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Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

whitehouse.gov

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Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

#51

Post by willcipriano »

brewdad wrote: post #38
willcipriano wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a good step towards student loan reform I'd argue quite the opposite. By "fixing" the problem with half measures like this ensures the problem will continue.

Right. Until the schools start losing money, there is zero incentive for them to reign in costs. That doesn't mean I want to see people suffer under the burden of their loans but this program isn't solving the right problem.

My solution?

Investigate the schools. What claims were made in the advertising? What did they know about the economic realities of graduates and when? Some of this was probably fraud. If you are telling kids "come have a bright future at my college" and statistically, that isn't happening, you probably should have to give the money back.

Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

#53

Post by baggy_trough »

Cody-99 wrote: post #44
baggy_trough wrote: post #7

It's hard to imagine a worse policy. It penalizes responsible behavior while doing nothing at all to address the root causes. Are we stopping making more of these loans? Of course not!

>It penalizes responsible behavior No it doesn't. That is a ridiculous thing to say. The people who received the cancellation have been paying on their loans for either 10, 20, or 25 years (depending on the degree type).

Of course it does. The responsible thing is to only go to a college that you can afford.

Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

#54

Post by ProblemExplorer »

robertn702 wrote: post #16

My biggest issue with these cancellations is that they don't seem to be fixing the underlying issue at all — that you can't default on your student loans. Lenders are incentivized to loan as much out as possible because their risk is so low, and so there is no reason to NOT approve a $150,000 loan to a student earning a degree which will realistically net them $40,000 a year. As soon as you let borrowers default, the…

> My biggest issue with these cancellations is that they don't seem to be fixing the underlying issue at all — that you can't default on your student loans

Lenders being selective about student loans is part of a larger feedback loop. That you can't default on your student loans removes a strong signal for a student to realize what they are planning to do isn't deemed productive by society, but that doesn't mean a well educated student won't figure this out on their own even in the lack of this strong signal.

A well educated person shouldn't need a lot of external feedback to figure out if you spend more than you earn, bad things will happen.

The root cause is schools are completely failing at their job of laying good foundations for generations of tomorrow and are not getting the feedback they need to be useful and political tricks like this further distorts the feedback loop.

This means students are not well educated - they might be able to recite Shakespeare or vomit out coding algorithms from a book but most of them lack logical thinking, clarity of mind, decision making that includes knowledge of finances and projections so you can answer the question "out of all the things I can do, what should I be doing right now?"

So they go and land themselves in a mess and then politicians exploit them by digging a deeper hole for them and their children.

Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

#55

Post by howard941 »

unholythree wrote: post #46
howard941 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it is very difficult to prove all of the elements you have to prove to get it discharged. For most people the answer is no

The public service loan discharge “used” to be broken and people were always rejected, but they made significant overhauls a few years back. My father for example, had his loans forgiven for working at a public library for a decade or so.

I took the question to ask whether or not the debt was susceptible to discharge under the Bankruptcy Code. Public service forgiveness is a different beast that doesn't flow through the bankruptcy system.

Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

#56

Post by ProblemExplorer »

pixl97 wrote: post #47
ProblemExplorer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More smart people leads to better outcomes for everyone smart people don't typically land themselves in a situation where they cannot respect their financial commitments.

Says every smart person before they end up in a situation they cannot respect their financial commitments... Of course, it's easy for you just to take anyone that does out of the smart pool and put them in the dumb pool. The problem is this is in no way a predictive measure. With the rules you have henceforth set you will be unable to classify that a person is smart before any trouble occurs. This is how the rules yo…

> person gets crashed into and injured, then a poorly timed market crash eliminates 70% of their savings driving them into bankruptcy

I think you need to collide your imagination with reality by asking whether majority of the recipients of this subsidy ended up there due to these terrible situations outside their control similar to what you suggest.

The crash, injury, market crash are all events that have happened to everyone and sure, it does affect a few people worse than others, but, for the problem at hand, are those the root cause, or something else entirely?

and should society as a whole ensure people have the training and skills to be more resilient to impacts from crashes, injuries, market crashes?

Extrapolating exceptional situations and weaving them into a story that feels good and fits an evil narrative that will have a terrible impact on future generations to come isn't a step in the right direction.

This is a political trick that exploits people in bad situations and does nothing to ensure that future generations don't end up in similar bad situations.

Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

#57

Post by Cody-99 »

baggy_trough wrote: post #53
Cody-99 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It penalizes responsible behavior No it doesn't. That is a ridiculous thing to say. The people who received the cancellation have been paying on their loans for either 10, 20, or 25 years (depending on the degree type).

Of course it does. The responsible thing is to only go to a college that you can afford.

So only the wealthy get to receive higher education. Good one! I know this is HN but this take goes beyond the typical level of unhinged. Honestly it seems like straight up trolling.

Someone who received public loans to attend university and who spent 10, 20, or 25 years paying them off at which point the rest was cancelled isn't really irresponsible.

Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

#58

Post by drak0n1c »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #36
tryptophan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly disagree. Russia has 54% of people with higher education, compared to us at 44%. In fact, it's the most "educated" country in the world. Bet you didn't know that... Look at how that worked out for them. The value of education is greatly overstated. (and on the other hand people who claim education is soooo important for a good society conveniently pretend things like culture, religion, morals, etc don't exis…

You need quality education not just quantity. Degrees from some universities in some countries might not be worth anything because anyone can get them and many do just because they've been conditioned that having that piece of paper changes your life for the best, and so No-Name universities appear to cater to that market creating a "degree inflation" where too many people have degrees but they're worthless.

True, we need quality education. But efforts to expand the quantity of education and educators here in the US have resulted in lower quality everywhere. Look at the steep degradation of NYC public schools over the last hundred years despite receiving ever increasing funds and benefits. See Harvard and other higher ed dropping merit requirements at all levels and being embroiled in plagiarism scandals.

Sometimes less is more. What was originally meant to help the <5% of the non-elite youth who were intellectually gifted or uniquely driven has mutated into a destructive-for-all-parties incentive pushed on 50+% of the population to follow. Quality of output requires quality of input, so returning to merit standards is a must.

Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

#59

Post by rayiner »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #23
tryptophan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a bad thing. Making intelligent decisions about career choices is now punished because you have to pay for people who didn't? Yay equity.

Your intelligent career decisions won't insulate you from the under-educated voters putting a despot and charlatan into power. An educated populace is better for everyone.

That story seems like a smokescreen for a straightforward economic conflict: people with college degrees that don’t lead to valuable jobs want the government to take public money and give it to them. They vote for the guy who promises to do that. Voters without college degrees—who will pay for that policy one way or the other, either directly or through inflation—vote for the guy who promises not to do that. Marx would say that this is about class and economics.

I got a quote recently from a plumber that drove to my house in a $90,000 BMW. If he doesn’t want to pay off the student loans of some Starbucks barista with an ethnic studies degree, that’s entirely in his rational self interest. Just as it is in the interest of the barista to seek that policy. It’s pure self-flattery to pretend it’s about anything more than that.

Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans

#60

Post by drak0n1c »

Cody-99 wrote: post #57
baggy_trough wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does. The responsible thing is to only go to a college that you can afford.

So only the wealthy get to receive higher education. Good one! I know this is HN but this take goes beyond the typical level of unhinged. Honestly it seems like straight up trolling. Someone who received public loans to attend university and who spent 10, 20, or 25 years paying them off at which point the rest was cancelled isn't really irresponsible.

The original mission of aid has been overrun to the point of being self-defeating. Higher ed is an inflated, bloated mess with a steep opportunity cost measured in time, money, and mindset. There are drawbacks to the narrow white-collar expectations and self-sabotaging ideologies (ie degrowth, critical theory). Why not a sensible in-between?

Aid should be merit-based. Both statistically and in my experience growing up at average and poor public schools <5% of the population is gifted and talented at the level where going to college would be a value gain for both them and society. Giving ~50% of youth a perverse incentive towards higher ed is obviously turning out to be destructive for both them and the institutions.

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