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

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

#71

Post by lapcat »

pc86 wrote: post #66
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…

Even the length of time won't tell you much. I owe about $15k, but I graduated in 2008. For the longest time I was making basically interest-only payments because I didn't make enough. Then I was making interest-only payments because I was trying to catch up on my retirement contributions. Then I was making interest-only payments because I was making more money in the market. Then COVID. Now if payments are re-instat…

> maybe think about what jobs you can get after school with whatever you want to study

What if the answer is "college professor"?

We can't have college at all without college professors, and it's a very long, treacherous road from undergrad to grad school to tenure track to tenure. Many people, perhaps most, get lost along the way. Yet society needs kids to keep trying, or we have nobody at the end.

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

#72

Post by nradov »

lapcat wrote: post #54
spywaregorilla wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No post body was provided.

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

#73

Post by pc86 »

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…

So the most important follow-up question to all of this is when did you do it? College costs have risen exponentially faster than just about everything other than healthcare, especially over the last 10-20 years.

I graduated almost 15 years ago, and I am starting to think that anyone who graduated more than a few years ago simply cannot comprehend how bad it is to have to pay for school now. Average annual tuition at all 4-year institutions is just under $29k.[0] Real median HHI for the same year was $65k.[1] As a student you simply cannot work enough to pay for school anymore; it's not physically possible. So loans, grants, scholarships etc are a requirement.

Completely unrelated to the math, the idea that everyone with a high loan balance is there because of "piss poor decisions" is not only insulting, but also idiotic. You need to have a pretty impressive lack of understanding about a half dozen or so topics to truly believe that.

[0] https://www.ontocollege.com/average-college-tuition/ [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

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

#74

Post by mountainriver »

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…

I agree, I put off finishing school to work and not go into debt, I’m happy with that decision and it isn’t fair to retroactively change the rules

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

#75

Post by mantas »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #53
mantas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)_/¯)

Healthcare is insurance for possible future accidents. A may have higher risk of breaking a leg, B may have higher risk of cardiovascular accident. Eventually it evens out. No matter how healthy lifestyle you lead, you've a risk of ending up in hospital. For active lifestyle it may be even higher :)

Meanwhile student loan is past decision. As well as paying it back or not. Some people may have lived on noodles to pay it back asap while others took the easy route. Maybe all payments shall be returned too?

Of course, US high education costs are stupid. There needs to be more incentive to guide people towards degrees that will pay for themselves too.

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

#76

Post by rumblestrut »

FTA: "Some borrowers say they would not change their spending habits if their college debt — or a portion of it — is canceled."

As someone who paid off student loans four years ago, I can tell you that this (at least for my family) wasn't the case. When you have more money, you find new ways to spend it (and enjoy doing so).

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

#77

Post by nradov »

lapcat wrote: post #71
pc86 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the length of time won't tell you much. I owe about $15k, but I graduated in 2008. For the longest time I was making basically interest-only payments because I didn't make enough. Then I was making interest-only payments because I was trying to catch up on my retirement contributions. Then I was making interest-only payments because I was making more money in the market. Then COVID. Now if payments are re-instat…

> maybe think about what jobs you can get after school with whatever you want to study What if the answer is "college professor"? We can't have college at all without college professors, and it's a very long, treacherous road from undergrad to grad school to tenure track to tenure. Many people, perhaps most, get lost along the way. Yet society needs kids to keep trying, or we have nobody at the end.

There are a surplus of students trying to become college professors. We would still have a surplus even if we cut off half of them at early stages of the pipeline.

And we have too many people going to college anyway. Many of them would be happier and better off in the long run if they attended trade school or joined an apprentice program or enlisted in the military. College is an excellent choice for some people, but it shouldn't be the default option.

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

#78

Post by toomuchtodo »

mantas wrote: post #75
toomuchtodo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)_/¯)

Healthcare is insurance for possible future accidents. A may have higher risk of breaking a leg, B may have higher risk of cardiovascular accident. Eventually it evens out. No matter how healthy lifestyle you lead, you've a risk of ending up in hospital. For active lifestyle it may be even higher :) Meanwhile student loan is past decision. As well as paying it back or not. Some people may have lived on noodles to pay…

You’re implying morality on rows in a database (the debt in question).

> Some people may have lived on noodles to pay it back asap while others took the easy route.

Indeed, life isn’t fair, and why policy shouldn’t inflict suffering “because it was hard for me.” (broad strokes) That’s not just silly, it’s toxic when expressed as policy.

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

#79

Post by abeppu »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #25

I don't know how you can have a blanket forgiveness of student loans without also addressing college costs. Otherwise consumers become even less price-sensitive, expecting another round of forgiveness in a decade or so.

Yeah, the trend in higher education costs seem especially out of line with the trend towards schools relying more on contract adjunct instructors, and shrinking down their core, tenure-track faculty. They're simultaneously spending less on actual instruction and spending more on administrators, and fancy facilities. I wonder if some regulation can make schools 'unbundle' instruction from other services, and allow students to enroll only in instruction, and opt out of services they don't intend to use, over-priced student housing, fancy sports facilities etc. And wherever we report student-faculty ratios, also reporting a student-non-teaching-staff ratio would clarify things.

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

#80

Post by sct202 »

dbingham wrote: post #50
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #25

I don't know how you can have a blanket forgiveness of student loans without also addressing college costs. Otherwise consumers become even less price-sensitive, expecting another round of forgiveness in a decade or so.

College isn't a consumer good. We need to stop thinking of it as such. It's a prerequisite for the vast majority of jobs. Which makes it a vital public good that should be run as a utility. We should be running a public university system with the goal and assumption that everyone has a seat at their local university - covered by their tax dollars.

College shouldn't be a prerequisite for so many jobs. My bachelors is directly related to the field I'm working in and I don't think the content that I learned was that useful and the most impactful thing has been the college recruiting job fairs where I got internships and a job.
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