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U.S. forgives 40k student loans

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#431

Post by edmcnulty101 »

300bps wrote: post #121
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fully on board with this idea. The government provides education for people who want it. They better themselves, they better the economy and taxes. A side benefit is that educated people also better the human race as a whole.

They better themselves, they better the economy and taxes What if they want to get a PhD on how autumn leaf colors in New England impact the emotions of rattlesnakes from Texas? You want to pay for that?

Not trying to vet every single edge case in my five sentence vision statement.

For one thing PhD's teach statistics no matter what's studied...and if more people...you included....were good at statistics to evaluate good policies, the world would be much better off.

Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#432

Post by nr2x »

omegaworks wrote: post #267
Ancapistani wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rewarding people who have worked for decades to climb out of that situation by lifting those who didn't do the same to the same financial position doesn't exactly encourage upward mobility, either.

So you would rather your neighbors be poor?

Some people can’t accept the fact that nothing separates them from a common beggar beyond luck.

Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#433

Post by nr2x »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #271
nr2x wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, this is pure PR the headline should be “Government Fulfills Terms of Loans it Failed to Meet”

Alternative could also be “government obfuscates prices for education and certain types of labor by offering nebulous benefit, the cost of which can be subject to much manipulation for purposes of presenting it as a low cost benefit”. It would be straight forward to simply pay for higher education expenses directly, with much less bureaucracy and more transparent pricing, allowing for better allocation of society’s r…

This is the Cal system before Reagan basically. Generated more than a few Nobels in addition to the educational mission.

Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#434

Post by UncleEntity »

smegsicle wrote: post #283
nr2x wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free community college was in build back better, 49 republicans and Joe Manchin killed it.

free community college is already a thing, it's called 'Pell Grants' republicans don't want to talk about it because it's free money that works, and democrats don't want to talk about it because there's no reason to expand it

> free community college is already a thing, it's called 'Pell Grants'

Hell, when I went to community college in the early 90’s it was basically free — $6/credit with a $60 cap.

Since then California changed priorities or something, haven’t lived there for almost 25 years so don’t care what they get up to.

Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#435

Post by ch4s3 »

greedo wrote: post #426
ch4s3 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Govt Reps get elected for a lot of things. Maintaining our roads, bridges and infrastructure are always buzzwords during elections. You're arguing against conventional political wisdom wrt the US, so I think the onus is on you to provide a better argument than sometimes the conventional wisdom is wrong. > Your link to Brookings just reinforces the issue. For profit schools account for 10% of students, borrow more o…

The only reason that income tax is the primary source of revenue is because of the cap on payroll taxes that allows the rich to avoid paying as much as the middle class.

Payroll tax is basically just secondary income tax. Other OECD nations don’t really do that, it’s an artifact of our wacky welfare system.

Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#436

Post by greedo »

ch4s3 wrote: post #435
greedo wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason that income tax is the primary source of revenue is because of the cap on payroll taxes that allows the rich to avoid paying as much as the middle class.

Payroll tax is basically just secondary income tax. Other OECD nations don’t really do that, it’s an artifact of our wacky welfare system.

It primarily funds Social Security. How is that part of "our wacky welfare system?" If you consider it a secondary income tax, then it really shows how regressive our tax system is since the rich don't pay the same rate.

Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#437

Post by LadyCailin »

everforward wrote: post #367
LadyCailin wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be on the university and college, if you must have private higher education, and not just make it free. State that the institution and/or potential employers must give out a loan that will cover the entire cost of education, which can be paid back with x% of income for 120 months of full time employment. If the student cannot find a job, or is not desirable for a given industry with the degree, and has to t…

I think it would need to be more nuanced than that if we want to escape second order effects. The first is that if the college bears risks for financed students, the first seats will always go to people who can afford to not use financing. It'd be like the legacy system, but out in the open and encouraged by regulation. The second is that it will likely make it harder to climb the social ladder. I'm too sleep-deprive…

Yeah, these are all good points, and I agree. But the bottom line is that currently no one profiting from the situation has any skin in the game, so when they start doing more harm than good, they have no natural alignments that would make them self correct.

Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#438

Post by landemva »

caseysoftware wrote: post #341
hunterb123 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So since it's only 8% it's fine? How many 8% increments can there be until we're allowed to be against this? I'm against any percentage of funneling taxpayer money to college administrators. Reduce tuition, don't rubber stamp federal loans while letting administrators increase costs.

I think we already have a solution built into the legal system: Lemon Laws. From the Great Wiki in the Sky: "Lemon laws are laws that provide a remedy for purchasers of cars and other consumer goods in order to compensate for products that repeatedly fail to meet standards of quality and performance." Obviously, these degrees did not meet the standards of quality to make "productive members of society" so the univers…

Or repeal the Clinton-era law that made student loan debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. In that way, potential lenders would have incentive to determine ability to repay.

Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#439

Post by RickJWagner »

janejeon wrote: post #157
buu700 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Plug the hole first (or concurrently), and then worry about bailing water. Additionally, as others have mentioned, it needs to be done in such a way that we aren't punishing those who have been responsible and made sacrifices to pay off their loans. I'm not opposed to student loan forgiveness, but I don't think it's nearly as popular as many progressives would like to believe as a standalone proposal. Come u…

Could it be possible that this is being done more as a way to garner votes for the midterms? Someone else commented that this affects like only a tiny fraction of people w/ student loan, but it does make for a good headline, judging by the number of comments here.

Exactly.

Could the current administration please direct attention to Social Security now? That one is going to be huge. Shortly.

Re: U.S. forgives 40k student loans

#440

Post by redwall_hp »

sgjohnson wrote: post #286
whymauri wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know we're currently in the Church of Paul Graham, where college is useless and it's all about the startup grind. But college is known to lead to better outcomes on average for people who go to college, and there is an intrinsic value, to both individuals and society, in receiving an education. High school is free, for example, and it's not worthless.

> But college is known to lead to better outcomes on average for people who go to college That largely depends on the field you're studying. STEM? Sure. Perhaps not for software engineering, because that these days can be entirely self-taught,if you're a person capable of it. But everything else? Probably worthless. A gender studies or liberal arts degree is not going to make you money.

STEM degrees are liberal arts degrees. "Liberal arts" is what is called "a traditional western education," which encompasses all of the sciences.

> Liberal arts education (from Latin liberalis "free" and ars "art or principled practice")[1] is the traditional academic program in Western higher education.[2] Liberal arts takes the term art in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the fine arts. Liberal arts education can refer to studies in a liberal arts degree program or to a university education more generally. Such a course of study contrasts with those that are principally vocational, professional, or technical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

Misusing the term is just participating in anti-intellectual propagandizing.

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