59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse • Hacker News Board

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#51

Post by spywaregorilla » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #37

spywaregorilla wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound intuitive to me. Who are these people with $80k balances of debt? How did that happen? Are they maybe correlated with higher earnings e.g. med students? Would they benefit the most from aid in terms of actually improving society? They might not actually be the "poorest" even if they have the lowest net wealth, if they have high incomes. More surprising to me: > As of March 2021, 23% of the $1.59 tr…

> Who are these people with $80k balances of debt? A lot of them are graduate students. > Off the cuff, this group seems like the least important to pay off Why do you say that? We're now seeing senior citizens get their Social Security garnished for student loan payments! Do you want to see people with a lifetime of student loan debt?

What kind of grad students? Excluding PhDs because people don't typically take on debts for those we've got med school, and masters programs. The former should be cheaper but it seems very inappropriate to bucket them in with the general population. The latter could vary wildly in terms of ROI.

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#52

Post by recursivedoubts » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

usury always eventually ends up in impossible situations like this

there's a reason traditional societies had jubilees

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#53

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

mantas wrote: post #36

whoomp12342 wrote: post #11

wow, what an abstract and deplorable example of NIMBY. i.e. "we want people to suffer crippling debt because we are worried about bananas costing 10 cents more"

If person A paid back his student loan, why would he have to cover other's student loan by his taxes (or price increase or whatever)?

For the same reason my taxes and insurance premiums pay for someone else’s healthcare.

Student loan debt at this scale should’ve never existed. It’s a policy failure (but so is a lot of US policy, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#54

Post by lapcat » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #51

lapcat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who are these people with $80k balances of debt? A lot of them are graduate students. > Off the cuff, this group seems like the least important to pay off Why do you say that? We're now seeing senior citizens get their Social Security garnished for student loan payments! Do you want to see people with a lifetime of student loan debt?

What kind of grad students? Excluding PhDs because people don't typically take on debts for those we've got med school, and masters programs. The former should be cheaper but it seems very inappropriate to bucket them in with the general population. The latter could vary wildly in terms of ROI.

> Excluding PhDs because people don't typically take on debts for those

I can tell you from personal experience that you're very wrong about this.

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#55

Post by president » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

whoomp12342 wrote: post #11

wow, what an abstract and deplorable example of NIMBY. i.e. "we want people to suffer crippling debt because we are worried about bananas costing 10 cents more"

I shouldn't be responsible for someone taking out a $40k loan for their art degree in poetry and not being able to find a job that can pay it back.

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#56

Post by lapcat » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

buscoquadnary wrote: post #48

lapcat wrote: post #7

The entire student loan debt issue has been framed badly, because hardly anyone understands the real problem: "As of March 2021, 54% of borrowers with outstanding education debt owed less than $20,000; 45% of the outstanding federal education loan debt was held by the 10% of borrowers owing $80,000 or more." https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-p... Forgiving $10K across the board is dumb and mi…

I guess it seems to me that there are way more questions about those with > 80k. I am going to assume they ended up that way because they made poor decisions, like taking out massive loans to do things like not work, to attend over priced schools, to slack on school work and have to repeat school. I mean I worked full-time through school, raised a family and still managed to finish my BS in 18 months and MS in 12 mor…

> partied hearty during school

This is a straw man.

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#57

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

daoist_shaman wrote: post #38

If student loans are forgiven, would those who already paid them off be eligible for rebates? If not, why would we want to reward large amounts of debt? Isn't that a recipe for disaster in a country where the average citizen already has ~6,000 dollars of credit card debt?

And what about those who never took it? Wouldn't it be fair to them to also give them same amount of money possibly helping them to set up business or investment?

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#58

Post by yuan43 » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

Setting aside the issues of ethics and fairness, it's worth noting that debt jubilee-type proposals are not a sign of a robust economy. They are a sign of an economy locked in a debt spiral.

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#59

Post by Yahivin » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #23

Yahivin wrote: post #15

Just make student loans easier to eliminate in bankruptcy. Problem solved.

but isn't that equivalent to just forgiving the loan?

It changes the risk profile for the lender when thinking about future loans and gives people who got caught in a bad situation more options.

Re: 59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

#60

Post by daoist_shaman » Mon, Aug 22, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #57

daoist_shaman wrote: post #38

If student loans are forgiven, would those who already paid them off be eligible for rebates? If not, why would we want to reward large amounts of debt? Isn't that a recipe for disaster in a country where the average citizen already has ~6,000 dollars of credit card debt?

And what about those who never took it? Wouldn't it be fair to them to also give them same amount of money possibly helping them to set up business or investment?

Yeah, they are also included. Anyone who had their education financed any other way should also be eligible, otherwise this doesn't seem very egalitarian. It punishes those who made the responsible financial choice of avoiding debt.