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

#121

Post by jessedhillon » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 6:29 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #118

jessedhillon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people are right. The data does not support the idea that student debt should be a top priority for anyone trying to maximize the impact of raining dollars onto the public. I'm presenting data not for the purpose of showing that there's a better way to distribute loan relief, but to show how incredible it is to claim this is motivated by desire to give relief to needy people (and therefore given top priority) I…

> It's decidedly not the needy who'd receive the most relief from this policy. That was never the claim. Student loan forgiveness is not universal basic income, medicare, food stamps, etc. It is not designed to overcome poverty. That's a totally separate problem that needs attention. Are you saying you expect every tax dollar to go to the poor first? Clearly you aren't basing your expectations on the status quo: We s…

My claim is that "people have student debt" is not one of societies issues. That some people have debt may be, but the question there is, who these people are and whether their educations are performing for them, not simply that the debt exists.

Focusing on the debt is a red herring that conveniently rewards elites and others who are doing just fine. Focusing on whether universities are actually doing what they claim on the box is the real issue -- again conveniently elided by a blanket debt forgiveness program.

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

#122

Post by fr11 » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 6:54 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #85

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not get rid of personal property. Lets start with you. > Oh, are we meant to be afraid of these solutions? Not afraid, but how about we spend a non-zero amount of brain power seeing if that is good or not rather than painting opponents as cowardly? Is asking to think too much to ask?

> Why not get rid of personal property. Well, that's pretty intense. But as a thought experiment, I suppose we can go all the way down this slippery slope. > Lets start with you. Well no, that's not how it works. We start with literally everyone at the same time. That's what Communism means. The fact that you need to change it to make it look unappealing is telling. Granted, I'm not advocating communism here. I'm jus…

Landlords provide benefits: renting a property means getting somewhere to live without being responsible for major systems if they break. Just because some landlords don't do a great job of maintenance doesn't change the fact that they are legally required to perform a minimum.

In addition, property purchase is legally complex, time-consuming, and risky. If you cannot find someone to purchase the home that you purchased, you can't really get rid of it. Renting thus provides optionality - the choice to walk away. The landlord takes on the risk of not being able to find a renter and having to cover the mortgage and property tax costs for a space they're not using. If you think that'll never happen, take a look at Detroit.

This is not to say that landlords are perfect, or that having them is better than the costs of them. But when you are going around making, in my opinion overly simplistic arguments, you weaken the strength of the underlying case. It makes it hard to take other things you say seriously.

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

#123

Post by fr11 » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 6:57 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #46

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…

> When you pay someone's debts, you assume some participation into the choices they've made So let's consider the choice to go to college. When I was growing up, I was told over and over again that if I got an Associates Degree that I would be practically guaranteed to higher wages. I was told that if I got a Bachelor's Degree, I would see higher wages still, and even higher for a Master's, PHD, etc. Everyone I know…

A good compromise here would be to allow bankruptcy on student loans. Those who need it can take advtange of that choice, while those for whom student loans provided a significant benefit can continue to pay them back.

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

#124

Post by fr11 » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 7:03 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #118

jessedhillon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people are right. The data does not support the idea that student debt should be a top priority for anyone trying to maximize the impact of raining dollars onto the public. I'm presenting data not for the purpose of showing that there's a better way to distribute loan relief, but to show how incredible it is to claim this is motivated by desire to give relief to needy people (and therefore given top priority) I…

> It's decidedly not the needy who'd receive the most relief from this policy. That was never the claim. Student loan forgiveness is not universal basic income, medicare, food stamps, etc. It is not designed to overcome poverty. That's a totally separate problem that needs attention. Are you saying you expect every tax dollar to go to the poor first? Clearly you aren't basing your expectations on the status quo: We s…

Yes, because there are more important problems to solve does mean we should ignore this one. That's literally the point of prioritizing - budgeting is based on recognizing that there are limits to reality - limits to how much money we can invent or tax without destroying our economy. You seem to think that we should get this for free, but it has to come from somewhere, and we're already facing an extraordinarily expensive pandemic, plus the West seems to keep burning and getting more expensive every year, hurricane season is doing more damage every year, we have more and more places where we can't maintain infrastructure, and, well, the list could go on.

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

#125

Post by fr11 » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 7:05 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #118

jessedhillon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people are right. The data does not support the idea that student debt should be a top priority for anyone trying to maximize the impact of raining dollars onto the public. I'm presenting data not for the purpose of showing that there's a better way to distribute loan relief, but to show how incredible it is to claim this is motivated by desire to give relief to needy people (and therefore given top priority) I…

> It's decidedly not the needy who'd receive the most relief from this policy. That was never the claim. Student loan forgiveness is not universal basic income, medicare, food stamps, etc. It is not designed to overcome poverty. That's a totally separate problem that needs attention. Are you saying you expect every tax dollar to go to the poor first? Clearly you aren't basing your expectations on the status quo: We s…

Plus - forgiving student loan debt, or, worse, Free College for All, would only incentivize colleges making college more expensive. College is already too expensive - it's literally ten times more expensive than it was 50 years ago, for no greater benefit. We need to find solutions that drive down the cost of things that we want people to have, not solutions to help us spend more of our money on them.

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

#126

Post by fr11 » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 7:09 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #78

drewg123 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think that we need to stop thinking about "subsidize some group". The more effort we spend making sure that somebody doesn't get something they don't deserve, the worse off we are. Let's just have a UBI rather than lots of bureaucracy keeping score.

I agree that UBI is a better solution. Is UBI on the table, though? Are we really looking at the choice between UBI, Student Loan Forgiveness, or both? All I am seeing is the dream of either, and the reality of neither. Right-wing conservatives - informed here by Murdoch press - are obsessed with defending the "neither" option, because anything else is evil Socialism.

I think there's more potential to convince the right wing and the center of UBI than student loan forgiveness. Certainly I think we're making a better society if we are able to do so. The problem with the UBI is that a livable UBI is too expensive for us to afford right now - even at 11k, it's much bigger than the entire US federal discretionary budget. A much smaller UBI that grows with time, though, maybe.

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

#127

Post by fr11 » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 7:13 AM UTC

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #35

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.

The government’s money all comes from taxes. If the government pays out money to people that aren’t you, it’s as if you had paid them directly and skipped paying taxes. If you wouldn’t want to give someone free money then you similarly shouldn’t want your government to give them that money.

This is true, but misses the main point for how to determine whether the government providing money is better than not: positive externalities.

As an example, we all benefit hugely from the existence of an EMS (911, ambulances, emergency rooms) system, even if most of us don't use it much. That's a positive externality that's worth the government making sure happens, as it wouldn't necessarily happen without government involvement.

Similarly, public schooling (or publicly paid school) provides externalities: a literate society, a basic level of civic and cultural knowledge that people can assume as a baseline, opportunities for social mobility. None of those exist with a voluntary system.

This proposal doesn't seem to pass that test: at least, nobody has proposed positive externalities that come out of this.

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

#128

Post by fr11 » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 7:16 AM UTC

535188B17C93743 wrote: post #2

I've got mixed opinions on this one––I feel like we often wrongly conflate "the elite" and "those with a college degree". The real losers if we cancel student loan debt is probably decamillionaires+ due to taxes. That said, I'm not in favor of immediate student loan cancellation. I think we need a sustainable solution to prevent a rebuild-up of student loans first, and I think we also need to aim to implement the sam…

I think we all lose, if we do decide to pay for this entirely through taxing the rich. We (further) lose social trust between the rich and the rest of us, and we (further) lose the sense that we're all in this together, and we encourage ourselves to further think about how we can get those people over there to pay for our stuff over here.

To be clear, yes, please, tax the rich. But do so with a progressive taxation that we all pay into, so we all share the cost to the best of our ability.

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

#129

Post by fr11 » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 7:19 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #70

535188B17C93743 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying it off now doesn't fix the problem––it's a bandaid.

Doing one doesn't accomplish the other. So again I ask, why does the order matter?

Not the original poster, but for me, because our political system is broken and we can never seem to do the hard part, so we shouldn't do the part that makes the system worse unless we can do the hard part that makes it better first.

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

#130

Post by ikerdanzel » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 8:09 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #61

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shelter is even more important and fundamental than education. Will the government be taking care of mortgages next?

That would be great. Maybe they can abolish landlords while they are at it. Oh, are we meant to be afraid of these solutions?

Sounds like communism. It has failed in China and USSR when they abolished the landlords. And now they revive landlords and fully embraced capitalism. I guess they did it wrong. We can do it better this time. Make Karl Great Again.