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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

#111

Post by MollyRealized »

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 am going to assume they ended up that way because they made poor decisions

That's a fairly flawed assumption.

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

#112

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

I think a first step should be to forgive all interest and fees on student loans in excess of the interest of the feds rate over the period of borrowing. That, in my opinion, is some of the worst of it. People are stuck making payments while at the same time seeing the amount they owe increases!

So let's try that first. Eliminate the predatory interest and fees first and see how that works out.

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

#113

Post by tablespoon »

pc86 wrote: post #73
buscoquadnary wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> 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.

> 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.

The only kind of student debt forgiveness that I'd maybe support is the kind that allowed the debt to be discharged in a bankruptcy, then claw back the money from the school. That would create consequences that would incentivize positive changes. A money giveaway would just be a socialize-the-risk/privatize-the-gains perversion.

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

#114

Post by dgeiser13 »

immigrantheart wrote: post #105
l30n4da5 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What year was this?

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

#115

Post by Turing_Machine »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #3
jollyllama wrote: post #2

The only way to "forgive" loans without causing inflation would be to screw over the banks by writing off the debt, forcing a credit crunch.

Banks haven't held any standard student loans since way back in the Obama administration.

That actually happened, yo. Obama did a federal takeover of all standard student loans, way back in 2010.

I mean, you can look it up. Over 90% of student loan debt is now held directly by the federal government (rather than merely being guaranteed by it, as was the case in the past).

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

#116

Post by suggestion »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #92
ramesh31 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Forgive these kids loans, who were just trying to go to college to learn and gain job skills to compete in the world and are now debt slaves. Nah. Those kids spent 4 years partying and treating adult life like an extension of high school with no consequences and free rent. I graduated highschool in ‘08, and I can clearly remember wondering how in the hell all of my friends on social media were living the lives they…

I agree. But I also think that they should be able to bankrupt out of them like Trump and many other rich people have done numerous times. Trapping students into non-bankruptable student loans is pure debt slavery.

Then every student will just declare bankrupty when they graduate and already have non-existent credit.

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

#117

Post by ecnahc515 »

nradov wrote: post #102
solardev wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suffer…

You could use the exact same argument even for many engineering degrees. A lot of people spend a lot of time, and money (from loans) trying to get CS degrees, only to fail to get through to upper division courses before changing majors. Is that money wasted? Should we move towards a model where your major is preselected for you before you attend college, based on your aptitudes, without you having any say in the matter? After all, we don't want to waste any money. What about if the major was preselected and you still failed to make any progress?

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

#119

Post by pc86 »

tablespoon wrote: post #113
pc86 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> 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. > So the most important follow-up question to all of this is when did you do it? College costs have risen exponentiall…

I'm torn on clawing the money back. I can think of 2-3 instances just off the top of my head where you could (legitimately) declare bankruptcy but the school shouldn't necessarily lose $50-100k because of that. Especially if nothing else about the current climate changes, all that will do is cause costs to rise even faster as the school just increases tuition to compensate.

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

#120

Post by nradov »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #117
nradov wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suffer…

You could use the exact same argument even for many engineering degrees. A lot of people spend a lot of time, and money (from loans) trying to get CS degrees, only to fail to get through to upper division courses before changing majors. Is that money wasted? Should we move towards a model where your major is preselected for you before you attend college, based on your aptitudes, without you having any say in the matt…

We should move towards a model where the availability and interest rate of student loans is based on actual risk as determined from the default rate of previous students who attended the same school with the same declared major. Students will then be able to make informed decisions about which major to select and how much debt to take on.
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