Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite • Hacker News Board

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#51

Post by bwb » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #31

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, a more equitable solution is to simply give everyone who took out a student loan a fixed amount of several tens of thousands of dollars. If you paid off your loans already, great, your reward is free money.

What about those who worked hard and took a few more years to not take out a loan in the first place?

Good for you :)! I paid off my loans through a combination of hard work and luck. I'd love to say it was all me, but it wasn't, I had great role models, I am lucky enough to be born into a country with amazing infrastructure, and many other reasons that have very little to do with me...

My question for you is do you want a stronger country?

Or, just a stronger you?

As a country are we just a bunch of people out for themselves, or are we a community?

I am a firm believer that the more Americans who are doing well in life, the better off we all are. The more Americans who are secure financially the better off we all are. The more Americans who can afford additional services and products the better off we all are. The more Americans who have a little bit of financial freedom to start a company and create jobs for other Americans the better off we all are. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

A little selfishness is good, but too much and everyone starts to view everyone as competition and "success" as a zero sum game. I want the kid down the street from me to be doing as well as my kid.

What do you think?

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#52

Post by woodruffw » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

breitling wrote: post #26

eesmith wrote: post #18

Free public libraries? Paid for by tax dollars? That's making the working class subsidize the elite. Free public roads? Paid for by tax dollars? That's making the working class subsidize the elite. Etc.

This is not analogous at all. Everyone uses roads. Everyone has access to public libraries.

> Everyone has access to public libraries.

I live in a historically poorer (and very densely populated) part of NYC, and this isn’t true: the NYPL’s branches are disproportionately present in more affluent areas. Those areas also tend to have larger libraries and more auxiliary library services (like computer and printer access).

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#53

Post by rsync » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #3

Opinions like this are why we can't have nice things in the USA. People look at some subgroup getting a benefit and are encouraged to think "Why should they get this thing when I get nothing? These people don't deserve it" and so they block the new benefit, and we fall farther and farther behind countries like the Nordics, where this is somehow not a problem.

"Opinions like this are why we can't have nice things in the USA. People look at some subgroup getting a benefit and are encouraged to think "Why should they get this thing when I get nothing? These people don't deserve it""

That is the price of diversity.

Diversity, which is neither bad nor good, has benefits and costs.

My very diverse country invented jazz music and snowboarding and the Internet. We also lack the social trust and cohesion of much less diverse countries like Japan or the Scandinavian countries at whose social welfare programs we marvel.

Personally, I'll take the jazz music and snowboarding even if it means fighting over what should be basic components of the welfare state.

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#54

Post by cscurmudgeon » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #17

orangecat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a magic button you can press to costlessly improve some people's lives. It's pure wealth redistribution with recipients disproportionately in the upper middle class.

Do you have a citation to back this up? I admit my knowledge is anecdotal, but I know somebody in their 20s, who went to college, and is in debt that would be cancelled. This person was the first in their family to go to college, and was unable to find a job in their field. Most of this persons peers are in a similar situation with respect to debt and being unable to find jobs in their field. The jobs these people ha…

> Do you have a citation to back this up?

Honestly, the side proposing a large action should also be ready with relevant research.

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#55

Post by vorpalhex » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34

zug_zug wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm strong pro-UBI, strongly against student-loan forgiveness. It's one thing to acknowledge automation is going to decrease the job pool. It's another to retroactively break financial contracts for a generation that's already not responsible enough with money, giving a huge amount to a small-interest group and ignore those who need it most (i.e. those who didn't go to college).; It also strongly incentivizes college…

Even though student payments went largely to administrators? That this didn't used to be the case? That students (of every economic class) paid rich white dudes to sit in offices and pretend to run a college? How is forgiving this loan anything but relief to young people who were essentially stuck either being that low-income group you are so fond of, or paying through the nose?

You don't get out of a loan because you don't like the skin color or wealth class of the receiving party. Should we forgive mortgages because the payments go to bankers?

Many of us did pay off our loans or took less loans then we could have and we did that knowing loans are to be paid back.

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#56

Post by Larrikin » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #5

When everyone was praising the billionaire who paid for the student loans of that graduating class a few years ago (who by the way is under investigation for tax evasion), I raised the point that this might not be seen as fair by everyone and I was immediately criticized by some friends. I cautioned that it's fine for a private individual to do whatever he wants, but watch out if you apply this some day to the govern…

The logical conclusion to your argument is that government should never do anything to help the citizenry unless it benefits every single person. Most people are not vindictive against people who received help.

As an example there were people who lost their jobs during this pandemic and I was lucky enough not to. The people who lost their jobs received an extra 600 dollars on top of their normal unemployment. This benefited society as a whole since jobs were very scarce for certain groups and kept a lot of people from having problems. If I ever lose my job and take unemployment I won't be upset at those people from receiving an extra benefit during this time period and wish they had been made to suffer instead. I'm also not angry at the local government for building a library on the other side of the city that I will almost certainly never go to.

Bringing it back to these scrimping and saving people, most people save money to reduce their loan burden after college. Its a vanishing small number of people who are not rich or receiving large scholarships that pay for college completely out of pocket

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#57

Post by bwb » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

zaphod4prez wrote: post #32

underseacables wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because collection and redistribution of wealth and assets has never worked anywhere in the world, ever. Any plan to dress it up as “debt forgiveness” is easily shredded for its narrow view that it’s a one and done, when this could be like tolls: Once in place they never go away.

You're making a realllyyy strong claim here, and also an unclear one. Redistribution hasn't worked... worked to achieve what end goal? I would be interested to hear what you think wealth redistribution has failed to do, and also to hear one or even two examples of societies that do not redistribute wealth in any meaningful way (I have trouble imagining how that could ever be the case, to be honest). I think that redi…

Redistributing wealth is literally what powers civilization :)

And, if you do it right over the long time you create more wealth, more specialization, more complexity...

Now if you overdo it that is really bad... but I look at inequality right now and wonder if I should start up a guillotine shop.

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#58

Post by supernova87a » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

hprotagonist wrote: post #49

supernova87a wrote: post #5

When everyone was praising the billionaire who paid for the student loans of that graduating class a few years ago (who by the way is under investigation for tax evasion), I raised the point that this might not be seen as fair by everyone and I was immediately criticized by some friends. I cautioned that it's fine for a private individual to do whatever he wants, but watch out if you apply this some day to the govern…

> Imagine how you would feel if you were from a family that had scrimped and saved to send you to college, you worked night jobs, etc. Only to find that at the end everyone else who had taken out loans had them forgiven (basically). An old, old complaint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_... ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who…

An old old complaint, yes -- meaning that it diminishes the legitimacy of the complaint and we should have gotten over this schoolchild thinking years ago? Or that it's a fundamental feeling in human beings and we'd better be careful to take it into account?

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#59

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38

breitling wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not analogous at all. Everyone uses roads. Everyone has access to public libraries.

And one third of American young people have/are getting a degree. That isn't enough to make it analogous?

[deleted]

Re: Cancel student-loan debt? That’s making the working class subsidize the elite

#60

Post by thomastjeffery » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #16

happytoexplain wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine how you would feel if you were from a family that had scrimped and saved to send you to college, you worked night jobs, etc. Only to find that at the end everyone else who had taken out loans had them forgiven (basically) I think you might be surprised by how many people in that situation would be happy for those who benefited, even at the same time that they are upset that they landed on the other side of t…

I think you might be surprised, as a practical matter, that many people in the world are not happy when their prudent choices are invalidated by a change in the government policy in favor of others who took the opposite choice as you. And that they be called "selfish" for thinking so. People working and making material sacrifices over their lifetimes only to see those burdens lifted for others are not a small edge ca…

> How do you feel?

How does that take higher precedence than the literal financial situation of millions of people?

> Your colleague has been a low performer consistently

You are painting a very different picture here. People by and large don't get into unrecoverable student loan debt because they are low performers. Many of them achieve excellent grades. Their work is simply not compensated. So here in your metaphor, you have made a demon out of the victim.

> How about we run that again the next 2 weeks. What are you going to do?

Again, this metaphor has strayed from the reality it is meant to compare to. Student loan forgiveness isn't a perpetual system. It's an N time deal. N increases during the time it takes to overhaul our failed higher education system. Because we are motivated to keep N low, we are motivated to quickly overhaul our failed higher education system.

> Your boss, at the delivery meeting, says, actually, this was just a motivational exercise to get us to practice coding and teamwork

Notice how even in your metaphor, you are victimizing your teammate when it is clearly your boss who is at fault. That part of the metaphor tracts quite well with reality. In reality, you are blaming the student when the universities and stagnant wages are to blame.

> And that they be called "selfish" for thinking so.

Indeed it might be.