Student loan forgiveness

I can’t say I’m a big fan of this plan. I’m not sure why taxpayers, particularly those who did not attend college but also those who did, should be responsible for the debt of others. And I can only imagine this will encourage institutions to raise their prices even higher. Maybe we should have the colleges for the bill for loan forgiveness instead considering they don’t pay any taxes?

I’d much rather see the government crack down on the cost of college to make it affordable. The cost of education should reflect the actual cost of educating the student. Not what the market will bear.
 
If we had a fair tax code, much of this stuff would clear up in its own. I do get the arguments regarding the “fairness” of this plan, but it’s low-hanging fruit when we subsidize the shit out of the wealthy and corporations.

States across the country rush to give companies who build plants or headquarters in their borders huge tax incentives… those are handouts. Companies deemed “too big to fail” - like airlines and auto manufacturers - get huge bailouts all the time. MAGA-churches that take in tens or hundreds of millions a year get tax-exempt status even when they involve themselves heavily in politics. Hundreds - probably thousands or even tens of thousands - of wealthy companies and individuals were able to take advantage of COVID relief funding and have loans forgiven, even if they would have fared perfectly fine without it.

It’s only when everyday working people get a fraction of that relief that it seems to be a big fucking deal, and that’s the part I can’t seem to figure out.

The fat cats have been sucking on the government tit for decades, but get mad when a runt laps up a drop off the floor.

So the problem doesn’t really seem to be about the government giving away money, but who gets it. Seems to me the people with the most want even more for themselves and less for everyone else. Why is a “handout” only defined as such when it goes to someone who can actually use it, but deemed perfectly acceptable when it’s a much larger sum going to someone who needs it far less?
 
GermanSuplex said:
So the problem doesn’t really seem to be about the government giving away money, but who gets it. Seems to me the people with the most want even more for themselves and less for everyone else. Why is a “handout” only defined as such when it goes to someone who can actually use it, but deemed perfectly acceptable when it’s a much larger sum going to someone who needs it far less?
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Because money talks, and big money most often talks to Congress not necessarily loudest. but last.
 
AG_PhamD said:
I can’t say I’m a big fan of this plan. I’m not sure why taxpayers, particularly those who did not attend college but also those who did, should be responsible for the debt of others. And I can only imagine this will encourage institutions to raise their prices even higher. Maybe we should have the colleges for the bill for loan forgiveness instead considering they don’t pay any taxes?

I’d much rather see the government crack down on the cost of college to make it affordable. The cost of education should reflect the actual cost of educating the student. Not what the market will bear.
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The thing is, we've already let two generations end up burdened by "whatever the market will bear" while still carrying on about how everyone needs higher education to get ahead in a service-based and consumerist economy. The result is already too much of a drag on the economy --and looking ahead for the next 20 years-- not to rectify this retroactively to the extent that taxpayers can agree is feasible. Biden's key legislation will help bring some manufacturing jobs out of the ground in the USA again but it's a late start to a pressing problem that has got a leg up for a long time already.

And yeah, some noses will be out of joint on college loan forgiveness, and not just on people who don't want to pay for other people's college loans. There IS no free lunch, so some pols will have to give up on their states' pet projects down the road to cover the cost of a whole nation having agreed by ignorant default to let this BS situation of overpriced college educations fester for so long.​
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I mean think about it, colleges are paying north of $300k to "administrators" --fundraisers!-- to keep pitching to parents the future value of their kids borrowing $75k a year to get just a baccalaureate degree that might open a door in some marketing firm so they in turn can pitch to somebody to borrow money to buy something.​
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Ugh! The emperor is just about stark naked on that whole gig by now. Only took 20 years or so to figure out that we cannot continue to run a consumerist economy if only the banks are gong to be able to make a living... and that only if the f'g government bails them out (again) because eventually the default rates will be overwhelming.​

Biden's move is jolting, for sure. He is putting existing regulatory muscle where his mouth has been, and it does force the discussion from the Congress' preferred stage of kicking the can down the road into the "right here, right now" reality.

If people don't like it, they'll sue. And, they will. And then If the courts don't like it, Congress will respond to will of the people at next opportunity to craft legislation (and appropriations) that will pass muster.

Bottom line things cannot go on as they are and that includes two generations already wallowing in debt they cannot repay while the economy stagnates as a result. It's a recipe for a failed state.
 
You wanna talk about handouts?

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Alli said:
Agree 💯. Not everyone should go to college. School districts used to put a trade school component into every system. Not so much today, although I see more of that locally since all the high schools have moved to “signature academies.” Many blue collar jobs will pay more than a job requiring a degree (or two), as evidenced by my husband (who has a hs diploma) earning a lot more than I ever did with a master’s degree.
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This is true, but we also have to consider that the last two generations (myself included in there) had it drilled into us from elementary school that college was the natural next step and the ticket to a regular life.

It was a lie, and for older people to balk at “bad decision making” is why younger people think that previous generations are completely full of shit and completely self centered.
 
AG_PhamD said:
I’d much rather see the government crack down on the cost of college to make it affordable. The cost of education should reflect the actual cost of educating the student. Not what the market will bear.
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Addressed by Biden-Harris with SLF. But too many are screaming their heads off and ignoring the totality of the relief being offered. Relief not just those suffering now, but in the future. It's accessible for anyone willing to take a few minutes to read.
 
Joe said:
They always say this knowing their tuition cost the same as a 6 pack of Budweiser and 1 pack of Marlboros lol
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Case in point, my Econ 101 prof was discussing the concept of inelastic demand one day, and paused for a moment to make the point.

He asked "How many of you smoke cigarettes? Raise your hands..." and then a moment later asked "OK, so how many of you who are holding up your hands now will quit smoking when the price of cigarettes goes up to 45c a pack? Put your hands down if you're pretty sure that's a bridge too far."​
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Of course most of us nicotine fiends put our hands down then, because 35c a pack already felt like too much when most of us could scrape up maybe 10 bucks a week doing side jobs (off campus or on) for incidental expenses including something better than the "grey meat" served at college dining halls for dinner.​

So yeah, oldtimers' idea of the cost of everything is easily clouded by remembering prices of stuff unadjusted for sixty years worth of inflation.

Also: the way the cost of our college loans was constructed was way different back then. They didn't tack on interest to principal and so via the blessings of compound interest convert a college grad's living wage into grinding poverty... which of course nowadays is how people who borrow $50k can end up owing like three hundred thousand.

I owed $4,800. Came out to 67 bucks a month for six years. I was making $100/week pre-tax on my first job (good pay in the early and mid-60s), so the hit of that loan obligation was not insignificant -- my half of a walk-up apartment rent was 53 a month, for instance. But the job was full time and work was plentiful even for women, and even before equal employment opportunity began to open more doors.​

So people my age back then did not face the daunting job-hunting prospects faced by college graduates of today, who are often looking at far worse terms on their college loans and far, far less assurance of having wages to pay up the student loans.

In short, most of the oldies should hush up and help their nextgen through some of the hassle now with ephemeral jobs or crap wages combined with draconian terms on school loans.

By "help out" I definitely mean we elders s/b adding voices as constituents of Congressional representatives to address the overall unfairness of what has obviously become the "student loan industry".
 
The easy thing would be to treat education as a right like most of the world, where student debt is as outrageous a concept as $30K+ hospital bills for having a kid.

But…America is a scam, not a country.
 
NT1440 said:
But…America is a scam, not a country.
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Not to derail the thread but that sure rang a bell right after my having read a piece in the WaPo about the cryptomining industry... [and the noise it inflicts on Americans living near big miners that have started moving into places around the USA after even China booted them out... ]

We do seem to go big on scams in these waning days of US capitalism...
 
lizkat said:
Not to derail the thread but that sure rang a bell right after my having read a piece in the WaPo about the cryptomining industry... [and the noise it inflicts on Americans living near big miners that have started moving into places around the USA after even China booted them out... ]

We do seem to go big on scams in these waning days of US capitalism...
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In my lifetime, which has been relatively short, I’ve lived through a major economic meltdown, and two “minor” ones brought on by the collapse of scams we build our economy off of.

My generation has never seen anything but the strip-mining of state capacity, to be sold off to the private sector for profit and worse outcomes. The country is apparently a scrap yard that auctions off the necessities for life (water, hospitals, electricity) to the private sector to continue bleed income from those who are living on the edge (which has only become a larger portion of the country in my lifetime).

So when I see people born before the 80’s put up any resistance to the notion that it’s outrageous for student debt to be forgiven, it boils my blood because the rest of the world has shown that it *should’t even exist in the first place*.

That goes for the well-meaning “well we can play with lowering interest rates” types too, it’s an infuriating nibbling on the finest edges of a massive problem that, again, *doesn’t need to exist*.
 
lizkat said:
Case in point, my Econ 101 prof was discussing the concept of inelastic demand one day, and paused for a moment to make the point.

He asked "How many of you smoke cigarettes? Raise your hands..." and then a moment later asked "OK, so how many of you who are holding up your hands now will quit smoking when the price of cigarettes goes up to 45c a pack? Put your hands down if you're pretty sure that's a bridge too far."​
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We must have had the same Econ professor. Except mine actually smoked in class while talking about inelastic demand. He also railed against KCL NOT being a substitute good for NaCl. LOL.

My mom smoked for much of her life. Started in college in the late 40's and smoked until the late 80's. She said she was going to start again when she was 80. She did not because the prices were simply too high. LOL
 
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