Great let's do it. And of course, my parents, who paid tens of thousands of dollars for my tuition, and I, who have paid off tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt will be reimbursed for our absolute stupidity in being financially responsible, right?
Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
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Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
#22Cancelling student debt won't solve the student debt problem, unless we stop giving out student loans.
Cancelling student debt would pretty much immediately stop new loans. I don't see how another loan for the same amount could be granted afterwards.
I think you are misunderstanding what people mean by "cancelling debt". They don't mean they will force lenders to suffer a loss, they mean that government will cover the debt.
Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
#23What about those of us who worked our way through school? Can we get a refund?
Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
#24The terminology of "cancelling" the debt is the most dishonest, twisted abuse of the English language. There is no "cancelling" debt. There's only forcing other people to pay. The incentives here are entirely backwards. All the people who made good decisions around cost-benefit of their education, all the people who made frugal choices, all the people who worked hard for the delayed gratification of their long-term p…
The proponents might respond that it was only partially bad decisions, but much more a degenerate exploitative system that caused people to take on these kinds of debt.
I am not a proponent. I happily make my payments every month while I enjoy my student-loan-enabled job. And yes, I made some decisions that would not appear to be the most intelligent when it comes to loan amounts.
Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
#25“A writer, filmmaker, and activist.” Uh huh.
Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
#26Anyone else think poorly of HN readers when they see bad articles on the front page.
I can't downvote because I use new accounts for privacy reasons.
Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
#27The terminology of "cancelling" the debt is the most dishonest, twisted abuse of the English language. There is no "cancelling" debt. There's only forcing other people to pay. The incentives here are entirely backwards. All the people who made good decisions around cost-benefit of their education, all the people who made frugal choices, all the people who worked hard for the delayed gratification of their long-term p…
> The terminology of "cancelling" the debt is the most dishonest, twisted abuse of the English language.
This kind of hyperbole is, itself, an example of "dishonest, twisted" language.
> There is no "cancelling" debt. There's only forcing other people to pay.
If I declare a banana to cost $1,000,000 but you can get it for the low price of $1 with a loan of $999,999 today and that loan gets canceled, does that mean someone else has to pay me the remaining sum?
> The incentives here are entirely backwards. All the people who made good decisions around cost-benefit of their education, all the people who made frugal choices, all the people who worked hard for the delayed gratification of their long-term planning get penalized and have to pick up the tab for the people who spent 4 years partying without any concern about cost of their education or lifestyle.
This kind of moralizing about making the right decisions stigmatizes people who couldn't make it through college for financial reasons and weren't able to find a job afterward and pay off their debt. It stigmatizes grad students who started off with good intentions but couldn't make it through the meat grinder. It stigmatizes first generation college students who had to return home after a year or two. All of these people now face student debts that can't be discharged by bankruptcy.
If we agree as a society to invest in war, but we can't invest in our people, then we will reap what we sow.
Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
#28What about those of us who worked our way through school? Can we get a refund?
you'd get a bigger tax bill.
Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
#29Right now we have around 1.5T in outstanding student debt. If all of this debt were to be cancelled, who would be left holding the bag? What would that do to the economy? IMO if we cancel all student debt, this would seriously rock our economy because we suddenly decided to take 1.5T in debt assets out of the economy.
Would it though? The government paid for my college then wrote down I own them. They want me to give them that money back eventually. Are they using my promise to borrow money somewhere else? Or is it just an expense for a budget year that gets added as income years later?
Also how much interest have we paid collectively on that 1.5 trillion? If we've paid that much already then what? Can't we just consider it an investment with a negative adjusted return and move on?
In other words macroeconomics doesn't make sense to me in a lot of ways.
Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
#30Great let's do it. And of course, my parents, who paid tens of thousands of dollars for my tuition, and I, who have paid off tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt will be reimbursed for our absolute stupidity in being financially responsible, right?
Proponents might say that its not about helping those who have helped themselves, but about helping those who still need help. If you could manage without loans, you aren't in a situation where gov intervention is required.
I'm not of that mindset. I'm content with my loans.