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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

#101

Post by specialist »

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…

Biden Admin just cancelled $3.9b debt of students attending ITT Tech school. What I gleaned from the news is ITT did a bunch shady stuff. Like steering students towards high interest rate loans and jacking up tuition prices. Reminds me of the subprime loan crisis.

Insult to injury, ITT didn't actually teach students much. At least with the scammy mortgages, you sort of got a house.

--

It seems to me the Biden Admin is doing triage, reviewing the student loans very deliberately, cancelling categories on a case-by-case basis.

I have no dog in this fight and only a shallow understanding of the issue. I expect that Biden Admin continue to cancel and reduce the most egregious loans. And then provide some kind of relief to the remaining borrowers who are most pear shaped.

--

Our society and government forgives debts all the time. Bankruptcy and bailouts. Crucial to keeping our economy healthy.

I don't see why individual's debts, like student loans, should be treated any differently.

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

#102

Post by nradov »

solardev wrote: post #93
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the moral or economic case for forgiving debt of people who borrowed to go to undergrad and then borrowed further to get a fairly useless grad degree like an MFA?

Is there societal value in art and the humanities at all? If not, why do we produce anything except engineers and financiers? That seems like a bigger cultural question that society needs to answer over decades, rather than saying to an individual student, "Haha! You picked the wrong major. Now you're fucked for life. Too bad." Most college kids going into school have no idea what they're going to be doing in the fut…

You're arguing against a strawman. No one here is seriously claiming that there is no societal value in art and the humanities. But we are currently producing a surplus of college degrees in those fields. Many of those graduates have no real artistic talent and no future in academia. Their educations were largely wastes of time and resources. As a tax payer and voter I am unwilling to continue funding that (or suffering inflation because of loan forgiveness). We ought to steer some of the less talented students towards other career paths.

By the way, most of the greatest artists throughout history never attended college at all.

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

#103

Post by nradov »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #86
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…

Does it really pay for itself or is that only true for law, medicine and engineering degrees?

An applied mathematics degree also pays for itself.

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

#104

Post by specialist »

PaulHoule wrote: post #68
codegeek wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, we stopped being objective a while ago and everything is "The other side is out to get us. Other side BAD". One side there are people who are pissed because they had to pay off loans and why should kids get it for free now while the other side is crying about the uncontrollable rising costs of education where a History Major costs $80K for 4 years. No one is looking at this problem objectively which is to…

'Affordable housing' is a euphemism for "unaffordable housing that is subsidized". Democrats refuse to see the problem (if the residents can't afford it, can the rest of us?) and Republicans just hope that if they don't build "affordable housing" the residents will go to some other town. One angle is that adding more money makes things more expensive. If the money isn't there then people will do with less or do witho…

codegeek wrote:

> No one is looking at this problem objectively...

I know it appears that way. But there are 100s of orgs working every single issue from all sides.

It's very, very challenging for these elites (experts) to get any attention. Death of journalism. Everyone's already overwhelmed. There's a zillion issues to care about.

Consequently, most issue central orgs now focus on direct lobbying.

FWIW, I was a serious activist (2004-2012). Media was a huge time sink. In retrospect, I wish we'd just focused on lobbying.

Paul Houle wrote:

> Democrats refuse to see the [housing] problem...

I have friends working on housing issues. Policy people absolutely understand the shape and scope. And the developers I've spoken with (casually, not policy work) do too and have been clear eyed about the situation.

My local party org does dozens of endorsement interviews every year. Housing has long been a hot issue.

The sad truth is that NIMBY has been the norm.

It's a mistake to think "Democrats" are left-wing, or are as "progressive" as we'd hope. Being "progressive" is usually on just 1 or 2 issues. Like a candidate who has been awesome on LBGTQ issues being utterly opposed to upzoning.

(Further, my town now only elects "Democrats". So all the competitive candidates label themselves "Democrat", which has very low predictive power what their actual positions are.)

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

#105

Post by immigrantheart »

l30n4da5 wrote: post #61
immigrantheart wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Student debt is a personal responsibility. It is a personal choice. There are people who knowingly decided not to take higher education because they knew it would make them go into debt and instead went to work instead, providing for their family. These are real tangible opportunity cost for these people who decided that they couldn't afford college debt. If you forgive student loans, then those people who went on de…

> Student debt is a personal responsibility. It is a personal choice. While I agree with you, to an extent, you cannot ignore than many young people were pressured into going to college, and going to a 'good school' by the authority figures in their life at the time (be it parents or school counselors). they were sold the lie that college would pay for itself, and for many it has not. I got lucky, personally, and don…

I went to get my CompSci master in a public college somewhere in NYC, total cost $20k.

Now I earn more than $250k/yr.

You can get into college without spending insane amount of money. You can also choose a more marketable major.

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

#106

Post by immigrantheart »

dktokyo wrote: post #70
immigrantheart wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Student debt is a personal responsibility. It is a personal choice. There are people who knowingly decided not to take higher education because they knew it would make them go into debt and instead went to work instead, providing for their family. These are real tangible opportunity cost for these people who decided that they couldn't afford college debt. If you forgive student loans, then those people who went on de…

Many of these students lay at the generational divide between college guaranteeing a great job (during the generation when most people went to high school and then trade) and college being a prerequisite for any job (today). And those universities only became so expensive because the federal govt guaranteed loans in the first place. University is radically more expensive than it was a few decades ago. It's not as sim…

Well, there are many many many problems in this world. Nothing is simple in this world. Including forgiving student loans. Forgiving student loans will create another sets of problems, like Pandora's Box that we can't ever put back.

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by rory »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #95
rory wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2008 was on the verge of a massive deflationary spiral. Bank debt forgiveness likely did cause inflation, but we needed it then! We are now in a period of high inflation already, so we would very much not like more.

Looks like inflation's was as high as it was today in 2008. https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/07/06/...

No, it's not at all actually: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=T1OA

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

#110

Post by al_mandi »

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…

The real problem is that running an economy on interest and usury will result in the outcomes we're seeing today. Let's address the root cause and not the symptoms.
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