Misleading headline. A more truthful one would be: Biden pays off 7.4B in student loans using taxpayer money. Banks are the winners here.
Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
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Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
#72Misleading headline. A more truthful one would be: Biden pays off 7.4B in student loans using taxpayer money. Banks are the winners here.
> Banks are the winners here
Not really - banks would have made money on something else instead.
The real problem is that universities are making money off selling trash to children not old enough to drink yet.
Before loans were guaranteed, there were some checks and balances for how much trash universities could sell and at what price, but now that politicians have figured out there's nothing stopping them from taking money that's not theirs and paying it off to universities, the only losers are those who consume the trash and destroy their lives and their descendants.
Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking out a bad loan is not smart. Not being able to pay it back is not smart. We can argue whether this is good or not, but certainly these people are not smart or they would have solved the problem or avoided it in the first place.
See, the problem with successful people is they confuse intelligence for luck. And I'm sure you're a very lucky person yourself. If you were smart, you would have seen the financial crash of year 2XXX. If you were smart you'd have seen that a foreign market for X would have opened up draining out all funding in the US and leaving that portion of the job market hollow. If you were smart you'd have seen that bill that…
> If you were smart, you would have seen the financial crash of year 2XXX
Makes sense
> If you were smart you'd have seen that a foreign market for X would have opened up draining out all funding in the US and leaving that portion of the job market hollow
Makes sense
> If you were smart you'd have seen that bill that allowed X thousand more people in the country in this job dropping pay rates by half
Makes sense
> And I'm sure you are smart for having been born in a family that was somewhere near middle class and didn't have crippingling addictions or otherwise have issues that would put education somewhere not number 1 on the priority list. I'll clap my hands at how brilliant you are...
Doesn't make sense and then there's unhelpful sarcasm at the end
> But, what we're talking about here is those not born with all these gifts can lift themselves out of a pit of debt or worse a life that would lead to crime, so that all of us live in a better place. You have any suggestions on that. Or are you just going to lock yourself up in a gated community and not worry about that kind of thing?
Providing direct value to society and getting rewarded for doing so has been an evergreen suggestion that has always worked well.
This works well for the Chinese immigrant with literally no money and no grasp of English who starts off selling takeout and grows the business, as it does to the person who starts driving taxi cabs, again, with no money to start off at all and then saves some to lease their first taxi and hire their first employee and then the second taxi and then the second employee.
A morally just society should reward, not punish these people. We need to have more, not less of them and that happens my incentivizing the right behaviors and disincentivizing the wrong behaviors.
It's all about the mindset and taking responsibility for your own future. You can complain and blame your fate or you can give it the middle finger and grow.
But, what are some suggestions you have to lift people out of a pit of debt or crime?
Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
#74Misleading headline. A more truthful one would be: Biden pays off 7.4B in student loans using taxpayer money. Banks are the winners here.
> Banks are the winners here Not really - banks would have made money on something else instead. The real problem is that universities are making money off selling trash to children not old enough to drink yet. Before loans were guaranteed, there were some checks and balances for how much trash universities could sell and at what price, but now that politicians have figured out there's nothing stopping them from taki…
> The real problem is that universities are making money off selling trash to children not old enough to drink yet.
Agreed.
Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
#75I remember my Father, working 80 hours a week, to put his 4 kids through college. We all also worked at least 20 hours a week while going to college. And I remember my mother squeezing every nickel until 6 cents dripped out of it. JUST so we wouldn't be burdened with debt after we graduated. I know that some people weren't as "lucky" as we were, and couldn't pay for college without debt. I don't begrudge them getting…
"I didn't have it good so the next generation shouldn't either." Student loans in the US are very predatory. This is a good step towards student loan reform, hopefully, and definitely a welcome boom for many struggling americans. Much better than tax cuts for people who have high incomes, for sure!
> Student loans in the US are very predatory.
Do you mean the loans are predatory, or the people who sell them? Like any financial product, they have at times been sold fraudulently--but this is already illegal and you can get remedy through the courts.
I've heard the loans being called predatory because they are interest-only loans. But, if you have the discipline, interest-only loans are an excellent tool for managing risk.
For example, I got an interest-only mortgage on my house when I moved to the valley. I felt better about joining a startup, because I knew I could ratchet down my monthly spend if I had to do an extended job search.
Of course, this means that you have to have the discipline to pay more than the minimum each month when you are getting a paycheck. Ideally, you should pay until it hurts, because the faster you pay down the principle the sooner you are free.
Yes, this means you'll have to buy fewer SUV's, or no SUVs at all and take the bus. Yes, you won't be able to eat out every meal--or perhaps any meal. I feel for you, I've been there, but that's life. Welcome to the wonderful world of being an adult.
If, after graduating from high school, you can't do enough math to compare the monthly student loan payments with the monthly income of your chosen major, well, that's on you. You should have payed more attention in school.
If, after graduating from college, you don't have the critical thinking skills to know that you need to pay down the principle on your loan--or it will eventually explode, well, that's on you too.
In either case, if you don't have the self-discipline to manage your money effectively, it doesn't matter how much money the government gives you.
Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
#76[flagged]
Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you think anyone in the US acts in the interest of the country as a whole No, but that’s my point. It’s a basic economic issue between voters with different economic interests. Cash-poor college educated people want government subsidies, and non-college educated people with money don’t want to pay for that. People who make their living doing knowledge work see the value in subsidizing college, people who don’t d…
> As Marx would say, each group votes according to its class and economic interests. Given the ever increasing concentration of wealth towards the top, either Marx was wrong about this or the proles value something more than money.
Or, to change a phrase, if the proles have been convinced that they are temporarily embarrassed bourgeoisie.
Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
#78My 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…
I don't think this is about fixing the underlying issue.
If you cancel debt and effectively put money into the hands of people with college degrees, theoretically, they will spend it on more intelligent things.
Or at least have a burden off their shoulders so that they can focus their careers.
Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
#79[flagged]
...helping people seems like a good thing?
Re: Biden Announces $7.4B in Student Debt Cancellation for 277,000 Americans
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As Marx would say, each group votes according to its class and economic interests. Given the ever increasing concentration of wealth towards the top, either Marx was wrong about this or the proles value something more than money.
Or, to change a phrase, if the proles have been convinced that they are temporarily embarrassed bourgeoisie.
Do you know any proles and how they think? For the most part, they don’t expect to become rich themselves some day. Rather, they have low confidence in the ability of government to improve anything, and high confidence that the government will make life harder for small business owners, or cause inflation, or other things that affect them.
Again, circle back to my plumber. He pays enough taxes to care what the government does with the money. And he’s quite reasonably persuaded that whatever the government does won’t help him, but will probably make his life harder.