Student loan forgiveness without addressing the outlandish cost of higher education would be a waste of taxpayer resources. I would support a plan that coupled student loan forgiveness with a reduction in available future financing for the associated colleges. There has to be some incentive for these colleges to offer socially productive education if their business model relies on publicly funded subsidies.
I mostly agree, but I’m still on the fence about this. Because while I agree student loans are outrageous I think that we should start forgiving medical debt as that’s not something people could see coming necessarily. For example I had a cancer diagnosis then a little less than two years later an aortic defect was found that had to be fixed also before it killed me and that sooner than cancer would have. I’m still paying for those bills today and it would be nice to have that forgiven. It seems a bit unfair to me in that yes the student loans suck but you chose it whereas I had no choice if I wanted to stay alive.
False dichotomy thinking. You can want both. I'll never understand why people think in "exclusive or" reasoning. Other places in the world have already shown both examples in your reply are doable and reasonable.
Yes, but don’t forget how and why this was politicized. The rising cost of college and lack of public investment in universities is a conscious conservative political policy started by Nixon and put into action by Reagan. This is a means by which to kneecap students who were some of the main social and political drivers of change during the civil rights and Vietnam protests.
I’m pretty sure that everyone who wants student loan forgiveness *also* wants the root cause of the problem addressed too.
Like, I garden. If I wind up with a powdery mildew problem on my plants, I’m going to treat the current problem *and* figure out what caused it and change it.
They may want it fixed, but no part of the proposal on the table includes fixing it. If his proposal included BOTH pieces i think you’d have the possibility of a lot more support. But then it likely would fall under legislation and not be something he could unilaterally execute.
This isn't necessarily 100% true, because of the societal knowledge gained along the way.
20-30 years ago, people thought college was a ticket to success, and definitely the 'best' way forward for everyone, and the loans were always worth it.
Today, you have to be living under a rock to not realize that student loans can be incredibly predatory, and you shouldn't just take the money.
Are people going to be dumb and do it anyway? Sure, absolutely. The same way people are dumb and go in for pay day loans, or any other type of loan. The issue here was the sheer scale of how many people were involved, combined with the inability to discharge these debts through backruptcy.
The often quoted phrase 'those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it' is valid, but keep in mind people have learned.
Not American but I’m somewhat familiar with the system there (in my university in Canada we had a lot of American international students since it cost the same as going to school out-of-state). I think the question is more “what college is right” than “whether college is right.” The numbers on lifetime earnings are pretty cut-and-dry. You’ll almost certainly make more money with a college education than without.
What I’m not as convinced of are the benefits of going to some private school out-of-state compared to more affordable schools in your home state. My understanding is that the difference in cost for a four-year degree can be in the six figures, and I’m not sure there’s adequate evidence that investment is worth it.
In Canada, student debt is dischargeable after 7 years.
What I would add is a requirement that universities receiving student loan funding personally guarantee a small portion of the debt. So, for example, if a gender studies graduate declares bankruptcy 10 years later on a 100k debt, the university would owe the government, say, $5,000. Very quickly universities would shrink or shutdown unproductive programs and make sure that the students being admitted were qualified and well-prepared to succeed.
Yes, but no. The issue is that banks have no incentive to give loans that they're sure the borrower can pay back (especially since these loans are also secured by the fed). So the bank gets a blank check to write out for any amount of money they want. Universities therefore have to reason to keep costs down because they know banks will write the check for whatever they ask.
If bankruptcy was to discharge the loan and the fed didn't cover the losses. Then banks would be more judicious with what kind of loans they give out and universities would in turn have to reign in their spending thus lowering overall costs.
And they certainly won't be able to even think of owning a home for a very long time now that they have that on their record. Claiming bankruptcy is a nuclear option - you are literally fucked for like 7 years after claiming it.
Lots of people are already at the “very long time” part already, 10+ years out and will never be able to own a home, partly because of student loans they can’t get ahead of.
Much of the younger generations already assume they will never own a home and never retire. Many would be happy to ruin their credit for 7 years to get out of paying back loans.
I don't agree with how it is implemented, but we should not allow a clean slate for student loans. It is a situation too easily abused.
Sure, in the same way that putting a cast on someone’s broken leg after they are hit by a car only fixes a symptom of our car-centric infrastructure. But, you know, that person has a broken leg *right now*, and they need help *right now* so it doesn’t turn into a lifelong issue.
I think forgiving the loans *is* the stopping the bleeding. Because the immediate problem it’s creating is at least two generations of college alumni who should be able to afford to spend money to boost the economy but can’t.
How do you propose to accomplish this? I’m curious to hear your opinions on the underlying causes of the “outlandish costs of higher education.” Obviously, universities have operating expenses and overhead. Are you perhaps thinking of capping salaries for presidents and faculty? What does the solution look like to you?
Universities are spending money on their sports teams and huge compensation packages for their executives. It’s not on professors I can guarantee that.
This. You look at the highest paid state employee in a majority of states, and it's a university football/basketball coach. Most colleges aim to make athletics their top priority because it draws the most attention from alumni and pulls in the most money from television deals and whatnot. There are television channels devoted to conferences and their athletics.
So many major universities are not treated like places of higher learning by their boards of directors, they're treated like sports franchises with extra steps, and it's utter bullshit.
I mean, I would also think maybe keep interest rates on loans incredibly low and put a reasonable cap on how much someone can owe on a given loan. (Like, no more horror stories of folks that have paid off their principal and still own more than they took out to begin with because of the interest)
This is the way. Forgiveness is great, but it doesn’t address the problem of how grossly mismanaged and overcosted colleges are.
Part of the problem is actually the availability of financial aid, which I feel is a great place to start since it’s also a piece of the loan forgiveness pie. Knowing how much students can get in financial aid leads to colleges charging that much for tuition, which leads to higher costs for everyone, which leads to more students needing financial aid. It’s a vicious cycle that needs to be addressed to really change things.
Honestly surprised this is so high on the replies. THIS is critical. are we supposed to just subsidize the fuck out of these exorbitant, out of control colleges?
Not a waste. Just not optimized.
The more excess income a person has, the more they can pay in taxes.
Have the debt paid off and start taking in more taxes per person. People with less debt will have more expensive houses, but more stuff, and have better employment opportunities. All of which will increase the amount of tax they pay in their life.
Just look at 95% of successful businesses. They were started by people who could afford to take a risk. If any fraction of the people that have their debt paid off start a successful company they takes they pay back will 1000x anything the govt paid them
That, and the fact these loans are pushed in the faces of 16 year olds who can get 100,000 when they turn 18 with a few mouse clicks. Nobody ever mentions that part.
This is my view. In theory I’m fully in favor of forgiving the debt, but we also have to do something about the underlying cause.. which is the predatory loans and things they tell kids in school (or don’t tell them).. but that’s a lot harder to get into a soundbyte so.. here we are
Most state schools have climbing tuition costs because the states cut funding.
People like to pretend that the schools are trying to take advantage of the students, but the reality is that if a school isn't known for something, it's those programs that get cut first.
My college has tuition to up every year because the state would cut funding. Those cuts hit my major pretty hard - chemistry.
The 1st reason that tuition went up was cheap loans that cannot be forgiven in bankruptcy. They created artificial demand (more students with money) allowing colleges to charge more without losing enrollment. Higher prices got baked in and then State cuts took affect.
Sure, but it’s all part of the problem. We stopped emphasizing education, and it allowed for too many cuts in too many critical areas, and that opened the door for corrupt bullshit.
This is how I think about it, too. Honestly, I'd like to see college and vocational training be a part of the social contract and basically publicly funded to everyone with the merit, aptitude, and drive to pursue education-- whether it's auto mechanics or medicine. Forgiving one ( or multiple) age cohort(s) their loans just kicks the can down the road, and does very little to make education affordable for the future population. I'd love it if everyone was forgiven their debts, but I worry that it will just make for bitterness if it's only a few generations of students. It also seems to heighten the brazenness of anti-intellectual sentiment that already poisons the country.
> but I worry that it will just make for bitterness if it's only a few generations of students
On the other hand, the boomers had a *ton* of shit handed to them, so handing something to current generations seems acceptable.
I say this as someone with no student debt.
My college didn’t tell us job prospects
Didn’t tell us that they push majors with little to no job prospects because of the number of students able to graduate.
Didn’t tell us they scheduled mandatory non degree related classes in such a way that you had to stay an extra year even if it’s all you had left just to take it and pass
Or how a degree related class might be offered every 3-4 years only….
It was all structured to keep us in school as long as possible to spend as much as possible
And to keep us coming back as much as possible.
Fuck schools
Under the last Bush presidency, bankruptcy law was rewritten to NOT COVER STUDENT LOANS. So, lenders can give anyone a loan and obtain lifelong obligation to have the loan repaid. No need to vet the 19 year old for future ability to repay, because they are the lender's indentured servant from then on.
Make student loans forgivable in Bankruptcy and lenders will have to stop making predatory loans.
I'm in rural Ohio where teachers are usually the highest earners in the area. The average teacher salary at my kids school was $67k in 2021 (most recent year I can find).
Teachers usually make decent money, it's all the other shit they have to deal with that is causing them to leave the profession imo.
Admin never having their backs when dealing with students/parents is a big one.
Not letting them fail students is another.
that would be cutting consumption taxes not income taxes, which i believe is the general usage of "taxes" .
just to specify .
in allowing the lowest incomes to retain more of their incomes, i believe the former would be more effective alone than the latter alone. the combination clearly would be better than either alone for that purpose .
clarity i hope
And then the next generation of college students takes loans and then we're back to square 1 in a few years...
If only there was some kind of policy that made education wide, expansive, accessible...universal even?
I think the Federal government allowing student loans to be accessible for all to give everyone an opportunity was a good thing, if they had regulated tuition increases among public universities. That didn’t happen so tuition rates have continued to grow exponentially because there was always money available to feed it. Not only that, interest rates from Federal government loans should have been capped. After all, it’s in the country’s best interest to have an educated workforce. An educated workforce keeps us moving forward, creates innovation, and stops us from falling behind other countries.
It all comes down to greed. If you can extort more money from people legally, it will be done.
But the problem is that flooding the university system with money is an incentive for universities to accept and keep studying as many students as possible, regardless of their academic capabilities. Which then degrades academic standards, so that college educations fail to educate students to the worldwide standard, and degrades the value of the college degree so that it is less helpful for gaining a high skill job and becomes required even for gaining lower skill jobs.
I’m not claiming to know the answer to your questions, but I’m hoping you can help answer this. How do all of the European countries that offer free higher secondary education get around this problem?
Yeah it's much much more limited. But you also don't have the culture here that you need a piece of paper to sit in front of a computer for an office job that they train you to do anyway.
I'd like that too.
Universal higher ed would require a congress way to the left of any we've had in my lifetime. It would need a supermajority on the same page. GOP would never vote for it and even the right leaning dems wouldn't be on board. We've had one supermajority for about 72 days in my entire lifetime. You need to go back almost 50 years to find another one.
It is absolutely not something Biden and current dems could pass if each and every one of them wanted to.
As I wrote to another commenter, saying you'd prefer lobster thermidor while on line at McDonald's is pretty useless. It isn't on the menu.
I think the jig is up though. When I enrolled I was told that ANY degree would equate to at least a decent paying, comfortable job. That narrative is dead now.
Exactly. I’m not against student loan forgiveness but it strikes me as the same selfish motivations the boomers had in letting education costs get out of control in the first place.
I still remember when student aid like BEOG (basic education opportunity grants) got cut in the 80s under reagan. I went from being able to afford tuition to needing loans even though my parents made less money.
We need a serious major focus on making education and job training affordable. That is completely lacking.
The university near me is looking for a new president after misplacing 250 million dollars. No where in that job search is there any mention of containing costs.
I would like to see increased federal funding to universities tied to states increasing their funding and tied to real focus on cost savings.
And no I don’t mean cutting professors, TAs, or basic maintenance. I mean cutting salaries and the number or top administrators and their aides. I mean paying serious attention to costs. I mean serious transparency in costs with detailed breakdowns, not just lumping it all together in large buckets like administration.
I mean education can be cheap.
But we also have a free market so private schools exists. A lot of the loan issues are coming from schools that should not exists. HBCU's probably should not exists anymore (or sized down). A lot of second or third tier private liberal arts colleges should not exists. Professional degrees that the Ivies pimp out provide far less bang for the buck than the branded undergraduates and should be limited. These are the big areas where big student loan debts come from (I am probably missing a few). Expensive private school tuitions. HBCU's I say probably should not exists because they generally are more expensive and we have enough affirmative action now that the black students are not going to be going there. Private liberal arts schools make sense if daddy can pay for it, but middle class kids paying with debt should not be going to them. Most of them have less prestige or equivalent to flag ship state schools or even their regional campuses.
Some law schools probably should not exists too. If your not going top 30-ish or a full-ride elsewhere you probably shouldn't be going to law school as the jobs your getting will not pay more than a bachelors. After you remove these programs your left with like Doctors with a lot of debt, but as long as you actually become a Doctor they are fine (rough life till your 40 but fine).
More government money being spent indiscriminately leads to more inflation, which generally harms those who are already struggling.
It would be great to have your student loan deleted, but if you aren't benefitting and already struggling, it's incredibly unfair. Especially considering Canada already has much less aggressive interest structure for student loans.
This isn't indiscriminately. It is targeted. And these are federal student loans. The funds were already paid/spent to the colleges. Forgiveness is just not collecting the outstanding balance. They aren't spending more money.
I’d prefer that they stop handing out the federally backed student loans that got us here in the first place.
If we can stop that program, I’d be up for some loan forgiveness.
Interest is not real money. If I give you $100 and say you owe me an additional $10 for every week you don’t pay, that $10 only exists on paper. It’s not real. This is a majority of what is being cancelled, the interest, plucked out of the air.
No interest is different from appropriate interest rates. A big issue with the student loan system and one of the causes of the student debt crisis is how predatory the interest rates are. Students are being forced to get loans with obscenely high interest rates to pursue their educations.
Ok but federal loans are capped at low interest, and private loans aren’t even on the table to be forgiven. So this argument loses a lot of its weight.
They are not. Student loan rates go off at 6.7-7.7%. Maybe low interest now that rates are up but not for borrowers who got their loans during the exact period when this started to go south i.e. when universities became self aware about the money these loans made available compounded with real estate prices shooting up.
Not to an individual no, but you wouldn't want just one person going to school. Say you instead lend $500 to 10,000 people, and as a result of having that money, around half end up making significantly more money than they would have which results in you, the government, receiving more in income taxes from that half of people over the course of their life than you would've received from all 10,000 people paying you back that $500 on top of whatever income tax they'd generate as a non educated laborer.
My girlfriend pays almost as much in federal income taxes each year as I earn in net income (her 120k gross, taxed for almost 35k vs my 36k net) that 35k could literally pay for several other student's tuitions by itself. And that's just middle class. The interest is totally unnecessary, and tends to just fuck over people who either can't or don't understand how important it is to pay off those loans as quickly as possible.
This is one of those things that is a downstream impact of a well-educated society. That doesn't get factored into these conversations enough, because people instead just see "poor people get free money" or "rich college kids get free money" and immediately say that's terrible. But really education is a significant investment in the future of a nation. While there's always going to be people who maybe don't "deserve" the education they were given, in that maybe they drop out or get a degree they don't use, the benefits of an educated workforce are very clear from the tax revenue they produce.
Interest is real money. It represents the time value of money. A payment of $100 today is NOT worth the same as $100 10 years in the future. Both inflation, and opportunity cost are real things.
No, it gets printed. The purchasing power is extracted from the savings of middle class Americans. (The wealthy have their money in assets and are protected.)
Sure it is, all student loans are government guaranteed. The money comes from financial institutions, and the government guarantees they will be paid back.
A bank or credit union cannot loan someone 50.000 and the borrower is forgiven.
The government writes off the loan and it then falls on tax payers
You know what is cool? The average college graduate makes more than the average high school graduate, and businesses are able to leverage that education to develop/produce more products. That results in higher GDP/stimulus to the economy, and it results in more tax dollars to pay back the forgiven loans. This benefits everyone.
But I should not be responsible for paying taxes on something I’m not responsible for.
My wife and I paid a combined 114.000 dollars back in student loans at 13.99% interest.
So we are entitled to get a significant part of that money back
I paid 70k at 12% and I’m done. It wasn’t fun, but I did it. I support forgiveness cause mine was predatory and no one cared. These are predatory and someone cares. Just cause it wasn’t fair to me shouldn’t mean it’s unfair to everyone forever.
More like…
I survived the infant killing machine…the infant killing machine still exists and kills more infants than ever before and we still encourage infants to get killed by it….
But they think it’s sad when people lose their infants, so they are going to take mine and give it to someone else who lost theirs.
The same could be said of any tax cut. They're not actually cutting taxes, they're just transferring the taxes for other people to pay!
Student loans are future revenues, not money that's currently sitting around, so forgiving them is essentially a tax cut to those that have them. And, as the chart shows, this tax cut is going to the actual middle class!
It’s not transferring anything from anyone. Most of the accounts have been paid in full if you minus the criminal interest. It’s Monopoly money that the sheep have been brainwashed to think loan forgiveness means if it doesn’t benefit them that it’s coming directly out of their pocket.
it's not though, the principal is already spent and the interest is just made the fuck up in the first place. In my situation I've paid down the principal and only have interest that I'm paying on interest. I'm not incurring some sort of cost to the bank that money doesn't need to be paid off if it's forgiven - it would just disappear and the same would be true if I paid down the loan five years ago, the added interest between then and now is made up.
If you file for bankruptcy and lose your house, do you still owe money on that mortgage? Because student loans are the only loans not wiped out from bankruptcy.
If the house isn't destroyed or loses significant value, maybe. But in 2008 they lost billions of value on defaulted homes and the government came in to make them whole again. Why not do that with people?
Any student loan forgiveness should be predicated on raising the age of adulthood, because we’ve collectively decided that 18-20 year olds aren’t legally competent to manage their own affairs.
Hey now. The majority of my student loans were taken out when I was 23 - 25. Grad school doesn't have any real federal financial aid available like undergrad does.
That’s because they waive your tuition and pay you minimum wage to teach the classes that everyone is borrowing $200k to attend 😹 It’s the circle of life.
It’s also not fair to those who didn’t go to college because the knew they couldn’t afford it. Forcing them to pay for the school you should have known you can’t afford.
AGREED. That would be me. Didn’t go to college bc I had to pay for my own college and did the math and realized I couldn’t afford it. So I didn’t go and started a business instead. Worked out well for me. Why do I now have to pay for someone else’s school who didn’t make the decision I made? It’s unfair.
My argument would be that I agree, but any amount of interest paid should be retroactively applied to principle and any remaining balance of interest is dismissed.
We shouldn’t forgive the principle of the debts, but the interest I think would be fair.
I am not a finance expert so forgive me for any terminology that may not be accurate lol
Why? The government is charged interest for the money it spends. The fed rate is currently \~5.5%, which is the same as the federal student loan interest for 2023-2024. Current treasury bond rates are similar for short term. Right now the government is passing along loans at cost, which is a great deal considering the overhead of the program.
I think it’s fair to control the interest so people don’t get eaten by it. I don’t agree with full forgiveness but limiting payments to x% of pay below a certain amount is good policy
Why should people without college educations subsidize people with college educations that will make a lot more money?
Forcing the poor to pay for the rich has to be one of the most immoral things imaginable.
Well no, that is what the graph is dishonestly trying to imply. But no. 75k is like 20% above average wage. And that’ll continue to grow as these new graduates get older.
Most of the loans being forgiven are people who have already been paying them for 10-20 years, yet their incomes are nothing exceptional. When exactly are they supposed to become rich?
Yes, on average those with a college degree will make more than those without. But those who earn a lot more have already paid off their college loans. This is targeting the people who were promised more for going to college, but due to life, circumstances, the economy, or yes, perhaps even their own fault, are not reaping the benefits of that promise.
The average time to pay back student is 20 years. https://educationdata.org/average-time-to-repay-student-loans .
People are bad with money, there is a reason that an absurd number of people apparently live paycheck to paycheck. It’s not surprising they take forever to pay back the loans.
I’m fine with debt forgiveness for those who didn’t finish school, but considering those who did are making on average 10-15k more on the low end. it’s absurd we should cover them, only for them to reap the benefits.
But it is the privileged. Those who obtain a college degree earn $27k more annually and $1 million more over a lifetime on average than those didn't earn a college degree.
People with college degrees on average make much more over their lifetime. Yes once they graduate they have debt, but for many they will simply pay it off and surpass the poorest and least educated people who will be most effected.
I think it would probably make more sense to have some systems in place to help those who will genuinely struggle to pay back their debts, by doing things like limiting interest after a certain amount of years, having some cap on the total amount they can spend on student loans, and even some debt forgiveness for those who have been consistently working but have low incomes. There's a lot of nuance there and I don't know what specifics would actually be best, but it makes more sense to target the people who will actually be effected. If they were to forgive all debt, then poorer people would be paying off the debts of many middle class young workers who are capable of paying it off themselves.
The bottom 40% pay no federal income tax. Because of student loan forgiveness, are tax brackets going up, especially for the poor?
People who go to college make more on average, so they pay more taxes; they create more, all those engineers and computer science majors and doctors, which stimulates our economy, raises GDP, raises standards of living, it benefits everyone. They have already paid for their loans in higher taxes, or they will.
The people who have been overpaid are the educational institutions. Why aren't people calling for them to pay back the money? This is like society and families telling teenagers they need a car, and in the past, the government would give a grant to pay for half of a Corolla to help the teenagers out, but then they said they would write a blank check, so Toyota started charging $80k for a Corolla, but the government only covered the same size grant of $10k, so the government already gave Toyota the money, and now we are whining that a teenager bought a Corolla for $80k.
Is this really true? Because I definitely paid federal income tax when I earned in the bottom 40%. Did I get scammed?
Edit: about half of these people are elderly on social security. So really the bottom 20% aren’t paying taxes. But even with that, 20th percentile household income is $28k. Which makes sense why I paid taxes on a solo income of $25k
At $25k single with no dependents or deductions, your federal income taxes are like $100/month. Lots of people have children or other types of dependents. They get EITC. Many get money/credit on top of paying no taxes, which is fine. They are poor and need it.
Yes! People forget that some people don’t have student loans and opted for trade work. Yet, they suffer the stigma of not having a college degree, then now they need to pay for those who did and refuse to pay it down.
If they want to do something then put a cap on the interest.
But they do stunts like this because the democrats would rather cause controversy instead of solving the problem
I was down to give everyone a break. This truly would be the best way to stop the bucket of crabs people from complaining whilst providing substantial relief.
I agree. I took out the loans, and I am paying them back. If someone magically cleared them, cool, but in reality, I would just like the interest to not be crippling.
I have never missed a payment, and I graduated undergrad 10 years ago. Thanks to the interest, I still have 70% of the loan balance left.
The democrats? Which republican bill did the dems vote down that would have put caps on interest for student loans?
Because the democrats did in fact introduce a bill that would eliminate interest on student loans, but has gone nowhere in the Republican controlled house.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4986/text
People love to shit on democrats because they offer imperfect solutions. Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that republicans offer no solutions, only ways to make the problem worse.
>Should Student Loan Debt be Forgiven?
No. When you take on debt, you must pay it back (unless the school closed while you were still an enrolled student).
I won't opine on the subject, but i will say that everyone who can get their debt canceled, should, just like taxpayers (mainly the top earners) use every method available to them to decrease their taxes. I paid my own college loans off, but if it was available to me I would have taken advantage of it. So no fault to the recipients.
This. We totally did this with the PPP Loans, of which more than 75% was fraudulently used to buy vacation homes, sports cars, etc. Don't hear a peep from anyone about taking on that tax load.
Not. One. Complaint. Everyone took that free money and some used it to get by, while some used it on fun things.
That handout wasnt a problem because they benefited from it directly.
I'd ask everyone who doesnt believe in student loan payoffs and took handouts from the government during covid, to give that money back since they don't believe in giving people things for free.
Don't know where you're getting this from, I know multiple small business owners that basically said
"This is the most stupid thing I've ever seen and a bad idea, but of course I'm going to take the free money because not taking it would be even stupider"
same thing with this student loan forgiveness, it's stupid but if they offer my fiance free money for her loans I'd be stupider to say no.
I think this works in exchange for service to the community.
For example, California primary care physicians who take on a certain number of medi-cal patients over 5 years get 300,000 in loan forgiveness. This helps patients get doctors, and doctors who take this massive pay cut for 5 years can expect a loan forgiveness.
I'm not sure people realize programs like you describe have been around for decades, and are actually very common. School teachers qualify too, if not every state, a lot of them. My friend got his loans forgiven after being a psychologist at a university for 10 years.
Wait, so this person above is literally describing what 5.2 billion of the latest forgiveness is for?
https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/public-service
Some people don’t do research to even see what school costs anymore. The D2 school I went to to get a 4 year degree now would cost someone $85k. That’s not including rent/food. Wild stuff.
Maybe for a major research 1 school - but a typical state school is less than 15K in tuition and fees per year.
If you work part time to cover college living rent prices and food you are far from taking on 150k in debt.
Don’t worry. It’s a carrot for the Ds to dangle and then, wouldn’t you know it, the Rs just won’t let it pass. But they’ll have “tried.” We need reform & hopefully we get it but I doubt it will be actual forgiveness of debt.
Nope. I’m all for making college more affordable, but when you sign a damn contract, you’re responsible for it. How is that fair to others that paid similar amounts for college and didn’t get bailed out?
And yes, I’m also against corporations and banks getting bailed out as well…
It’s the interest that’s killing these people paying off loans. If you paid your loans off like I did decades ago, keep in mind that the conditions out there are way different and that never ending $750/month payment for thirty/forty years is crushing even our most needed professionals.
No, I took on debt knowing it had to be repaid. So did everyone else who took student loans. They are called loans for a reason. Now if someone took out 100k in loans but is only making 60k a year then that’s their fault. They chose to make a career that does not pay well and took out more in loans than they needed. That being said there should be something for careers such as teachers and the like.
I don't mind cancelling student debt, but I think that the people who worked hard and paid off their debts should get something too. Maybe give them tax breaks totaling the full value of the principal they paid down. If that's too expensive, then cap it a maximum value of $X that can either be forgiven or claimed as a deduction.
what mainly bothers me about it is how it indirectly punishes those who paid their loans despite having no more than $75k income....including several years of having my income taxes intercepted, back when I was making under $35k/yr with a wife and child I was supporting....and in exchange for that I just watch other people having uncle sam give it to them for free. really creates a perverse incentive and makes the people who already paid the price feel like dupes.
Federally backed student loans should always be at less than 3%, and if you’ve made 6 payments in a row it should be at 0.99%
Just make it easy to pay them off.
Forgiving debt does absolutely zero to solve the problem and we will just be right back here in four years or so, but with people having bigger and worse loans because they expect it to be forgiven, so just grab more free money while you can!
I’d prefer there was some responsibility around degrees instead. Instead of using taxpayer money to fund degrees that don’t pay off. Why not instead force the college to reimburse your tuition if they allowed you to get a degree that turned out to be worthless, or earns you under a certain yearly salary.
It’s like sticking a band aid on a gashing wound expecting it to fix something. And in the process of putting the band aid on your holding a knife, make a massive OTHER cut.
It is mopping up the blood without staunching the wound.
Fix predatory practices by universities and lenders, then once that is resolved we can deal with cleaning up the damage. If you pay off loans for people who made poor decisions on overpriced degrees first, you've only subsidized the problem and ensured it will get worse.
Why are we giving gifts to educated people, who make more money on average ? Forgiven debt is a gift, and would normally be taxable income. If we are dropping 'helicopter money' on people in the middle of an inflation epidemic, why not give it to homeless people ? Don't they need it more ?
Student loan forgiveness without addressing the outlandish cost of higher education would be a waste of taxpayer resources. I would support a plan that coupled student loan forgiveness with a reduction in available future financing for the associated colleges. There has to be some incentive for these colleges to offer socially productive education if their business model relies on publicly funded subsidies.
What’s for sure, if the only thing we do is “forgive” the loans and do nothing to fix the system we’ll end up back in the same mess eventually.
It is weird how many do not realize this. I mean, we are going to have this exact same problem again in a few years.
They do realize it, it’s just they realize they can keep forgiving loans to get votes if the problem continues
Wait, you mean this issue is politicized?
Buying votes, mostly on the backs of people who didn’t go to college and who make less than those whose votes are being bought.
I mostly agree, but I’m still on the fence about this. Because while I agree student loans are outrageous I think that we should start forgiving medical debt as that’s not something people could see coming necessarily. For example I had a cancer diagnosis then a little less than two years later an aortic defect was found that had to be fixed also before it killed me and that sooner than cancer would have. I’m still paying for those bills today and it would be nice to have that forgiven. It seems a bit unfair to me in that yes the student loans suck but you chose it whereas I had no choice if I wanted to stay alive.
False dichotomy thinking. You can want both. I'll never understand why people think in "exclusive or" reasoning. Other places in the world have already shown both examples in your reply are doable and reasonable.
Yes, but don’t forget how and why this was politicized. The rising cost of college and lack of public investment in universities is a conscious conservative political policy started by Nixon and put into action by Reagan. This is a means by which to kneecap students who were some of the main social and political drivers of change during the civil rights and Vietnam protests.
I’m pretty sure that everyone who wants student loan forgiveness *also* wants the root cause of the problem addressed too. Like, I garden. If I wind up with a powdery mildew problem on my plants, I’m going to treat the current problem *and* figure out what caused it and change it.
They may want it fixed, but no part of the proposal on the table includes fixing it. If his proposal included BOTH pieces i think you’d have the possibility of a lot more support. But then it likely would fall under legislation and not be something he could unilaterally execute.
Yes we are. Absolutely.
In a worse mess, now that people know that they stand a high chance of not having to pay anything if they wait long enough.
This isn't necessarily 100% true, because of the societal knowledge gained along the way. 20-30 years ago, people thought college was a ticket to success, and definitely the 'best' way forward for everyone, and the loans were always worth it. Today, you have to be living under a rock to not realize that student loans can be incredibly predatory, and you shouldn't just take the money. Are people going to be dumb and do it anyway? Sure, absolutely. The same way people are dumb and go in for pay day loans, or any other type of loan. The issue here was the sheer scale of how many people were involved, combined with the inability to discharge these debts through backruptcy. The often quoted phrase 'those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it' is valid, but keep in mind people have learned.
Not American but I’m somewhat familiar with the system there (in my university in Canada we had a lot of American international students since it cost the same as going to school out-of-state). I think the question is more “what college is right” than “whether college is right.” The numbers on lifetime earnings are pretty cut-and-dry. You’ll almost certainly make more money with a college education than without. What I’m not as convinced of are the benefits of going to some private school out-of-state compared to more affordable schools in your home state. My understanding is that the difference in cost for a four-year degree can be in the six figures, and I’m not sure there’s adequate evidence that investment is worth it.
Okay So forgive loans and fix the system
Too logical and too hard. Plus we the government love our debt slaves. It benefits us!
Easy solution. Make college debt cleared by bankruptcy and all the rest of the economics will work itself out.
Everyone would just declare bankruptcy after graduating, right? That just creates a mess.
In Canada, student debt is dischargeable after 7 years. What I would add is a requirement that universities receiving student loan funding personally guarantee a small portion of the debt. So, for example, if a gender studies graduate declares bankruptcy 10 years later on a 100k debt, the university would owe the government, say, $5,000. Very quickly universities would shrink or shutdown unproductive programs and make sure that the students being admitted were qualified and well-prepared to succeed.
Yes, but no. The issue is that banks have no incentive to give loans that they're sure the borrower can pay back (especially since these loans are also secured by the fed). So the bank gets a blank check to write out for any amount of money they want. Universities therefore have to reason to keep costs down because they know banks will write the check for whatever they ask. If bankruptcy was to discharge the loan and the fed didn't cover the losses. Then banks would be more judicious with what kind of loans they give out and universities would in turn have to reign in their spending thus lowering overall costs.
But bankruptcy works for people who have actual assets College kids have literally nothing
And they certainly won't be able to even think of owning a home for a very long time now that they have that on their record. Claiming bankruptcy is a nuclear option - you are literally fucked for like 7 years after claiming it.
Lots of people are already at the “very long time” part already, 10+ years out and will never be able to own a home, partly because of student loans they can’t get ahead of.
Much of the younger generations already assume they will never own a home and never retire. Many would be happy to ruin their credit for 7 years to get out of paying back loans. I don't agree with how it is implemented, but we should not allow a clean slate for student loans. It is a situation too easily abused.
Implying that astronomical tuition isn't a direct result of guaranteed student loans is foolish.
This is the answer. Forgiving the debt only helps a symptom of a much bigger problem.
Sure, in the same way that putting a cast on someone’s broken leg after they are hit by a car only fixes a symptom of our car-centric infrastructure. But, you know, that person has a broken leg *right now*, and they need help *right now* so it doesn’t turn into a lifelong issue.
Yep stop the bleeding first.
Doctor: I'm not going to do anything about your current situation until you lose weight. Patient: But I'm in the middle of a heart attack!
“I’m not going to do anything about your situation until other people lose weight.”
That's better. "I know you're starving but I'm not going to give you any food until we can get EVERYONE fed."
I think forgiving the loans *is* the stopping the bleeding. Because the immediate problem it’s creating is at least two generations of college alumni who should be able to afford to spend money to boost the economy but can’t.
How do you propose to accomplish this? I’m curious to hear your opinions on the underlying causes of the “outlandish costs of higher education.” Obviously, universities have operating expenses and overhead. Are you perhaps thinking of capping salaries for presidents and faculty? What does the solution look like to you?
Universities are spending money on their sports teams and huge compensation packages for their executives. It’s not on professors I can guarantee that.
This. You look at the highest paid state employee in a majority of states, and it's a university football/basketball coach. Most colleges aim to make athletics their top priority because it draws the most attention from alumni and pulls in the most money from television deals and whatnot. There are television channels devoted to conferences and their athletics. So many major universities are not treated like places of higher learning by their boards of directors, they're treated like sports franchises with extra steps, and it's utter bullshit.
I mean, I would also think maybe keep interest rates on loans incredibly low and put a reasonable cap on how much someone can owe on a given loan. (Like, no more horror stories of folks that have paid off their principal and still own more than they took out to begin with because of the interest)
Public state schools should be free but also much harder. So it's easier to fail out of reducing the cost of education. This is how europe is.
This is the way. Forgiveness is great, but it doesn’t address the problem of how grossly mismanaged and overcosted colleges are. Part of the problem is actually the availability of financial aid, which I feel is a great place to start since it’s also a piece of the loan forgiveness pie. Knowing how much students can get in financial aid leads to colleges charging that much for tuition, which leads to higher costs for everyone, which leads to more students needing financial aid. It’s a vicious cycle that needs to be addressed to really change things.
Honestly surprised this is so high on the replies. THIS is critical. are we supposed to just subsidize the fuck out of these exorbitant, out of control colleges?
Since when did any politician buy the vote of people who barely made a living? The audacity to defer to the wealthy here is astonishing.
Not a waste. Just not optimized. The more excess income a person has, the more they can pay in taxes. Have the debt paid off and start taking in more taxes per person. People with less debt will have more expensive houses, but more stuff, and have better employment opportunities. All of which will increase the amount of tax they pay in their life. Just look at 95% of successful businesses. They were started by people who could afford to take a risk. If any fraction of the people that have their debt paid off start a successful company they takes they pay back will 1000x anything the govt paid them
That, and the fact these loans are pushed in the faces of 16 year olds who can get 100,000 when they turn 18 with a few mouse clicks. Nobody ever mentions that part.
I prefer we just slash taxes for those making less than $75,000.
Because people making 30k pay so much in taxes? lol.
Yeah, my student loan payment has always been much bigger than my tax payments.
Yeah. Forgiving loans without fixing the underlying problems will just exacerbate the problem.
This is my view. In theory I’m fully in favor of forgiving the debt, but we also have to do something about the underlying cause.. which is the predatory loans and things they tell kids in school (or don’t tell them).. but that’s a lot harder to get into a soundbyte so.. here we are
Most state schools have climbing tuition costs because the states cut funding. People like to pretend that the schools are trying to take advantage of the students, but the reality is that if a school isn't known for something, it's those programs that get cut first. My college has tuition to up every year because the state would cut funding. Those cuts hit my major pretty hard - chemistry.
The 1st reason that tuition went up was cheap loans that cannot be forgiven in bankruptcy. They created artificial demand (more students with money) allowing colleges to charge more without losing enrollment. Higher prices got baked in and then State cuts took affect.
Sure, but it’s all part of the problem. We stopped emphasizing education, and it allowed for too many cuts in too many critical areas, and that opened the door for corrupt bullshit.
This is how I think about it, too. Honestly, I'd like to see college and vocational training be a part of the social contract and basically publicly funded to everyone with the merit, aptitude, and drive to pursue education-- whether it's auto mechanics or medicine. Forgiving one ( or multiple) age cohort(s) their loans just kicks the can down the road, and does very little to make education affordable for the future population. I'd love it if everyone was forgiven their debts, but I worry that it will just make for bitterness if it's only a few generations of students. It also seems to heighten the brazenness of anti-intellectual sentiment that already poisons the country.
> but I worry that it will just make for bitterness if it's only a few generations of students On the other hand, the boomers had a *ton* of shit handed to them, so handing something to current generations seems acceptable. I say this as someone with no student debt.
My college didn’t tell us job prospects Didn’t tell us that they push majors with little to no job prospects because of the number of students able to graduate. Didn’t tell us they scheduled mandatory non degree related classes in such a way that you had to stay an extra year even if it’s all you had left just to take it and pass Or how a degree related class might be offered every 3-4 years only…. It was all structured to keep us in school as long as possible to spend as much as possible And to keep us coming back as much as possible. Fuck schools
Under the last Bush presidency, bankruptcy law was rewritten to NOT COVER STUDENT LOANS. So, lenders can give anyone a loan and obtain lifelong obligation to have the loan repaid. No need to vet the 19 year old for future ability to repay, because they are the lender's indentured servant from then on. Make student loans forgivable in Bankruptcy and lenders will have to stop making predatory loans.
Vice versa here
If you have student loans and only make $30,000 somethin isn’t right.
We call these teachers in the USA.
Never met a single one making under $40,000
Considering most have a masters, even that's a fucking joke. But out in the sticks they make way less than on the coast.
I'm in rural Ohio where teachers are usually the highest earners in the area. The average teacher salary at my kids school was $67k in 2021 (most recent year I can find).
Teachers usually make decent money, it's all the other shit they have to deal with that is causing them to leave the profession imo. Admin never having their backs when dealing with students/parents is a big one. Not letting them fail students is another.
Welcome to America. Here’s your tiny American flag and 40,000 hospital bill.
Yes, proportional to their income
that would be cutting consumption taxes not income taxes, which i believe is the general usage of "taxes" . just to specify . in allowing the lowest incomes to retain more of their incomes, i believe the former would be more effective alone than the latter alone. the combination clearly would be better than either alone for that purpose . clarity i hope
Only if you are counting regressive taxes like sales tax.
At that amount, a thousand dollars can mean everything
And then the next generation of college students takes loans and then we're back to square 1 in a few years... If only there was some kind of policy that made education wide, expansive, accessible...universal even?
I think the Federal government allowing student loans to be accessible for all to give everyone an opportunity was a good thing, if they had regulated tuition increases among public universities. That didn’t happen so tuition rates have continued to grow exponentially because there was always money available to feed it. Not only that, interest rates from Federal government loans should have been capped. After all, it’s in the country’s best interest to have an educated workforce. An educated workforce keeps us moving forward, creates innovation, and stops us from falling behind other countries. It all comes down to greed. If you can extort more money from people legally, it will be done.
But the problem is that flooding the university system with money is an incentive for universities to accept and keep studying as many students as possible, regardless of their academic capabilities. Which then degrades academic standards, so that college educations fail to educate students to the worldwide standard, and degrades the value of the college degree so that it is less helpful for gaining a high skill job and becomes required even for gaining lower skill jobs.
I’m not claiming to know the answer to your questions, but I’m hoping you can help answer this. How do all of the European countries that offer free higher secondary education get around this problem?
Yeah it's much much more limited. But you also don't have the culture here that you need a piece of paper to sit in front of a computer for an office job that they train you to do anyway.
I'd like that too. Universal higher ed would require a congress way to the left of any we've had in my lifetime. It would need a supermajority on the same page. GOP would never vote for it and even the right leaning dems wouldn't be on board. We've had one supermajority for about 72 days in my entire lifetime. You need to go back almost 50 years to find another one. It is absolutely not something Biden and current dems could pass if each and every one of them wanted to. As I wrote to another commenter, saying you'd prefer lobster thermidor while on line at McDonald's is pretty useless. It isn't on the menu.
I think the jig is up though. When I enrolled I was told that ANY degree would equate to at least a decent paying, comfortable job. That narrative is dead now.
Exactly. I’m not against student loan forgiveness but it strikes me as the same selfish motivations the boomers had in letting education costs get out of control in the first place. I still remember when student aid like BEOG (basic education opportunity grants) got cut in the 80s under reagan. I went from being able to afford tuition to needing loans even though my parents made less money. We need a serious major focus on making education and job training affordable. That is completely lacking. The university near me is looking for a new president after misplacing 250 million dollars. No where in that job search is there any mention of containing costs. I would like to see increased federal funding to universities tied to states increasing their funding and tied to real focus on cost savings. And no I don’t mean cutting professors, TAs, or basic maintenance. I mean cutting salaries and the number or top administrators and their aides. I mean paying serious attention to costs. I mean serious transparency in costs with detailed breakdowns, not just lumping it all together in large buckets like administration.
I mean education can be cheap. But we also have a free market so private schools exists. A lot of the loan issues are coming from schools that should not exists. HBCU's probably should not exists anymore (or sized down). A lot of second or third tier private liberal arts colleges should not exists. Professional degrees that the Ivies pimp out provide far less bang for the buck than the branded undergraduates and should be limited. These are the big areas where big student loan debts come from (I am probably missing a few). Expensive private school tuitions. HBCU's I say probably should not exists because they generally are more expensive and we have enough affirmative action now that the black students are not going to be going there. Private liberal arts schools make sense if daddy can pay for it, but middle class kids paying with debt should not be going to them. Most of them have less prestige or equivalent to flag ship state schools or even their regional campuses. Some law schools probably should not exists too. If your not going top 30-ish or a full-ride elsewhere you probably shouldn't be going to law school as the jobs your getting will not pay more than a bachelors. After you remove these programs your left with like Doctors with a lot of debt, but as long as you actually become a Doctor they are fine (rough life till your 40 but fine).
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How's that?
More government money being spent indiscriminately leads to more inflation, which generally harms those who are already struggling. It would be great to have your student loan deleted, but if you aren't benefitting and already struggling, it's incredibly unfair. Especially considering Canada already has much less aggressive interest structure for student loans.
It's not Government Money ..its tax payers money being spent!
This isn't indiscriminately. It is targeted. And these are federal student loans. The funds were already paid/spent to the colleges. Forgiveness is just not collecting the outstanding balance. They aren't spending more money.
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I’d prefer that they stop handing out the federally backed student loans that got us here in the first place. If we can stop that program, I’d be up for some loan forgiveness.
Someone making 75k gross and taking the standard deduction for 2024 will have an effective federal tax rate of about 11%. How much lower you wanna go?
It’s not forgiven, it’s transferred to other people to pay. So your answer is a resounding “no!”
Most of it is interest plucked out of the air. It's non-existent
Interest plucked out of the air?
Interest is not real money. If I give you $100 and say you owe me an additional $10 for every week you don’t pay, that $10 only exists on paper. It’s not real. This is a majority of what is being cancelled, the interest, plucked out of the air.
In that case can I borrow $500 from you today and pay you back $500 in 5 years?
No interest is different from appropriate interest rates. A big issue with the student loan system and one of the causes of the student debt crisis is how predatory the interest rates are. Students are being forced to get loans with obscenely high interest rates to pursue their educations.
Ok but federal loans are capped at low interest, and private loans aren’t even on the table to be forgiven. So this argument loses a lot of its weight.
They are not. Student loan rates go off at 6.7-7.7%. Maybe low interest now that rates are up but not for borrowers who got their loans during the exact period when this started to go south i.e. when universities became self aware about the money these loans made available compounded with real estate prices shooting up.
~7% is not the problem. The problem is the 20-30% private Sallie Mae loans. Which are not in the conversation to be discharged.
Not to an individual no, but you wouldn't want just one person going to school. Say you instead lend $500 to 10,000 people, and as a result of having that money, around half end up making significantly more money than they would have which results in you, the government, receiving more in income taxes from that half of people over the course of their life than you would've received from all 10,000 people paying you back that $500 on top of whatever income tax they'd generate as a non educated laborer. My girlfriend pays almost as much in federal income taxes each year as I earn in net income (her 120k gross, taxed for almost 35k vs my 36k net) that 35k could literally pay for several other student's tuitions by itself. And that's just middle class. The interest is totally unnecessary, and tends to just fuck over people who either can't or don't understand how important it is to pay off those loans as quickly as possible.
This is one of those things that is a downstream impact of a well-educated society. That doesn't get factored into these conversations enough, because people instead just see "poor people get free money" or "rich college kids get free money" and immediately say that's terrible. But really education is a significant investment in the future of a nation. While there's always going to be people who maybe don't "deserve" the education they were given, in that maybe they drop out or get a degree they don't use, the benefits of an educated workforce are very clear from the tax revenue they produce.
What the fuck am I even reading
no it is the lost opportunity cost had that money been put to good use
Interest is real money. It represents the time value of money. A payment of $100 today is NOT worth the same as $100 10 years in the future. Both inflation, and opportunity cost are real things.
Is it really transferred?
No, it gets printed. The purchasing power is extracted from the savings of middle class Americans. (The wealthy have their money in assets and are protected.)
Sure it is, all student loans are government guaranteed. The money comes from financial institutions, and the government guarantees they will be paid back. A bank or credit union cannot loan someone 50.000 and the borrower is forgiven. The government writes off the loan and it then falls on tax payers
You know what is cool? The average college graduate makes more than the average high school graduate, and businesses are able to leverage that education to develop/produce more products. That results in higher GDP/stimulus to the economy, and it results in more tax dollars to pay back the forgiven loans. This benefits everyone.
But I should not be responsible for paying taxes on something I’m not responsible for. My wife and I paid a combined 114.000 dollars back in student loans at 13.99% interest. So we are entitled to get a significant part of that money back
I paid 70k at 12% and I’m done. It wasn’t fun, but I did it. I support forgiveness cause mine was predatory and no one cared. These are predatory and someone cares. Just cause it wasn’t fair to me shouldn’t mean it’s unfair to everyone forever.
It’s not transferred though. It just gets added to the deficit the same way that cutting taxes does.
What’s more, I paid my damn loans over 20 years and paid them off. It simply isn’t even remotely fair to now saddle me with someone else’s debt.
I survived the infant killing machine so it doesn’t make sense that we turn it off now!
Nothing got turned off lol We're still doling out these predatory loans by the millions...
More like… I survived the infant killing machine…the infant killing machine still exists and kills more infants than ever before and we still encourage infants to get killed by it…. But they think it’s sad when people lose their infants, so they are going to take mine and give it to someone else who lost theirs.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” -Greek Proverb
My Dad died of cancer. Can’t cure it now!
The same could be said of any tax cut. They're not actually cutting taxes, they're just transferring the taxes for other people to pay! Student loans are future revenues, not money that's currently sitting around, so forgiving them is essentially a tax cut to those that have them. And, as the chart shows, this tax cut is going to the actual middle class!
That's not how this works, like at all. Please educate yourself
It’s not transferring anything from anyone. Most of the accounts have been paid in full if you minus the criminal interest. It’s Monopoly money that the sheep have been brainwashed to think loan forgiveness means if it doesn’t benefit them that it’s coming directly out of their pocket.
it's not though, the principal is already spent and the interest is just made the fuck up in the first place. In my situation I've paid down the principal and only have interest that I'm paying on interest. I'm not incurring some sort of cost to the bank that money doesn't need to be paid off if it's forgiven - it would just disappear and the same would be true if I paid down the loan five years ago, the added interest between then and now is made up.
Lol wait until you find out what quantitative easing is
If you give someone 20k loan forgiveness for a music degree you can give me 20k towards my mortgage. We both know what we signed up for
If you file for bankruptcy and lose your house, do you still owe money on that mortgage? Because student loans are the only loans not wiped out from bankruptcy.
Student loans are also the only loans that do not require collateral/ credit. With a mortgage the lender can sell the home in case of a default.
If the house isn't destroyed or loses significant value, maybe. But in 2008 they lost billions of value on defaulted homes and the government came in to make them whole again. Why not do that with people?
Bailing out the banks was a mistake that shouldn’t be repeated. Just because bad policy is done once doesn’t mean it needs to be repeated.
If you file for bankruptcy do you lose your college credits/degree?
Any student loan forgiveness should be predicated on raising the age of adulthood, because we’ve collectively decided that 18-20 year olds aren’t legally competent to manage their own affairs.
Hey now. The majority of my student loans were taken out when I was 23 - 25. Grad school doesn't have any real federal financial aid available like undergrad does.
That’s because they waive your tuition and pay you minimum wage to teach the classes that everyone is borrowing $200k to attend 😹 It’s the circle of life.
You can discharge your mortgage in bankruptcy.
If you live in a no recourse state you can just walk away from the house and the bank can't go after you.
This is the dumbest argument imaginable. Go sell your house if you want to be rid of the mortgage.
You bought your house at age 17 with no down payment because you were pressured by your teachers and society?
Yes I mind. It’s your debt pay it. It’s not canceled it’s put on me to pay your share.
It’s also not fair to those who didn’t go to college because the knew they couldn’t afford it. Forcing them to pay for the school you should have known you can’t afford.
AGREED. That would be me. Didn’t go to college bc I had to pay for my own college and did the math and realized I couldn’t afford it. So I didn’t go and started a business instead. Worked out well for me. Why do I now have to pay for someone else’s school who didn’t make the decision I made? It’s unfair.
My argument would be that I agree, but any amount of interest paid should be retroactively applied to principle and any remaining balance of interest is dismissed. We shouldn’t forgive the principle of the debts, but the interest I think would be fair. I am not a finance expert so forgive me for any terminology that may not be accurate lol
Why? The government is charged interest for the money it spends. The fed rate is currently \~5.5%, which is the same as the federal student loan interest for 2023-2024. Current treasury bond rates are similar for short term. Right now the government is passing along loans at cost, which is a great deal considering the overhead of the program.
I think it’s fair to control the interest so people don’t get eaten by it. I don’t agree with full forgiveness but limiting payments to x% of pay below a certain amount is good policy
Why should people without college educations subsidize people with college educations that will make a lot more money? Forcing the poor to pay for the rich has to be one of the most immoral things imaginable.
This chart clearly shows that it's not the rich that will be getting loan forgiveness.
Well no, that is what the graph is dishonestly trying to imply. But no. 75k is like 20% above average wage. And that’ll continue to grow as these new graduates get older.
They aren’t richer yet* considering that those with college degrees will most likely earn more than those without.
Most of the loans being forgiven are people who have already been paying them for 10-20 years, yet their incomes are nothing exceptional. When exactly are they supposed to become rich? Yes, on average those with a college degree will make more than those without. But those who earn a lot more have already paid off their college loans. This is targeting the people who were promised more for going to college, but due to life, circumstances, the economy, or yes, perhaps even their own fault, are not reaping the benefits of that promise.
The average time to pay back student is 20 years. https://educationdata.org/average-time-to-repay-student-loans . People are bad with money, there is a reason that an absurd number of people apparently live paycheck to paycheck. It’s not surprising they take forever to pay back the loans. I’m fine with debt forgiveness for those who didn’t finish school, but considering those who did are making on average 10-15k more on the low end. it’s absurd we should cover them, only for them to reap the benefits.
But it is the privileged. Those who obtain a college degree earn $27k more annually and $1 million more over a lifetime on average than those didn't earn a college degree.
People with college degrees on average make much more over their lifetime. Yes once they graduate they have debt, but for many they will simply pay it off and surpass the poorest and least educated people who will be most effected. I think it would probably make more sense to have some systems in place to help those who will genuinely struggle to pay back their debts, by doing things like limiting interest after a certain amount of years, having some cap on the total amount they can spend on student loans, and even some debt forgiveness for those who have been consistently working but have low incomes. There's a lot of nuance there and I don't know what specifics would actually be best, but it makes more sense to target the people who will actually be effected. If they were to forgive all debt, then poorer people would be paying off the debts of many middle class young workers who are capable of paying it off themselves.
The bottom 40% pay no federal income tax. Because of student loan forgiveness, are tax brackets going up, especially for the poor? People who go to college make more on average, so they pay more taxes; they create more, all those engineers and computer science majors and doctors, which stimulates our economy, raises GDP, raises standards of living, it benefits everyone. They have already paid for their loans in higher taxes, or they will. The people who have been overpaid are the educational institutions. Why aren't people calling for them to pay back the money? This is like society and families telling teenagers they need a car, and in the past, the government would give a grant to pay for half of a Corolla to help the teenagers out, but then they said they would write a blank check, so Toyota started charging $80k for a Corolla, but the government only covered the same size grant of $10k, so the government already gave Toyota the money, and now we are whining that a teenager bought a Corolla for $80k.
Is this really true? Because I definitely paid federal income tax when I earned in the bottom 40%. Did I get scammed? Edit: about half of these people are elderly on social security. So really the bottom 20% aren’t paying taxes. But even with that, 20th percentile household income is $28k. Which makes sense why I paid taxes on a solo income of $25k
At $25k single with no dependents or deductions, your federal income taxes are like $100/month. Lots of people have children or other types of dependents. They get EITC. Many get money/credit on top of paying no taxes, which is fine. They are poor and need it.
How about PPP loan forgiveness?
Yes! People forget that some people don’t have student loans and opted for trade work. Yet, they suffer the stigma of not having a college degree, then now they need to pay for those who did and refuse to pay it down.
People with student loans are poor, dippy. They're literally IN DEBT.
It makes it easier to go to college
Fix the root cause/problem. Otherwise every 10 years we’ll be having this same conversation about loan forgiveness.
I paid off my wife's debt while she was going through college. I make 36k a year. I shouldn't pay off other people's. Edit typo
Let’s get rid of the whole program if they’re going to be gifts instead of loans.
If they want to do something then put a cap on the interest. But they do stunts like this because the democrats would rather cause controversy instead of solving the problem
I was down to give everyone a break. This truly would be the best way to stop the bucket of crabs people from complaining whilst providing substantial relief.
Dems introduced it a few years ago. Republican house won't pass it. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4986/text
I agree. I took out the loans, and I am paying them back. If someone magically cleared them, cool, but in reality, I would just like the interest to not be crippling. I have never missed a payment, and I graduated undergrad 10 years ago. Thanks to the interest, I still have 70% of the loan balance left.
The democrats? Which republican bill did the dems vote down that would have put caps on interest for student loans? Because the democrats did in fact introduce a bill that would eliminate interest on student loans, but has gone nowhere in the Republican controlled house. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4986/text
People love to shit on democrats because they offer imperfect solutions. Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that republicans offer no solutions, only ways to make the problem worse.
>Should Student Loan Debt be Forgiven? No. When you take on debt, you must pay it back (unless the school closed while you were still an enrolled student).
Do you take the same hardline no forgiveness stance against bankruptcy?
Of course not lol
Yes. Be responsible for the debt you owe. It's called being an adult, or how we millennials like to call it, "adulting."
I won't opine on the subject, but i will say that everyone who can get their debt canceled, should, just like taxpayers (mainly the top earners) use every method available to them to decrease their taxes. I paid my own college loans off, but if it was available to me I would have taken advantage of it. So no fault to the recipients.
Why not forgive everyone's debt and we all start over?
This. We totally did this with the PPP Loans, of which more than 75% was fraudulently used to buy vacation homes, sports cars, etc. Don't hear a peep from anyone about taking on that tax load.
Not. One. Complaint. Everyone took that free money and some used it to get by, while some used it on fun things. That handout wasnt a problem because they benefited from it directly. I'd ask everyone who doesnt believe in student loan payoffs and took handouts from the government during covid, to give that money back since they don't believe in giving people things for free.
I didn’t get fuck shit during Covid
Same, but I’m also doing a lot better than most the people who did.
Both are BS
Don't know where you're getting this from, I know multiple small business owners that basically said "This is the most stupid thing I've ever seen and a bad idea, but of course I'm going to take the free money because not taking it would be even stupider" same thing with this student loan forgiveness, it's stupid but if they offer my fiance free money for her loans I'd be stupider to say no.
I think this works in exchange for service to the community. For example, California primary care physicians who take on a certain number of medi-cal patients over 5 years get 300,000 in loan forgiveness. This helps patients get doctors, and doctors who take this massive pay cut for 5 years can expect a loan forgiveness.
I'm not sure people realize programs like you describe have been around for decades, and are actually very common. School teachers qualify too, if not every state, a lot of them. My friend got his loans forgiven after being a psychologist at a university for 10 years.
Wait, so this person above is literally describing what 5.2 billion of the latest forgiveness is for? https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/public-service
Yep. So many people complaining about this when it's actually the government proactively doing something it promised.
How about you go to an in-state school instead of taking $150k in loans so you can go to a school because of their great football program?
I mean, you can get pretty close to $150k in state for 4 years all in. Definitely, with some grad school.
Some people don’t do research to even see what school costs anymore. The D2 school I went to to get a 4 year degree now would cost someone $85k. That’s not including rent/food. Wild stuff.
Maybe for a major research 1 school - but a typical state school is less than 15K in tuition and fees per year. If you work part time to cover college living rent prices and food you are far from taking on 150k in debt.
And what happens when people continue to take out these loans? In 20 years will they all just be forgiven again?
Well, I spent years and finished paying off my student loans right before talk about the first loan forgiveness program started. Kinda sucks actually.
Don’t worry. It’s a carrot for the Ds to dangle and then, wouldn’t you know it, the Rs just won’t let it pass. But they’ll have “tried.” We need reform & hopefully we get it but I doubt it will be actual forgiveness of debt.
It’s almost like you got a penalty, instead of a reward.
I made extra payments and everything. :(
How is it being paid for?
Nope. I’m all for making college more affordable, but when you sign a damn contract, you’re responsible for it. How is that fair to others that paid similar amounts for college and didn’t get bailed out? And yes, I’m also against corporations and banks getting bailed out as well…
I'm personally looking forward to paying for other people's loan agreements. I don't really want my money, they should get it for free.
It’s the interest that’s killing these people paying off loans. If you paid your loans off like I did decades ago, keep in mind that the conditions out there are way different and that never ending $750/month payment for thirty/forty years is crushing even our most needed professionals.
No, I took on debt knowing it had to be repaid. So did everyone else who took student loans. They are called loans for a reason. Now if someone took out 100k in loans but is only making 60k a year then that’s their fault. They chose to make a career that does not pay well and took out more in loans than they needed. That being said there should be something for careers such as teachers and the like.
I don't mind cancelling student debt, but I think that the people who worked hard and paid off their debts should get something too. Maybe give them tax breaks totaling the full value of the principal they paid down. If that's too expensive, then cap it a maximum value of $X that can either be forgiven or claimed as a deduction.
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what mainly bothers me about it is how it indirectly punishes those who paid their loans despite having no more than $75k income....including several years of having my income taxes intercepted, back when I was making under $35k/yr with a wife and child I was supporting....and in exchange for that I just watch other people having uncle sam give it to them for free. really creates a perverse incentive and makes the people who already paid the price feel like dupes.
Yes, stupid idea for so many reasons. Hand over your own personal money if you’d like to help. But fuck off with mine.
Federally backed student loans should always be at less than 3%, and if you’ve made 6 payments in a row it should be at 0.99% Just make it easy to pay them off. Forgiving debt does absolutely zero to solve the problem and we will just be right back here in four years or so, but with people having bigger and worse loans because they expect it to be forgiven, so just grab more free money while you can!
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I’d prefer there was some responsibility around degrees instead. Instead of using taxpayer money to fund degrees that don’t pay off. Why not instead force the college to reimburse your tuition if they allowed you to get a degree that turned out to be worthless, or earns you under a certain yearly salary.
It’s like sticking a band aid on a gashing wound expecting it to fix something. And in the process of putting the band aid on your holding a knife, make a massive OTHER cut.
It is mopping up the blood without staunching the wound. Fix predatory practices by universities and lenders, then once that is resolved we can deal with cleaning up the damage. If you pay off loans for people who made poor decisions on overpriced degrees first, you've only subsidized the problem and ensured it will get worse.
Why are we giving gifts to educated people, who make more money on average ? Forgiven debt is a gift, and would normally be taxable income. If we are dropping 'helicopter money' on people in the middle of an inflation epidemic, why not give it to homeless people ? Don't they need it more ?