to make said education accessible to everyone.

Someone else said something similar, that this is "unfair" because it doesn't solve the root of the problem. We're all STEM folks here, most of us are developers, so let me ask you a hypothetical: imagine you're developing an app. You develop a proof-of-concept and show it to the client. They turn to you and say, "we're not paying you for the time you took to make this; it's not the full app". What would you think? Progress is not binary.

This policy doesn't solve the whole problem, but it is a step in the right direction. Consider it a proof of concept: if this policy can show the feasibility of forgiving existing student loan debt that's piled up over many decades, then it should pave the way for future policies which can better subsidize new loans -- a far lower cost.

Obviously, the root of the problem lies with privatization of education and capitalism, but those are things so ingrained in our society that we basically can't expect to ever fix them. Working our way towards better subsidies is the next best goal.

Not solving the entire problem doesn't mean it's unfair, it just means it's a step in the right direction on a longer journey. Policies like this are a first step towards policies that apply to future generations. If this can show that forgiving loans retroactively -- all the student loans from decades past that are still being repaid -- is feasible, then forgiving loans proactively for future graduates, which is much less cost, is definitely feasible.