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Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

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Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#71

Post by jcriddle4 »

benj111 wrote: post #30

So what about the moral hazard in this. This doesn't seem to solve anything for prospective students, except to suggest they too may get their debt cleared, so load em up? Surely you should be looking at future rules, then retroactively applying them if appropriate, rather than bailing out a cohort.

Yes college is like crack cocaine. The lives I have seen wrecked by it is amazing. Just the other day a good friend of mine was talking about getting his hundredth PHD. He was looking into possibly Quantum Mechanics next. Such a powerfully addiction. We need to make sure education is incredibly expensive if we want to keep our young kids safe from it. /S/S/S

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#72

Post by lawlessone »

kasey_junk wrote: post #36
lawlessone wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is welfare for upper middle class people. Maybe more lower class people would go into this if they could afford it?

We don’t need to do debt forgiveness to do that. We could just fund future tuition. One of the selling points of the universal policy is that it’s the only way to get the votes of the well off but resentful, even if it’s staggeringly inefficient.

>We don’t need to do debt forgiveness to do that. We could just fund future tuition.

I agree

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#73

Post by benj111 »

jcriddle4 wrote: post #71
benj111 wrote: post #30

So what about the moral hazard in this. This doesn't seem to solve anything for prospective students, except to suggest they too may get their debt cleared, so load em up? Surely you should be looking at future rules, then retroactively applying them if appropriate, rather than bailing out a cohort.

Yes college is like crack cocaine. The lives I have seen wrecked by it is amazing. Just the other day a good friend of mine was talking about getting his hundredth PHD. He was looking into possibly Quantum Mechanics next. Such a powerfully addiction. We need to make sure education is incredibly expensive if we want to keep our young kids safe from it. /S/S/S

How does that relate to my comment?

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#74

Post by collidge »

overthemoon wrote: post #69
collidge wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one once in this topic has said "exclusively due to immoral choices".

You framed it as people who don't deserve a break--for reasons related to values like prudence and thrift--getting a break anyway. Fine. If some people did act virtuously but are still in tons of debt, in what way do they not deserve a break? Why bring up the Goofus and Gallant scenario at all? The question isn't whether people deserve loan forgiveness, it's a question of what's good for society as a whole.

"You framed it as people who don't deserve a break".

I'm quite sure you can't find a quote where I did this.

But anyway, you're focusing on this from a different point of view from the people you're arguing against. It's important to take note that there are (at least) 3 groups of people with interest in this conversation: people who've paid off their debt, people who have not paid off their debt because they've been unable to, and people who've not paid off their debt because they did not want to.

Those who've paid their debt are pointing out that it's unfair to retroactively support those who did not make the same frugal choices. (This is sort of what you're arguing against)

Those who are in debt because they are hard up for reasons beyond their control are arguing for paying off debt for anyone who has it.

I understand your interest at stake in saying we should forgive the debt. But you're being disingenuous if you ignore the point of the first group of people.

Instead of hashing out what's fair, let's give tax progressively and give a stimulus to everyone. This has the same benefit to those in debt, but avoids both the unfairness we're talking about and requires less government expense in paying accountants to determine who should get the benefit (because everyone gets it automatically).

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#75

Post by rayiner »

jqgatsby wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of "perfect fairness" versus "workable compromise." Sanders' proposal epitomizes everything that's wrong with progressive liberals' attempts to implement a welfare state. While everyone else in the developed world treats middle and upper middle class people as the benefactor class, people like Sanders are convinced that the kid who took $150,000 in loans to attend a liberal arts college and now make…

Is it the case that you are coming at this from a point of view that is opposed to progressive liberalism in general? That would have been helpful to mention up front, because the article you cite is actually arguing from the view of Sanders' proposal being insufficiently progressive. It seems disingenuous to me to cite it without clarifying that your own reasons for opposing the proposal are completely different.

The article criticizes Sanders' proposal for allocating a large government benefit disproportionately to the middle class. I'm criticizing the proposal for the same reason.

My point about taxes is the flip side of the same criticism. "Progressive liberals" view the upper middle class as a marginalized class that should receive government benefits, not a privileged class that should pay for them. That's why Sanders' proposed tax brackets are the same as Trump's until above $250,000.

> Income bracket Tax

  Lower limit Upper limit Rate 
    $0 – $18,450              10% 
    $18,451 – $74,900         15%
Put differently, upper middle class "progressive liberals" only believe in a progressive system to the extent they are on the receiving end of the welfare system. So that someone who paid $100,000 for college and has a $100,000 job in New York is treated as the proper recipient of government welfare, at the expense of those above them. But taxing that guy like the privileged class, to support the people at the bottom who truly need it, is off the table.

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#76

Post by kasey_junk »

benj111 wrote: post #65
kasey_junk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of the point is that it’s not needs based. It doesn’t matter if you make 400k with 100k of debt or 36k with 6k of debt. Fairly clear one of those 2 is getting a much better deal.

If you borrow 100k graduate, earn 400k and pay off your loan in a year you wont be benefitting from this. Its those taking 90k in loans and only earning 36k that's the problem as I see it. All that said I'm not from the US, so didn't expect fees to vary so much. (do they?)

The first is a common doctor situation in the USA. The second is a common paralegal. Both were taken from people I know.

The interest rate environment right now means that many of my high earner friends are not in a hurry to pay more than the minimum on their loans. Debt forgiveness for them will be a straight cash infusion against their net worth.

No idea what the percentage of each is.

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#78

Post by r00fus »

mrep wrote: post #63
xivzgrev wrote: post #2

“Sanders will also release a detailed roadmap -- centered on new taxes on Wall Street -- to raise the $2.2 trillion dollars necessary to pay for this program and his other college funding plans. It will include a 0.5% tax on stock trades (or 50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. Sanders believes that could raise more than $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten…

It's amazing how politicians like this propose these types of things and never look to see if anyone else has tried it because we have the perfect example, Sweden: "In January 1984, Sweden introduced a 0.5% tax on the purchase or sale of an equity security. Hence, a round trip (purchase and sale) transaction resulted in a 1% tax. The tax applied to all equity security trades in Sweden using local brokerage services a…

You know that the London Stock Exchange currently implements transaction taxes and that it generates billions (€3.8bn per year) yearly in revenue? [1]

How about all these other countries that have implemented or are currently implementing them? [2]

Looks like this clause is why the UK was successful while Sweden may not have been: "The tax is charged whether the transaction takes place in the UK or overseas, and whether either party is resident of the UK or not."

Clearly the UK being a much larger securities market is a much better parallel to the US than Sweden. It all probably comes down to the implementation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#Unit... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#Unit...

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#79

Post by r00fus »

solotronics wrote: post #5
xivzgrev wrote: post #2

“Sanders will also release a detailed roadmap -- centered on new taxes on Wall Street -- to raise the $2.2 trillion dollars necessary to pay for this program and his other college funding plans. It will include a 0.5% tax on stock trades (or 50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. Sanders believes that could raise more than $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten…

Today we have hyper globalized financial systems and if a country implements taxes like this the big players just move their money elsewhere. This only ends up hurting middle class folks who are playing by the books. I think it would make much more sense to have a very simple tax system (a few percent on every capital gain or income, wether corporate or personal) and get rid of every other complexity and loophole. If…

> If America had one of the lowest corporate tax rates many companies would locate headquarters here and bring that few percent of billions of dollar we wouldn't have otherwise.

I think the reality is that while corporations do some jurisdiction shopping, it's pretty clear that low taxes are only one part of the equation of where HQ locations are chosen.

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#80

Post by lostmymind66 »

yifanl wrote: post #37
lostmymind66 wrote: post #24

This will not fix the problem with colleges pumping out useless degrees. They got their money up-front, don't have any consequences, and the taxpayers get to foot the bill. Why not fix the root of the problem? This solution will only serve to enrich the universities and not get them to change their behavior.

What policy change that could be implemented would do anything about the societal belief of college = job? Even something as extreme as outlawing job listings from listing college degrees as a requirement probably wouldn't do it. It'd just become a "soft" requirement.

"What policy change that could be implemented would do anything about the societal belief of college = job?"

We stop federally subsidizing student loans. This will reduce the overall cost of universities, because they won't be relying on instant government money and the universities will be responsible if the student defaults.

It will be in their best interest to push out students that actually succeed and have a chance at paying the money back.

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