Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All. • Hacker News Board

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#101

Post by D13Fd » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #31

rejectedandsad wrote: post #16

Unlike the rest student loans are taken out by choice (you can’t accidentally be hit by a university or be mistakenly accepted to an expensive school). I don’t see why people that made bad choices should be bailed out while I made better choices yet continue to suffer.

You know, there's the local state college here that for all practical purposes has open admission. You can see the advertising up and down the highway. The local kids (black and white, but mostly black) try to get a nursing degree but 70 % fail out. There's verious reasons, crap highschool, need to work to support themselves, also stupidity. They could have failed out cheaper at their community college. What I'm sayi…

I don't see how that is anything but a choice.

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#102

Post by JamesBarney » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #33

floor2 wrote: post #13

The 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 frugal little wouldn't lose anything. They'd gain less, which is not the same. Every single day there are people taking really stupid risks and winning due to luck. Do you feel penalised because you took less risks? If cancelling student debt solves real problems for the population on average, but makes a few idiots multimillionaires by accident... I'm all for it.

All cancelling student loans does is transfer money from the college educated to the non-college educated.

And student loans can already be put on thirty year plan, or setup for income based repayment. No one is starving because of their student loans, they're just having to purchase a house a little later in life than if they didn't borrow a bunch of money.

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#103

Post by skizm » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

Just let student loans go into bankruptcy. Most of the problems would be solved. Banks would be forced to actually evaluate someone's ability to pay back the loan after school, they'd give out smaller loans to lower their risk, schools would be forced to charge less due to less people being able to "pay" (people already can't pay without these insane loan amounts). Worse case for students who can't repay undergrad loans is that they're early 30s and starting over with no debt.

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#104

Post by gruez » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #45

tsjq wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you'd get a bigger tax bill.

Not necessarily. I don't think USA has to cut a check to cancel these, I think they just have to stop asking for repayment.

Maybe the government should do this all the time. Housing crisis? Medical bill crisis? No problem, just have the federal government "loan" them money, then don't ask for repayment!

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#105

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#106

Post by cudgy » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #58

theandrewbailey wrote: post #7

Cancelling student debt won't solve the student debt problem, unless we stop giving out student loans.

Yeah this is my issue with the idea too. In 20 years, you're going to have the same problem again with new borrowers unless you make some fundamental changes to college to stop predatory student loans from being given out. To be fair, I find this thread to be a bit misguided. Everyone here is talking about canceling 100% of student loan debt but I've only ever heard suggestions where the amount of loans above 100k or…

Maybe it’s time to pursue that extra degree and borrow the money regardless of need if you already have borrowed the 50/100k limit … free money. I’m sure that the schools will love raking in the cash and raising tuitions due to the increased demand.

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#107

Post by keanebean86 » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

voxic11 wrote: post #64

keanebean86 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inv…

If you went to school before 2011 this likely isn't how it worked. Instead you actually got a loan from a private lender which was guaranteed by the federal government. The ACA changed this so that the federal government now actually originates and owns the loan. > Prior to the Affordable Care Act, a majority of student loans originated with a private lender but were guaranteed by the government, meaning taxpayers fo…

I completely forgot about that honestly. I used some special refinancing offer so all my loans are direct now.

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#108

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

thebean11 wrote: post #83

dragonwriter wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no "cancelling" debt. There's only forcing other people to pay. No, there is actually cancelling debt. There is also forcing someone else to pay, but that’s a different thing. Its probably the case that only some (such as government-held portion) of the debt at issue could Constitutionally be cancelled, in the strict sense, though. > The incentives here are entirely backwards. Because its not (unlike, say,…

> Because its not... an ongoing thing available to people in the future So the debt gets cancelled then banks and institutions restart their vicious cycle of predatory education price and predatory education loans? What exactly is the goal here?

> What exactly is the goal here?

To mitigate the social harms resulting from the current debt load that have accumulated over decades as part of a process that includes development of policies to prevent getting back to the same state.

(Some of which actually may already have been adopted, as all of the debt areas at issue have seen policy reforms over the last decades that could be part of that, though most cancellation advocates would argue—and I would agree, even though I don't necessarily agree with “cancel it all”—that further work remains to be done.)

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#109

Post by HarryHirsch » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

D13Fd wrote: post #101

HarryHirsch wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, there's the local state college here that for all practical purposes has open admission. You can see the advertising up and down the highway. The local kids (black and white, but mostly black) try to get a nursing degree but 70 % fail out. There's verious reasons, crap highschool, need to work to support themselves, also stupidity. They could have failed out cheaper at their community college. What I'm sayi…

I don't see how that is anything but a choice.

It's a choice but not a well-informed choice. The fact that too many students have to support themselves while at college isn't even a choice.

Re: Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.

#110

Post by harimau777 » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

hedberg10 wrote: post #15

Okay, NYT, you start. Make your work free. (It's an NYT opinion piece, so straight into the garbage it goes, but it's written by Astra Taylor, who I value for her contributions to unschooling way back when, but since it's not free, I can't be bothered)

The argument is generally not that people should not be paid.

Instead the argument is that the terms of the debt are not just or that people did not enter into the debt fully voluntarily (e.g. medical debt isn't much of a choice when the alternative is death/disability, student loan debt isn't much of a choice when low skilled positions don't pay a living wage).

The proposed solution generally takes the form of canceling existing debt, reforming future debt, and reforming society so that the debt is less necessary.