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Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

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Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#291

Post by kamaal »

stephaniepier wrote: post #218
jonahrd wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right that it's a poor financial decision, but I still hope to one day live in a country where people can pursue education in any subject matter (not just STEM/other money makers) for the pure purpose of educational fulfillment. That can only be done with a system that helps pay for education instead of letting the market decide which degrees are most valuable in terms of pure capitalistic measures

Well, and really I think it depends on the person rather than the degree. One of my friends majored in theater, which I'm sure many people see as a useless degree. She paid off her loans and bought a house within 3 years of graduating and owns a successful business teaching voice lessons over skype. On other other hand, I know someone who has a PhD in biochemistry who struggled to find a job for years. It's not fair…

Not exactly. If a person knows where they truly stand its easy to make life choices from there on.

Many people I know who did engineering with me in India were stuck waiting for a 'dream job' and have gone no where with their lives. People like us knew we had no special skills in engineering to wait for a magical moment of a 'dream job' to arrive and took whatever came our way. Incrementally we worked towards improving ourselves and now have near dream jobs.

The more special you think you are, lesser the options you will have. Because you would got used to thinking of many jobs as work beneath you.

Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#292

Post by ArkyBeagle »

nstj wrote: post #277
toomuchtodo wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR The health of the economy is more important than your moral high ground. Same reason we let people walk away from homes (or not walk away, simply not be able to afford them), but we'll still give them a mortgage 3 years after their foreclosure; the economy needs the monetary velocity to survive.

What does this have to do with the velocity of money? If the students continue to pay off their debt then the money flows to their creditors, who will use put it to work in the economy. If the debt is forgiven then it won't go to their creditors and will instead go to those who had student loans who will similarly spend it. Is there another reason that forgiving student loans improves the health of an economy?

For a student, they can either spend money on educational debt service or they can buy other things. "Buy other things" presumably increases monetary velocity.

Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#293

Post by friendlygrammar »

leereeves wrote: post #137
tw04 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>...fer instance: "Here's what 10$ an hour looks like! Had to put in my 2 weeks." And pretty much every reply is "I make way more than that, what are you thinking??" I'd imagine the guy either doesn't know how to show up consistently and on-time, or has such a severe lack of social skills that he can't properly interview for a job. If you can weld like that and can't find a job making more than $10/hr you are doing…

> "I make way more than that, what are you thinking??" Way more than that being $30/hour = $60K per year.

Are you implying $60k a year is poor?

Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#294

Post by zanny »

nstj wrote: post #277
toomuchtodo wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR The health of the economy is more important than your moral high ground. Same reason we let people walk away from homes (or not walk away, simply not be able to afford them), but we'll still give them a mortgage 3 years after their foreclosure; the economy needs the monetary velocity to survive.

What does this have to do with the velocity of money? If the students continue to pay off their debt then the money flows to their creditors, who will use put it to work in the economy. If the debt is forgiven then it won't go to their creditors and will instead go to those who had student loans who will similarly spend it. Is there another reason that forgiving student loans improves the health of an economy?

The class that lends is also the class whose marginal increases in wealth do not produce goods demand or consumption, it just goes back into lending and / or investment / and or bonds.

The best way to grow an economy is to give a dollar to its poorest participant, not its richest, because the poor class will immediately spend it on goods, creating demand, where the richer you are the less of your income goes to consumables that drive production.

Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#295

Post by ArkyBeagle »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #242
gozur88 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>TL;DR The health of the economy is more important than your moral high ground. Will the economy be more healthy? I see little evidence for the assertion. It's possible the damage done by all that debt cancellation will be greater than any benefit.

Student loan debt that can't be discharged drags down discretionary spending, spending which drives the economy. Cancelling the debt might cause a negligible amount of inflation. http://www.businessinsider.com/3-charts-explain-the-effect-o... http://time.com/10577/student-loans-are-ruining-your-life-no...

The projected amount of inflation probably still won't push growth into the Fed's target.

Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#296

Post by friendlygrammar »

sosborn wrote: post #196
rayiner wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is the same as the peak career earnings for someone with a liberal arts bachelors degree that doesn't pursue graduate education.

> peak career earnings I make much more than that and I only have an B.A. in English.

Congrats, you are the exception to the rule.

Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#297

Post by kbutler »

mattmanser wrote: post #260
toomuchtodo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should treat student loan debt like any other debt. We should! There's no asset to secure the debt, so just mark the trade line as unpaid/collections and have it be a black mark for 7 years. If Congress isn't going to fix this, Millenials can max out unsecured credit, pay off their student loans, and then go bankrupt on the unsecured debt; 7-10 years of bad credit is better than the federal government pursuing y…

7 years for a bad decision made when you were 18? That seems incredibly harsh. Then again, you Americans really don't believe in rehabilitation do you.

The american bankruptcy system is much more forgiving than most of the world, precisely because it allows the economy to be more flexible.

"Some countries keep failed entrepreneurs in limbo for years. Britain will discharge a bankrupt from his debts after 12 months; in America it is usually quicker. In Germany people expect it to take six years to get a fresh start, according to the commission; in France they expect it to take nine (see chart 2)." http://www.economist.com/node/21559618

Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#298

Post by ArkyBeagle »

bsbechtel wrote: post #182
toomuchtodo wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR The health of the economy is more important than your moral high ground. Same reason we let people walk away from homes (or not walk away, simply not be able to afford them), but we'll still give them a mortgage 3 years after their foreclosure; the economy needs the monetary velocity to survive.

>>When the Fed could just poof more money into existence? I hope you realize it doesn't quite work like that.

Google "William F. Hummel money" and read the whole thing.

Technically, money is created when a bank writes a loan, but the Fed does meta-meta(-meta?) money creation on a global scale.

Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#299

Post by zanny »

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #221
morgante wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like toomuchtodo mentions, we could treat it like other unsecured debt (like credit card debt). Just because it's unsecured doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to discharge it with bankruptcy. Get the government out of the loan business and the market will correct itself. You won't be able to get a loan for a useless degree and if you end up being unable to pay off your loan you can go through normal bankruptcy proceed…

Upvoted. But. The argument against this could be that due to the unsecured nature of the six-figure (potentially) debt the free market rates will be insane effectively reducing access to higher ed for those who can't afford it without the loans. Then again, if less ppl could afford a degree in Queer Musicology (does exist - https://www.musicology.ucla.edu/mission-and-history-1 ) or let's say Environmental Studies etc…

There is already plenty of movement, and in general close to ready availability, of free college in everyones home state at their state university or several other public universities funded by the state government.

If you got rid of the insanity that is federal loans it would just increase demand for state schools and community college.

Re: Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

#300

Post by ZoeZoeBee »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #233
CyberDildonics wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. "Buying 0 interest treasuries" is what the Bank of Japan calls it.

Interesting tidbit: We're way passed that with the BoJ. They're the majority shareholder of 55 companies on the Nikkei. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-14/the-tokyo-... That's right. The Bank Of Japan is printing money to prop of the value of top companies trading on Japan's exchange. Think about the macroeconomic causes and consequences of that.

Even Better think about the consequences of Japan's aging population relying upon the Japanese Government Pension Investment Fund, being propped up by the JCBs purchase of equities.

>The GPIF’s results are seen as a gauge of broad market performance, as the fund owns nearly 1% of global equity markets and more than 7% of the Japanese stock market. Domestic and foreign equities comprised 44% of the portfolio at the end of March, below its 50% target weighting for the asset class, the fund said in a statement. http://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-gpif-pension-fund-suffers...

There is this can they keep on kicking, hoping to out run the "current" malaise but you can't escape the Great Graying when your economies are dependent upon constant expansion.

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