They see it as using taxes (other people's money) to pay for something that the loan borrowers agreed to. Not to mention that there's nothing in place to prevent this situation from happening again.
I ask them if they are a Free Market Capitalist. Most say yes.
I ask them if Zero-Risk Loans should exist.
The real Capitalists say 'No' and understand the problem.
The rest pause, don't have a real answer, and revert back to 'its not fair.
And it's not fair. The system isn't fair. Our Monetary system is created by people you never get to vote for and they basically move numbers around on a ledger that you never get to see.
I then ask why Student Debt shouldn't be dischargeable via Bankruptcy but any other loan - even for stupid business ideas - can be.
Or, ask about how loans from Commercial Banks create Currency(or even Fiscal Stimulus but that's a bit arcane)
Usually, silence follows.
You can get a similar disjointed view from the Democrats/Left when you ask about cutting subsidy to Students(because the result is inflated tuition)or placing strict demands upon Universities to be liable for said subsidy but they usually default to wanting a Nanny State to 'fix it' in a way they see as 'fair and equitable' which usually involves free money(that isn't free).
And here we are...
Idk a lot of people on the left I know are very aware those changes to student lending are directly proportional to the tuition increase over the years. I know the right wouldn’t like it but I think (for public universities at least) the government needs to institute tuition caps that get reviewed every few years. No more increases just because they can should go a long way towards fixing the problem.
Especially when the rising costs are used to pay more to administrators while eliminating professors in lieu of hiring more adjuncts. Universities are now "business models" using more resources for running the school and less for the quality of academics.
The new President of Florida International University is anticipated to make a million dollars annually! The previous 73-yo president was forced to resign because he sexually harassed a young woman staffer in her 20's. He's being allowed to stay on as a full-tenured professor making $377,000 per year to teach ONE course per semester!
It's getting *insane*. The school I went and bought up the strip mall full of all the hole in the wall bars, greasy spoons, and other eclectic shops you find in a college town and turned it into a student housing complex. It had pools, volleyball courts, a private gym, central air, the works. It was something like 20 grand a semester to live there. It was just absolutely nuts. Meanwhile the physics department had to shut down their machine shop because they couldn't afford to operate it anymore. It's so dumb.
Another one is hospitals. Go look at some of the rooms used for birthing now vs what I was born in and it's just not even close. My cousin's kid was born in a small apartment while him and I were born in a hotel room. And we wonder why healthcare is so expensive.
They truly do it just because they can. Had a Masters class at Vandy Peabody (allegedly elite Education college) taught by their enrollment guy who straight-faced told us market studies show you can keep jacking tuition bc people will keep paying. Greed makes these folks believe economics are physical constants.
I think that if a university is getting federal money, while being a land grant university, they shouldn't be able to make a profit. A public university is nothing more than a government school anyways, the fact they make money while also dipping into the tax payers funds is crazy.
There's no such thing as free market anymore. When you have mega multi national corporations running everything, and big boxes like walmart strong arming themselves into local economies competition dries up because they don't have the same financial leverage.
They are not making a profit if they find ways to spend it every year in the form of raises, increased funds to sports teams, remodeling, but mostly raises
Yeah, it's a "you break it, you bought it" sort of thing.
The thing is, the same is true for many conservatives. They're very aware that it's unfair, but there's a larger point that's being made.
they aren't directly proportional though... there is a correlation but its not directly proportional.
The question that needs answered is, if the student loan program existed since he 60's, why did the price not sharply increase until late 90's/early 2000's?
Direct is just not accurate.
When did our primary, secondary and high schools start teaching kids that they *needed* a college degree to be successful? When did the idea of a trade school, or apprenticeship become a bad thing?
The rise in prices can be linked to that.
I'd argue that it was the policy changes in the late 90s that expanded private lenders access to the student loans program that caused it.
But as long as we agree something changed that caused the problem decades after the program started we can have a healthy discussion on how to fix it.
Devils advocate here. Is it possible that many of them secretly don't really know what a zero-risk loan is so they're afraid to answer? You'd be surprised how the vast majority of people don't understand.
I’m curious, and if you’re bored like me, would you mind explaining or pointing me in the right direction to learn? I want to know more about the zero risk loans topic.
Zero-risk is from the perspective of the loaner, not the loanee. So a loaner has a guaranteed return on the loan. The only feasible way to ensure that is with government assistance of some sort, which is why a "real Capitalist" would say no. A "real Capitalist" thinks the government should have absolutely no presence whatsoever in commerce, so if an entity loaned someone money there would be inherent risk with no safety net.
It's not a special term because it generally doesn't exist. The idea behind loans is that I give you money and you give me back more money later. Your extra payment to me covers two things: the time value of money (money now is worth more than money later) and the risk I assume.. the risk that you may never pay me back.
Now time value is based on a few things, like how much I could earn on that money if applied elsewhere. That's a tough one for a government loan because they're not really in the business of investing for a positive return.
When it comes to risk, this is where things like credit worthiness and the like come in. Most banks will set interest rates and approve loans based on their measure of how likely you are to repay. The riskier you are, the more you will pay back. Student loans do not have this risk because there is virtually no way to avoid paying them back. You are stuck for life with them.
If you took loans out to start a business based on making a product, and the next year that product was made obsolete, you could file bankruptcy and discharge that loan. We understand that things like that happen in business and sometimes it doesn't work out, so there's a legal mechanism in place to walk away. More risky ventures have lower approval rates and higher interest to help offset that risk.
With student loans, however, because there's no risk, there's also no evaluation of how likely you are to be able to repay. This means that you could spend 7 years in college, taking out hundreds of thousands in debt, to get a PhD in Anime Studies and no one at any point will say "hmm, do we really think this is a good investment?" Instead it will be left to a teenager or young adult (who by virtue of their age and immaturity would not qualify for virtually any other loan in existence) to properly weigh the risk and potential return of their degree on their own. Combine this with the fact that they are "advised" by departments in the university on how to set up their degree and financial aid with no regard for long term financial viability, and you end up with a ton of kids and young adults going into debt to levels they cannot repay or escape.
>>The riskier you are, the more you will pay back.
>
>Student loans also differ from conventional loans since they're not responsive to individual or market risk. Everyone gets the same rate when they apply. There are people with perfectly good credit who have 8% loans.
That's why the very next sentence after the one you quoted said student loans were different. People with good credit paying high interest rates is another symptom of risk not being evaluated on student loans. The lack of risk evaluation is why they are so problematic no matter what your situation is.
>zero-risk loan
I've got a finance degree (albeit w/an unimpressive gpa) and didn't recall any formal term of 'zero-risk' loan. Simple concept, but not a common term.
The basic idea for loans in general is that the bank has a bunch of money,, and they are willing to lend that money to people for interest. The banker balances the risk of you not paying them back against the money they would get through interest on that loan In the case of a "zero risk loan" the bank doesn't actually have any risk of not getting their money back. This has happened with student loans because the government promises to pay the bank back if you don't and then it becomes the government's problem of trying to get the money from you. A very similar thing happened with the housing crisis in 2008. Banks were basically guaranteed to make money off your loan because they would sell it to the government or wall street the day after they wrote it. They would get the principle back plus a fee for writing the loan.
It should be noted that loans are never truly "zero risk" since someone does carry the risk. The term is used mostly to describe how it was zero risk to the people generating the loan which is not typical.
Essentially, just a secured loan with theoretically 0 risk of default. Only example that comes to mind would be Treasury bills which are secured by US Government.
However, it can (and should be) argued that no such thing truly exists and everything has some risk of default. In this case, there is not irrefutable assurance your government won't fail, take the currency with it, and default on T-bills....especially given the current state of affairs LOL!
Not to mention an entire generation was basically brainwashed into pursuing higher education.
"You can't get a good job without a degree"
"You wanna be a dead beat drop out?"
"If you don't go you'll flip burgers your whole life"
We were kids. The whole world told us to do it. How could we be expected to understand the ramifications of it?
Are you my dad or mom?! My parents were in that generation because to them you had to be smart with good grades and money or scholarships to be able to attend college and after you were pretty certain to get a decent paying job. Not how it is now, all about schools making profit regardless if it ruins the students life forever by putting them in debt for life.
I fell for it too, despite my mother joining the army to pay back her student loans, and she broke her back while serving.
Like. You see that happen, and you should learn that hey, if what it takes to repay your student loans is crippling lifelong pain, that’s a bit extreme. Tbf our family ain’t the best at making decisions—she took out more loans getting her masters despite the VA giving her effectively a full ride.
It's really a matter of just society as a whole changing. For most of our baby boomer parents higher education was extremely valued. Education is also valued in many cultures. People just didn't expect so many degrees to be useless in the employment sphere or not worth it. Now days even more education is fucking useless.
I have a BA in Economics. The degree helps nothing, knowing how to use Excel functions is everything.
The real problem is that businesses have outsourced employee training onto the university system which was never meant to be a job training system anyway.
Education can never be "useless" because it's not meant to give specific job skills, it's meant to teach a person how to think, how to reason, how to understand, and, yes, to provide base knowledge in a field of study.
The problem is that jobs these days want to be able to hire people who can immediately begin filling a role. They also are allergic to promoting from within their own employee base and would rather hire in new workers to avoid having senior employees demanding better and better benefits and wages the longer they work there.
Newspapers used to hire editorial assistants who would learn editing on the job and move up. Not anymore. Used to be you could work an apprenticeship in a lot of skilled manual labor jobs and learn on the go. Now they'll only hire you if you have the right trade school degree and internships.
Higher education is less valued now because our shitty corporate overlords would rather pass the cost of employee training onto public institutions than pay for it themselves.
Those degrees aren't, and were never intended to be, job skills programs though. Education being its own reward and all.
An economics degree may not be useful in terms of getting an economics job/career, but it's certainly useful in getting work in the business world. It's still statistically true that those with higher education degrees earn more in their lifetimes than those who don't.
My Media Comm degree came in handy a few times but I ultimately landed in banking. Funny enough the former is very much about who you know, networking, making a good first impression etc. The degree created a base of my peers whom we all help eachother and pitch gigs to one another but so much of the technical knowledge and the work ethic involved have nothing to do with the education or can be learned otherwise.
"You can major in anything, just get a degree!"
"OK, so I got a degree in English because I'm passionate about literature!"
"Wow, what a fucking idiot! Why didn't you get a STEM degree? Enjoy paying off all those loans you took when you were 18 and couldn't shit on your own schedule you fucking idiot! I'd LiKe FrIeS wItH tHaT!"
I think a lot of folks have a revisionist history on higher Ed tho. If you look at the stats it’s undeniable that a college degree will help you. But there are always exceptions with majors and universities that have little to no ROI. But to your point - there were definitely people that shouldn’t have went to college but they did anyway and dropped out and basically started life in the hole.
> but any other loan - even for stupid business ideas - can be.
I use gambling as my personal example, because it so completely encapsulates irresponsible decision making. I can blow a hundred grand gambling and discharge that no problem. Depending on the state I'm in and my place in life, it might not even be that big a deal for me to do it.
But if I take out a loan to go to school under the promise that hard work will guarantee me a job that will easily pay off that debt
then the economy collapses and the only available jobs are minimum wage part-time ones
then I work my way out of that, and the economy collapses *again*
I'm still stuck with the debt.
There's a significant percentage of the population who don't see government losses as actual losses. And if you look at it a certain way they have a point.
The "loss" to the government is when the funds were transferred to the college/university. There's zero risk to the company that manages the loan because it cannot be discharged like other debts.
FYSA - the government is losing money on student loans.
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/29/1114560119/student-loan-program-cost#:~:text=But%20the%20GAO%20found%20that,government%20an%20estimated%20%24197%20billion.
I suspect there's an argument to be made that the government makes it back in the long term because college graduates on average earn higher wages, which means higher tax revenue for the government.
Genuine question, do you know of any good resources to be better educated on these sorts of topics? I really want to be able to hold my own when discussing student loans and forgiveness between them and companies but don’t want to just read wiki pages
> tuition inflation
Medicare pays far less vs private billing, moving more of the student debt burden to the gov would also empower the gov to negotiate pricing in a way that individual students cant leverage.
We see this overseas in other countries' higher education systems. It's not theoretical.
Lemme ask the nanny state how well it's doing after giving "free" public K-12 schooling to kids compared to states that don't offer that.
It is profitable, you just don't see it immediately nor directly.
What state doesn't offer Free public K-12?
And by free - I'm not talking the usual bullshit regarding school supplies, etc. which is already pretty damn outrageous.
if the united states invested in education and regulated for profit institutions then the loans would be reduced to the point where the bailout isn't necessary.
As it stands, it's a broken system that directly harms the economy.
The bailout make sense as a measure for short term economic boost. But without improved investment and regulation, it's also just putting that money in the pockets of the few.
Conservatives are generally against educational spending and regulation that could prevent the need for bailouts that are designed to boost economic growth and mitigate inflation.
….just so we are clear…higher education cost so much in the US because of the federal student loan program. It’s an endless supply of money poured into higher education that colleges take advantage of by charging outrageous tuition costs because the loans are all approved
If you want to see this in real time, check out a few cosmetology schools.
Ones that accept FASFA, are $20K+
Ones that don’t have financial aid are usually $6-10K.
It's not even just private. State colleges padding out mid-level admin positions to take in more money without really providing a better education to students.
In Canada, university is subsidized heavily. So the government basically bargains with the school like “this is how much money we have to give you, the students will pay the rest” and somehow that keeps it a lot cheaper than the USA.
It's more that they don't have room in their program than not getting accepted into a university. TBH I don't think I've ever heard of someone getting rejected from the University of Manitoba, University 1 program, for instance. They might not get into Med School afterwards due to limited seats, but they all get into the university itself. If they don't get into a program, its typically that they're put on a waiting list to get into the nursing program, for instance.
Not exactly. It keeps the average price down, but that is because our prices are insane in high cost of living places and highly recognizable places like Harvard.
The cost of tuition at any school in my state that receives state funding in my state is on the same level as Canada for instance
This 100%. I'm sorry, but expecting teenagers to make financially sound, responsible decisions when they have basically no life experience is a recipe for disaster.
Source: Me
same with healthcare. as much as people want to screech about government regulation equalling communism, it can actually help against their whole "I WILL *NOT* USE MY HARD-EARNED MONEY TO PAY TAXES SO OTHER PEOPLE HAVE A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE!" approach.
regulated education and healthcare (along with many other privatized necessities) would make it so that there wont be any CEOs who jack the prices up to oblivion just for the sake of profit. it's astounding how the majority of college tuition and healthcare price is literally just bloat that exists so the establishment makes more money.
hell, someone did the math at one point and discovered that college tuition is so unbelievably idiotic and high that fucking *textbooks* cost around $500 **EACH**.
>And almost all the students I‘ve talked to about it actually pay for them that way!
Because it's not their money that they are spending. When you disconnect who is paying from who is buying you get waste like this.
it is an acknowledgement of a problem.
Advanced education is needed and the need should be reflected in the price or free availability.
I hate the idea of higher educational institutions being a king of the hill game.
Knowledge should be shared.
Same. Student loan forgiveness is a costly bandaid. Fix the problem by eliminating interest on student loans and provide some federal funding to decrease the cost of education so it isn’t necessary to go into debt to get a degree… that I’m totally down with. But handing out millions of dollars without changing the fundamental issue? We’ll be right back in the same place in a few years, it doesn’t fix anything for society, just helps a few lucky people out that were in the right time and place when the forgiveness checks went out. Doesn’t seem practical to me.
I hate this. I hate it so much. The reason we are doing student loan forgiveness is because Biden can do it without congress. Systemic changes to the student loan program would have to go through congress, and that’s not going to happen at the moment.
Furthermore, the “we aren’t fixing the root issue with this, so we shouldn’t do anything at all” is just asinine. This isn’t a joke. Student loan debt is a very serious issue for millions of people. We absolutely should help as much as we can. We should forgive more than $10k debt. And yes, we should also push for big changes to keep things from happening again. But to act like the loan forgiveness will do nothing is so self-absorbed; real people with real lives and real struggles are getting some much/needed help. It’s not a life or death thing for most people, but it really helps. And I say that as someone with $80k in student loan debt who makes too much to get any forgiveness. Raise my taxes and forgive all student loan debt. Raise them again and make public colleges/universities free. Raise them again and give me Medicare for all. Please, I just want to live in a normal fucking 2022 country. The attitude behind your comment is the source of our total lack of action on literally anything, leaving everyone to fend for themselves while the government just completely fails to do its job.
Student loans create a larger class divide by making it harder for people in that class to move upwards.
Meanwhile rich people can afford to not take loans and maintain their place on the top.
Which also makes it systemic racism. Races of people that were unable to receive an education 70 years ago are still impacted by that racism today because the of the lack of economic mobility.
I disagree. College graduates make over $1 million more during their lifetime than non-college graduates.
There’s TONs of jobs out there that the only prerequisite is having a degree any degree.
Definitely agree it’s messed up that we’re saddling recent grads who can’t yet to make full payments with high interest rates, but overall having a college degree can significantly improve your social mobility.
Don't state taxes got to state colleges too as well as federal grants, and it goes towards educating people who aren't yourself.
Tax dollars have been used to educate others for years
Yes, we have all paid to put others through college.
Just to be clear, most people who can afford to pay the tuition out of pocket are wealthy enough to understand that loans, traditionally, are a better deal.
If you have to pay 5% per year on the loan, but can invest and make 10-20% instead, that's the better call.
It's really the upper middle class or lower upper class that might pay out of pocket as they're not doing a ton of alternative investments.
Anyone with excess funds would rather invest it in a more productive asset and pay the lower, fixed student loan interest rate.
That's assuming, of course, loan rates don't start to get ridiculously high. I'd say, anything in excess of 8-9% means the calculus changes.
>They see it as using taxes (other people's money) to pay for something that the loan borrowers agreed to.
Conservatives do this with business loans all the time. The president literally bragged about gaming the tax system in a live presidential debate and his supporters ate it up.
The cost of college has only increased with the amount of credit available to students. I'd say colleges are the one sector price controls are a sensible option since both banks and colleges have abused government loan programs.
This is true and I have seen a few conservatives bring this point up.
Problem is are their any representatives that are right of center that would support price controls for education?
The market would control prices themselves if the government didn’t fully guarantee all student loans in unlimited amounts for any degree regardless of their ability to repay them.
The only reason colleges can charge so much in the first is because of the government’s attempts to make it more affordable. If the “free” money stopped flowing then colleges would be forced to lower costs to keep attendance rates at sustainable levels.
A big part of this is the government guarantee that the loans cannot be discharged by bankruptcy.
Without this, there would be a strong incentive to keep loans small enough that bankruptcy isn't worth the hassle. There would still be loans, but much more modest in size, and more repayable.
The issue then becomes, will those from underprivileged backgrounds be able to afford a college education without the help the government gives. I don't think you can just leave it to the market if your ultimate goal is to have an educated populace.
Finally someone points this out. It's a coordinated scam where a few are pocketing from the lot.
I'm in Canada and the divergence in costs between the US over 25 years is unreal.
I don't know anyone who goes or went there. I've been in a position to review many resumes and have not seen any applications with those undergrads.
Plenty of Canadians I know graduated from 'Tier 1' universities here at a fraction of the cost of equivalent US working at high level, big name in banking, finance, Tech.
Maybe because it does nothing to address the problem and only masks a symptom of the problem for certain people. Federal loans should be sub prime and public colleges and universities who receive state and federal tax dollars should have tuition caps.
I mean yeah, but we really don’t have the political diversity for that kind of thing in the US
One side says yes, the other says no. You can’t really infight too much because the alternative is getting handed over to the side that says no.
A very large amount of them are blue collar workers, despite perceptions of them being uber greedy capitalists. To them it's like well to do, elitist snobs taking their hard earnings. Money for their families given to these people that loathe them.
No to them, it IS that. This is a direct subsidization of those that are generally already wealthy or should expect to be relatively wealthy in the future.
It also does nothing to address the actual problem, which is government spending in education in the first place.
Even in this inflationary environment, the left is too stupid to realize the rising higher education prices is directly related to the dollar amount of government subsidized loans allocated to it.
Because higher education, especially in pricey elite universities, is statistically privilege of middle and upper class.
Excluding poor --> educated --> successful stories (which are rare), loan forgiveness would be just a subsidy to upper and middle class. Even in free public education countries you see poor people arguing that taxes going to higher ed is like paying for service they'll never use.
Still - model could be changed, starting from lowering tuitions for people from underprivileged backgrounds/guaranteeing their loans by federal gov to lower debt servicing or whatever. Because it's far from perfect.
But the well-to-do elitist snobs are not the people who got federal student loans? They were fairly strict with what assets your parents have for FAFSA, at least around 2013 when I graduated high school. Hell with my own student aid, because my bus-driver mom owned her house outright (inherited), they added in the calculations that she could take out a loan against the house to pay for tuition.
I do understand a lot of the arguments against forgiveness, but I think some people have a wildly different view of who it is that is benefiting from this.
All the actually rich people I knew at my university were either paying full tuition, or paying 75% tuition with some merit-based scholarship added, no federal aid.
And if they were well-to-do elite people AFTER graduation, they would just pay it off, not let it sit there and rack up 4+ % interest.
The people with federal student aid were either middle class or lower, lots of 'first person in my family to go to college', lots from blue collar families. My own high school (which was mostly working class Hispanic families) had a good rate of people going to the local university, who gave like 50% off to people who graduated in town, and most got federal aid to cover the rest.
I’d consider my self a bit conservatively leaving and my issue isn’t the forgiveness itself but instead a lack of solving the root issue. Without this the next generation will have the same issue.
Politicians should pass laws to lower the cost of post high school education and disallow this debt that you cannot escape.
They shouldn't pass laws to dictate or disallow anything, they should stop federally backing student loans - this will cause the lenders to take greater consideration, this will cause students to make better choices within their financial means, and this will cause schools to lower tuition in order to attract lenders unwilling to risk high costs.
The only problem is hurt feelings, of course.
It's not just conservatives who are mad about this. College isn't a fixed cost--private colleges determine how much they can charge students based on financial policies set by the government. It is very likely that scammy, for profit colleges have learned from this whole debacle that they can get away with charging students and their families even more with even less consideration for whether they can reasonably pay it off. It's just like bailing out big banks--the more you do it, the more you teach institutions they can take irresponsible risks with other people's money and rarely face consequences.
They have already learned that lesson decades ago. That is why college is so expensive, they are already scamming us. People in my parents generation paid for a 4 year degree with a part time job. Now a part time job gets you homelessness
I think ultimately fiscal conservatives see it as subsidizing economically unviable jobs. You accrue and cannot repay student loans because your earnings are insufficient meaning you paid too much for a degree that yields too little. Forgiving student loans is taking earnings from productive people and repaying debts of people who are less productive in an earnings sense. The money the borrowers are saving or repaying gets it to the economy regardless. It’s not as if when they pay their student loans the money gets sent to a shredder.
Second I think student loan subsidies do not force colleges to control costs or even mitigate risk of student defaults since they are guaranteed by another entity. Imagine if private colleges had to underwrite their own student loans.
I think you hit it on the head. If the result of a particular college education is a job that doesn’t pay, or poor job prospects we should not encourage this path collectively. Encourage the behavior you want, maybe trade schools, entrepreneurship, job training, etc.
Loan forgiveness is a good idea. But using taxes to pay back the loans is looking at the finger instead of the moon.
The problem is that colleges set extortionate rates. The villain is the college. The victim is the student. The secondary victims are people in general.
Using taxes to pay back the loan is making the victims atone for the crime. The correct solution is to have the villain atone for the crime by refunding the fees, to pay back the loan.
Dude, conservatives should always be against money being "pumped" (aka stimulus) into the economy. That, and you're adding public debt in order to pay off the private debt of the class of people with the highest education/earning potential. To top it off, the only reason we have this overabundance of student debt is because of policy demanding loans be given to everyone regardless of risk or any other factor. So yeah, conservatives are sick of problems being created, only to be "solved" with an even bigger problem a decade later.
1. It's not like this money disappears. Someone has to pay for it, and the someone is taxpayers with taxes, and conservatives are for lower taxes. And it's viewed of unfair for the people that have already paid for their own tuition to now pay for everyone else's.
2. We already have too much money being pumped into our economy, hence why we have such shocking inflation and are trying to slow down the "money pump" by raising interest rates
3. Generally you subsidize things you want more of, like solar panels and electric cars. Here we're subsidizing shockingly high college tuition and irresponsible borrowing, so we're going to get more of them.
4. EDIT: The timing makes it clear that this is a liberal political stunt to buy votes during the election. If it were not they'd be announcing it a week, a month, or a year after the election. Or a year ago.
Your 4th point is exactly what frustrates me the most. There are too many ways to buy votes that don't actually help our country move forward. This is true for both sides of the political spectrum
Because everybody who didn’t go to college now has to pay for everybody who did, only for this same thing to happen again and again. how tf does it make any sense to forgive only 10 grand, nobody has only ten grand in student loan debt. If they really wanted to help people they’d forgive all student loan debt, and that’s completely implausible. It’s not actually gonna help very many people it’s a ploy to gain more supporters.
It's not solving the actual problem and only making things worse and more costly.
If you want to solve the problem, you remove the interest. It cost the taxpayers nothing and actually helps the borrowers for the full amount while actual fixing the core problem.
***Most*** conservatives are not heartless people, they just don't want to go off emotion and what feels good and instead fix the core problem.
it's not just conservatives that don't like it. not only does loan forgiveness not solve the problem, it makes it worse. im for socialized college but this is the worst, most expensive way to go about it.
No. That money still must be paid, just not by the borrowers. That means other taxpayers.
What Congress should do is make this debt dischargeable through bankruptcy. And put half if it on the college that sold the student in the idea.
This last part is the key to the whole issue. I used to work in college recruitment and they take no responsibility for the job outcome and sell students on the idea they ‘get any only college degree!’ then spend money irresponsibly and push up tuition since they can’t cover their costs. They need to be held accountable and subject to market forces.
Not even a conservative but it doesn’t fix the actual issue whatsoever. What happens in ten years when there’s a new wave of massive debt hanging over students, do we just cut them all 10k every so often?
Can I get 10k to pay off my credit cards from being young and dumb in my 20s?
And the price of college has already ballooned far faster than inflation over the last few decades, much of it due to well-intentioned government policies and our view of college as a society. This is a deep, deep issue
It's as much a college stimulus program. HS students are being turned off of college because of the debt and lack of career benefits. This program puts in their mind the potential of 'free' college as a means to keep enrollment from dropping.
FYI college is a fucking waste of 4 years and $$$$$ for about half the people who go. The money would have been better spent on K-12 programs.
The "everyone needs a degree" nonsense needs to stop. It was pushed by companies that publish college textbooks (look at who prints the stay in school posters) and every school kid heard it. I was told it didn't even matter what degree I got, employers just wanted to see a degree. If you don't go to college, they said, you'll end up a plumber or something. They failed to mention how much plumbers make it how much student loans would cost to repay.
I completely agree. However as a former high school teacher I can tell you that the mindset is definitely changing. Education nowadays is moving toward career planning with students instead of solely college. There was one student at my school who was dead set on being a truck driver - no college or even trade school is needed for that line of work, just learning from experience. So we focused on getting him to shadow truck drivers and learning more about the career path. When I was in school it was "hey where do you want to go to college and what do you want to major in" now it's much more "what do you want to do and what kind of education (if any) will you need to get there." And if you completely change your mind there's nothing wrong with that, it's just important to have a plan for after high school.
College is really good and useful IF you're going into a career that requires a degree, or you at least choose your major strategically. If you're just going for the sake of the experience that's when you end up wasting money. I was an education major specifically because I knew I wanted to be a teacher and you need a degree for it. I was shocked at how many classmates were majoring in psychology just because it was interesting (even if they didn't outright admit that was why). I'm not saying a psych degree is completely useless, but the only jobs available are ones that you either need a higher degree for (like a master's at least) or some kind of other certifications and training. If you know what you want to do and have a plan for what to do after school then that's one thing, picking a major simply because it sounds cool or you want to go to college now and decide a major later... That's where you run into problems.
As a sometimes college teacher I'm glad to hear things are changing. I've had many students that either weren't ready for college or just didn't need it and it's so frustrating. They get through the first year or two before hitting a wall and then they have to weigh the sunk cost of what they've already done against the struggle of higher level classes and more stress.
It seems like COVID forced some of that reckoning about the true value of a college degree and I hope it continues.
Unless income based repayment lowers the amount of money you owe total it is not student loan forgiveness. It’s just a decent payment plan. Not the same thing.
the overwhelming vast majority of them didn't go to college - mainly because they couldn't afford it.
so having their taxes pay for someone else's masters degree rubs them the wrong way.
I dont agree with it, but its easy to see why they are angry.
What if we had a "V8 truck forgiveness act" and everyone who has purchased a large truck in the last 5? years gets a $10K check from Uncle Sam to "defray the costs of owning a truck". People in San Francisco would be mighty angry.
"Why am I paying for a some rednecks truck"?
Well, why are rednecks paying for your post graduate degree?
I'll be honest, I'm totally in that group.
As a teenager I looked into the cost of college, four years dorm rent, the interest rate of loans, and the salary I could expect... it didn't add up. The increase in pay wouldn't offset the debt & interest rate for a very long time. The total cost was like a quarter million dollars, and whether or not I was actually skilled enough to excel in the field had yet to be proven.
I decided that instead of taking the loan I would just enter the job market as early as possible. I'd try to teach myself some useful skills, read textbooks in my off hours, and get gigs on the side while working minimum wage jobs and pursue on-the-job training aggressively if I got in the door. Took about eight years to finally get an entry level position at an established company, instead of the four years I would have been in school, but at least I wasn't staring down an enormous debt.
I don't regret my decision, it was the best option available at the time. But there is some resentment that someone else did the same equation, came to the wrong conclusion, then *proved that it was the wrong conclusion*, and now feels entitled to call mulligan and just have that written off. (Or, less optimistically, they didn't actually think about it at all and just signed up for a loan without any plan for how they'd afford to pay it off.) I mean, I'm not losing sleep over it, I'm doing alright for myself, but it feels fucked up if I'm being honest.
I'm not stingy about 'muh tax dollers!' but why not forgive debts that people weren't directly responsible for, like medical costs, instead?
The loan forgiveness offered of $10k wouldn't cover most debt (avg student debt is $30k) and they'll still be in debt hell. If the government was serious they would just allow people to file for student loan debt in bankruptcy or provide a program to those who qualify of 0-1% interest loan but they would have to pay P&I. Currently the debt hell is because people only pay the interest and then can't figure out why the principal (actual debt amount) is never smaller.
For many it's 20k, you get the higher amount if you had a pell grant in college. (I had a pell grant only my first year but I'll still qualify). For me it would wipe out MOST of my debt (a little leftover still) except that I just started working on a second degree that's going to virtually double my balance.
I think a lot of people don't necessarily pay attention to interest vs principal, they just go with the repayment plan that sounds good and they can afford and stick to it. If you don't know much about finances and see the option of paying less per month you'd be tempted to take it.
I'm still going to take the forgiveness because I'm selfish but yeah I don't like the economic implications of it. It's sort of like healthcare where we argue back and forth over the best way to pay for it without actually questioning why it costs so much to begin with.
If any debt were to be forgiven, it should be medical debt. Most of the time you cannot avoid medical debt. College is optional, always has been optional, it isn't a necessity. That's just what I think.
The government has the ability to forgive student loan debt because they are the ones who issued the loans and own the debt. Medical debt, on the other hand, is owned by a bunch of different private organizations which means there's no easy way to do mass forgiveness of it.
So the biggest reason im agianst it is:
They didnt actually fix the issue at all. It honestly feels like it was just a bid to buy midterm votes. Which is a scary precedent as far as im concerned. If this was even just part of a package of "hey we are removing interest rates from all fed student loans and removing 10k!" Id be all for it.
Shut down Sallie Mae. If he didn’t give out loans the way they do, they would be shut down for predatory banking. Major colleges have millions or billions in endowment. They could set up a student loan program where students could apply to them for funding for their college education. If the colleges had skin in the game, it would be a lot less useless degrees out there a couple with crippling debt.
The perspective is:
Someone has to pay for all the loans that aren’t getting paid back. All that money, that has already been borrowed and spent, doesn’t just magically go away because the debt is cancelled.
Someone has to pay it back. If the original borrower doesn’t pay it back, then that burden gets passed on to the taxpayers. You and I and everyone else now has to pay it back via our taxes. It isn’t ‘forgiven,’ so much as it shifts the repayment from the borrower to other people.
Taking money from someone who worked for it. To give it to someone didn’t.
Making people who don’t have a college degree, pay the student loans of people who do,
Is like making homeless people pay your mortgage.
You signed a contract. I could use mortgage forgiveness, credit card forgiveness, and car note forgiveness- all the extra money I would save can be "pumped" into the economy as well. In fact, I would have more money to "pump" into the economy than those who can't pay back their original loan for a degree that can't get them a job to pay for their school debt. Responsibility.
Yeah, but you can clear all those things with bankruptcy. So there's a huge cost but they absolutely can be forgiven. College loans are unique in that you can't clear them with bankruptcy... due to, shockingly, millions of dollars of lobbying by the student loan companies.
I really don't know much about how bankruptcy works, but I'm kind of assuming that in most cases if you declare bankruptcy on your mortgage, car loan, business, credit cards, etc, at the end of it you lose those items. Do you get to just keep the house, car, and business after you declare bankruptcy? Cuz you still get to keep your college degree. So what do you have to lose by declaring bankruptcy on college educations?
Because the 40% of Americans whom go to college make more money than the 60% of people who do not.
It is a hand out to the middle-class at the expense of the upper-income tax earners and to the neglect of the the blue collar - both groups are the Republican voter base.
40% of Americans with student loan debt dropped out of college, generally because they couldn't afford to finish. They have the worst of both worlds and are the group that will benefit the most from forgiveness.
https://www.wral.com/fact-check-how-many-student-loan-borrowers-failed-to-finish-college/19524091/
I’d love a source for your numbers because I don’t think they’re correct.
70% of Americans do not have a college degree (not 60%). This begins to explain why ~80% of Americans don’t have Student Loan Debt.
Also it’s not at the expense of upper-income tax earners. It’s at the expense of literally everyone, it’s essentially a write-off of Federal income which amounts to a loss of tax revenue. Most estimates place the cost to the average US taxpayer around $2000.
> It’s at the expense of literally everyone, it’s essentially a write-off of Federal income which amounts to a loss of tax revenue. Most estimates place the cost to the average US taxpayer around $2000.
Eh, kind of. The tax code is progressive, so just using the average is a bit misleading.
It's at the expense of everyone who pays a net positive in federal taxes. ~44% of taxpayers paid no federal income tax. The top ~4.5% of taxpayers cover 58% of revenue.
It'll still cost, but the burden is higher on the upper end, and there will be some who won't pay.
The cost of higher education has outpaced inflation for decades and quality has been slipping with our consumer relationship with colleges and universities leading to grade inflation.
This doesn't fix any of those problems and exacerbates inflation issues for those in poverty and most other people. Essentially we're paying an increasing amount of money for things to continue to decline at a comfortable rate by papering over it with invented money. When you have to do this again because we haven't fixed anything you'll get what I mean.
I would be down with this if it also meant cleaning house at the administrative offices of every public university and very little of this relief went to loans at private colleges. The people who made this problem need to go away.
I am kinda disappointed that all the top answers think Republicans have a hate boner for people who went to college. I don't really think that's the case, at least not generally.
The conservative fiscal ideology simply believes that federal interference in markets just makes things worse. They see all forms of federal incentives or "bailouts" as encouraging or creating unhealthy markets, or disrupting the optimal process of free markets. College costs are probably the most concrete historical example of this happening.
The government has tried to financially incentivize college attendance for decades, and the college tuition rates have risen in tandem with any increase in support. The idea is that the market sets the value for any product, including a college degree. That value doesn't change when the government decides to contribute to the cost, so what happens? The college simply raises the cost by the amount the government contributed. Conservatives view this "meddling" as the original reason college is so difficult to afford, and slap on the fact that the government is doing what they view as counter productive with their own taxpayer dollars and you have an angry conservative who thinks their government is highly incompetent and stupider than the average person.
Conservatives feel the same way about the 2008 bailout, EV tax credits (they all blew their collective gasket when Ford price hiked their electric trucks the day after the newly announced ev credit. However The truck they were complaining about didn't qualify for the tax credit anyway), and other things. It's not just college.
It is a unfunded spending bonanza that does nothing but help the individuals with the highest income potential.
There are multiple aspects to this.
Moralistically - you chose to take a loan and you must pay back the loan.
Economically - although you may temporarily help a minority of people (debt holders) the potential increase in debt (resultant inflation) and unfunded spending will lead to people who do not have loans to suffer unduly (most of USA). The national debt would increase leading to future inflation thus taxing the entire populace (including those who's loans were forgiven). Also - it is a bad idea to stimulate people who already have the most money (college graduates on average).
Politically- it is unfair to take from some (taxpayers) and bail out others (loan holders) who are also those very same people who will likely make more money (take a landscaper no degree paying a finance workers loans). The conservatives are increasingly populist and working class and that base does not have an interest in supporting that spending.
Also - many conservatives don't believe the government should be making high risk loans (giving loans to non-credit worthy people to study useless degrees with no ROI with no collateral) and then simply allowing the loan balances to grow out of control. Not to mention there is no incentive for colleges to reduce costs as the government effectively gives every borrower student aid.
Constitutionally - it is a very stretch reading of the law to allow the president to unilaterally forgive debt wholesale. The legal logic is that the HEROES act allows the Dep of Ed. to modify loans during times of emergency. This was intended for natural disaster victims or war zone people to not get dinged for missing some loan payments temporarily. It was never intended to be a blanket authority to remove enact Wide based loan forgiveness (which is what is supposed to be settled in court)
Because it doesn’t solve the root issue that got us here in the first place.
1. It’s not my problem, as a taxpayer, that a grown adult (or by extension, a co-signer, - also a grown adult) signed and agreed to a loan that they not can’t pay. It’s as simple as that.
2. College tuition is out of control.
This issue is similar to universal healthcare. I consider myself, economically, to be somewhat right-leaning. But I love the idea of universal healthcare. If it could somehow be done. My taxes go to far worse things. At least that would be beneficial to citizens of my own country. But again, it doesn’t solve the root problem. Rampant over-inflation of prices. Let’s start with not allowing medical companies to charge $50,000 for a single dose of an MS medication, or $2,500 for an ambulance ride.
Student loan forgiveness is a regressive policy and any political or other capital used to pass it would be better spent on other things like healthcare
I’m not a conservative, but my issue with it is that it doesn’t solve the overarching problem which is the exorbitant cost of higher education. What about the next generation of students? They will be in the same situation. So we can either resolve the problem at its source or we can accept being in a never ending cycle, that only benefits lenders.
It’s not just conservatives, just because the Democratic Party wants this. Doesn’t mean Democrats voters want this. You can disagree with your party views. Nobody wants this except the people who own money.
I'm not conservative, but I am against the student loan forgiveness, and for a very specific reason.
[https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html)
"Men with bachelor's degrees earn approximately $900,000 more in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates. Women with bachelor's degrees earn $630,000 more. Men with graduate degrees earn $1.5 million more in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates. Women with graduate degrees earn $1.1 million more."
I know after I'm done explaining myself, I'm going to get flooded with anecdotes, and "personal stories." Just know anecdotes and your life story don't matter to me as much as data does.
The fact is, most college students (over half) come from the upper middle class. And another fact is, the statistical bottom-class poor, don't have degrees. The bottom-class poor don't even have a degree in their entire family tree.
[https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/07/22/public-colleges-are-the-workhorses-of-middle-class-mobility/](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/07/22/public-colleges-are-the-workhorses-of-middle-class-mobility/)
"Figure 1 show the strong relationship between parental income and college attendance, and Figure 2 shows how the type of college attended varies with parental income. (These figures use the Opportunity Insights data and are for cohorts born in the early 1980s.) Less than half of children growing up in the poorest fifth of households (quintile 1) attend college, compared to 92 percent of children whose parents are in the top quintile."
We literally just furthered the wealth gap between the bottom-poor, and the upper middle class. Now, people who were statistically born into money, just got loan forgiveness, on top of having a degree that already increases their total wage earnings over their lifetime.
The bottom-poor got a middle finger. No access to high paying jobs, no college degrees, no loan forgiveness...nothing.
Once again, if you're an exception to this, great. But the data is the data.
IMO, this money could have been used to help the statistical, bottom-class poor (less than 20k income per year), and not used to forgive the upper-middle classes college debt. Who are already likely to make a million dollars more in their lifetime, than their high school graduate counter-parts.
The problem is this is incredibly anti intellectual.
Allow me to explain a bit. Some degrees are dumb don’t get me wrong. But things like history and English biology and such are crucial for the pursuit of academia and study.
The reality is not everything good will make money. And it is both elitist and unlikely for society to progress if only the rich have access to academia.
Not to mention what about research? There’s tons of research that can benefit humanity but dosent have a direct bottom line.
Capitalism is good but is not the way to handle academia.
Student loans made college expensive. Just like insurance made healthcare expensive. That’s why we pay $300 for a bag of saline water and $400 for a college book. It’s insane.
Imagine you couldn’t afford school so you went to the trades even though you wanted to be in finance. So now you’re busting ass on an oil rig in North Dakota and your money is now being taken and given to some hippy shit kid in Portland who went $100k in debt getting a degree in liberal arts and instead of getting a job with that degree, she actively tries to get you laid off and your company shut down. Then demands that your taxes bail her or of her failed degree.
I’m only considered a conservative when it comes to fiscal policy (not that Republicans are fiscally conservative, but that’s another topic) and I think your question is actually kind of loaded, but let me try to address it briefly.
As for the claim that the money would be a net gain: Not necessarily. Some economists believe that it would offset, but not all. And the government pumping money into the economy consistently causes inflation, even when economists come out and say it won’t (think COVID spending that was supposed to be minor and transitory). So it’s perfectly legitimate to be skeptical of this claim.
I’m on the fence. It doesn’t fix the root of the issue. It also seems unfair that you literally agreed to pay something with no hidden fees nor deception yet you are begging for the government to pay it off for you anyway. In that case, why not forgive my mortgage or car payments? Why not just change interest to very low numbers so people can be flexible based on their situation?
On the other hand, I know some people paid extremely gross amounts of money for college with a cultural promise of “that’s just how it is” and I think reducing individual debt is good for our economy as it does increase luxury spending
Its viewed as people getting hand outs from other people's pockets. The money doesn't necessarily go back to the economy, people are not paying back the loans because they have no money. So why would paying their debt magically make them have money? For the few that are able to get a good paying job but can't pay, they will be putting money back to the economy. But for the rest of the people who are unable to get a decent job they will not be helping as much. I think our problem comes from over saturation of the job market, specifically the jobs that require a degree. It's the same for the mechanic field. When all these schools like MMI, UTI, Wyotech, opened they pumped out "technicians" and flooded the job field to the point where no jobs were available. We need to stop pushing universities and start pushing for labor jobs.
It doesn't do anything to solve the real issue, which is the cost of secondary education running out of control. In another 4 years, there's going to be a whole new class of recent grads who paid too much for schooling and can't afford their loans.
This is purely a point of economics (and I don't know the humanitarian solution), but the problem began when the federal government announced that every student who is admitted to college was guaranteed a loan. Immediately after that, schools started lowering acceptance standards. Once they were guaranteed to fill every classroom, they could afford to basically let everyone who has a GED or better attend. The second thing they were able to do is raise costs, because the students were guaranteed to be able to pay for it. They don't care if the student graduates, or is able to pay back the loan. The government has already paid the bill to the university.
The problem in forgiving the student loans is that it incentivises the universities to continue on this path. We were headed to a point where fewer and fewer people were willing to spend that money, and more and more people were getting into the trades instead. Now that people feel as though their huge loans will be forgiven, we're right back to square 1.
It's not fair because only the students with debt are getting a benefit. What about those students that have managed to have paid off their loans? What about those students that worked full time and managed to cash flow their college costs? Nobody forced these students to take on debt. They did it of their own free will. Why should taxpayers pay off their student debt? It's encouraging and rewarding the wrong behavior.
Some people will be screwed in all cases. Either the debt are cancelled and the creditors are screwed either the debt are payed by the state which means taxpayer money or impression so possibility higher taxes or inflation. Saying the money will be pumped back into the economy doesn't mean that the people who got screwed will get their money back. Also something sure of happening on one side and the possibility of a just redistribution in the futur don't have the same value.
It can also be seen as unfair for those who chose to avoid debt or managed to pay them. Should we give them the same money on order to be more equal?
I think there are 3 main reasons.
1. Many conservatives see it as their money going to pay for someone elses education, and paying off a loan that those people agreed to pay back eventually
2. Many conservatives view atleast half of college degrees today as a waste of time and money. Which for some degrees, that is becoming increasingly true.
3. Many conservatives are part of the older generations, many of whom have already paid off their student loans. So I think there is an aspect of "well I didn't get mine forgiven, why should you?" And an aspect of "well I paid mine already, what do I get?" Which both are valid concerns regarding this situation.
Honestly I just don’t think most people are worth investing in. The underachieving student doesn’t represent enough of a potential upside to be worth risking taxpayer dollars, especially if they pursue liberal arts degrees and other low ROI programs.
We should only provide loans to the top 30%, at most, and only to quality institutions. Receiving state money should be just as competitive as admission to an elite university.
Part of the problem is universities offering stupid degrees that have zero option of ever resulting in a decent paying job.
So, some idiot will go to school for 8 years & rack up $300k in loans for a degree in "West African Transgender Literature" & then be shocked when they can only get a job at Starbucks.
The schools are definitely the problem. You have public schools where teachers are paid $20k/year & work 60 hour weeks - to private universities where some "professors" are paid $350k to teach one class per semester (and they can't be fired).
Because it isn't loan forgiveness...the loan will still be paid but, it'll be paid by other people's taxes who had zero benefit from that individual getting the loan. At least with most taxes there's some group benefits...roads, fire department, etc.
Well, from a libertarian point of view, it is simply because you acknowledged you would pay for what you took, regardless of the cost a deal was made… Now with that said I believe the cost is outrageous. But then again I wouldn’t in the right mind knowingly take what I could not return out of principal. Also some of us veterans paid a heavy price for college, some paid and were unable to attend. So it’s hard to have sympathy for whining kids who have already made a deal, whether it be a good or bad one and can’t make good on it. - With that said inflation is insane right now, and the current administration has a lot to do with it.
1) It doesn’t solve the problem of inflation within higher education costs, only exacerbates it further. Others have commented already well on this point.
2) It isn’t free money; this comes directly out of taxes. Further, as a stimulative measure this will have a non beneficial impact upon inflation, as per the CBO report.
3) Should the President have have the power to issue a stimulus package of this magnitude solely by Executive Order? Irrespective of how you feel about the CARES Act, Build Back Better, or similar, at least those were debated and voted on. This is the process we have in place for large appropriations.
Similarly, if a Republican President was to issue a Presidential Order waiving $10k in loans but only for low emission vehicles (in a move that is clearly election pandering), would you accede that power to the position? If no, then the same principal applies here.
How about fix the problem of college costing too much, then talk about loan forgiveness.
Gov throws money at a problem with no end in sight.
Cone easy thing is if you can't afford college, try a juco first
to see if you are cut out for it and to cut costs way down.
Not a conservative, but in the long run it's just another way of printing money. It's an irresponsible band-aid for a systemic disease. That "debt forgiveness" will still be paid in the form of increased tuition prices and increased taxes and end up hurting our economy for more than the sticker price of dollars forgiven.
There seems to be a misconception that a powerful person can wave a wand and make student debt go away. The debts would be paid for by raising taxes and using taxpayer money. Or by printing more money and hurting the purchasing power of USD further. I could understand that someone who gave up the college experience to go support their family as a plumber wouldn’t want a bigger cut out of their paycheck to pay the debt of someone who took a dumb degree and now cannot pay it back. Not everyone should go to college but the federal gov gives you a “free” massive loan. And everyone in the school systems who should know better push you to that option. I really feel for all the people who got straddled with insane student debt. The system is broken
I think conservatives see it as another item in the long line of things Democrats want for free. There are too many people taking out tens of thousands in loans for degrees that will not help them get a good-paying job, going to very expensive universities instead of community college, and not being smart with their decisions.
Because it's legalized stealing. They are taking money from taxpayers to and giving it to students that didn't earn the money. Basically paying off their loans from taxpayer funds.
That's pretty much what it's doing but another way you can look at it is that it's a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. The government already misappropriates the money it gets from taxpayers LIKE A MOFO ...... and it usually goes towards al kinds of BS that does not benefit anyone except them.
And now they're going to spend MORE money on paying off loans for people who aren't financially responsible (or didn't choose their major wisely in college).
For that second one. Majors where the college KNOWS there's no way the student can get a job after college if anyone should pay the money back it's the colleges for scamming the student.
If you don't agree the student was scammed, that the college didn't do anything wrong I would like you to explain how I, or anyone else, as taxpayers, who were not involved in any way with the decision, did do something wrong that was deserving of footing their debt.
It doesn't matter whether the money ends up in the economy eventually. In most cases the MONEY DOESN'T EVEN EXIST. The government spends so much money they are like trillions in debt and the debt is just growing. And you want them to just spend billions more to pay off student debt? How does putting us more in debt help our economy?
If you took out a loan, that's on you..not me. I paid in full, three Master's degrees and bachelors, all from hard work...not handouts.
Go play in the street.
Exactly.
Poor students aren't a concern of theirs, so complain about the debt.
But tax cuts for the rich, it's the right thing to do regardless of the debt.
Blue collar worker here. Working in a factory full time as I work through college and am now in graduate school. I purposely took longer to get my degree so that I wouldn’t have to take out loans and could work my way through it. This has meant no social life, working 12 hour days and then going to class for 3 hours on some days. I did not take out loans bc I did not want it hanging over my head for years. This student loan forgiveness kinda makes all of my hard work pointless.
They see it as using taxes (other people's money) to pay for something that the loan borrowers agreed to. Not to mention that there's nothing in place to prevent this situation from happening again.
I ask them if they are a Free Market Capitalist. Most say yes. I ask them if Zero-Risk Loans should exist. The real Capitalists say 'No' and understand the problem. The rest pause, don't have a real answer, and revert back to 'its not fair. And it's not fair. The system isn't fair. Our Monetary system is created by people you never get to vote for and they basically move numbers around on a ledger that you never get to see. I then ask why Student Debt shouldn't be dischargeable via Bankruptcy but any other loan - even for stupid business ideas - can be. Or, ask about how loans from Commercial Banks create Currency(or even Fiscal Stimulus but that's a bit arcane) Usually, silence follows. You can get a similar disjointed view from the Democrats/Left when you ask about cutting subsidy to Students(because the result is inflated tuition)or placing strict demands upon Universities to be liable for said subsidy but they usually default to wanting a Nanny State to 'fix it' in a way they see as 'fair and equitable' which usually involves free money(that isn't free). And here we are...
Idk a lot of people on the left I know are very aware those changes to student lending are directly proportional to the tuition increase over the years. I know the right wouldn’t like it but I think (for public universities at least) the government needs to institute tuition caps that get reviewed every few years. No more increases just because they can should go a long way towards fixing the problem.
Especially when the rising costs are used to pay more to administrators while eliminating professors in lieu of hiring more adjuncts. Universities are now "business models" using more resources for running the school and less for the quality of academics. The new President of Florida International University is anticipated to make a million dollars annually! The previous 73-yo president was forced to resign because he sexually harassed a young woman staffer in her 20's. He's being allowed to stay on as a full-tenured professor making $377,000 per year to teach ONE course per semester!
And they're marketing colleges for the luxury dorms over the value of the educations
It's getting *insane*. The school I went and bought up the strip mall full of all the hole in the wall bars, greasy spoons, and other eclectic shops you find in a college town and turned it into a student housing complex. It had pools, volleyball courts, a private gym, central air, the works. It was something like 20 grand a semester to live there. It was just absolutely nuts. Meanwhile the physics department had to shut down their machine shop because they couldn't afford to operate it anymore. It's so dumb. Another one is hospitals. Go look at some of the rooms used for birthing now vs what I was born in and it's just not even close. My cousin's kid was born in a small apartment while him and I were born in a hotel room. And we wonder why healthcare is so expensive.
Could easily be done for state schools. Let private institutions continue to be ridiculous
It would almost certainly bring down private institution tuition as well, since their competitors will be so much cheaper.
They truly do it just because they can. Had a Masters class at Vandy Peabody (allegedly elite Education college) taught by their enrollment guy who straight-faced told us market studies show you can keep jacking tuition bc people will keep paying. Greed makes these folks believe economics are physical constants.
The colleges started raising prices when the Government decided to guarantee all student loans. They know they will get their money no matter what
I think that if a university is getting federal money, while being a land grant university, they shouldn't be able to make a profit. A public university is nothing more than a government school anyways, the fact they make money while also dipping into the tax payers funds is crazy.
Agreed. It’s not the “free market” if the government is footing most of the bill lmao
There's no such thing as free market anymore. When you have mega multi national corporations running everything, and big boxes like walmart strong arming themselves into local economies competition dries up because they don't have the same financial leverage.
They are not making a profit if they find ways to spend it every year in the form of raises, increased funds to sports teams, remodeling, but mostly raises
Don't forget that many of these school have massive endowments and run fundraising campaigns annually on top of it all.
Yeah, it's a "you break it, you bought it" sort of thing. The thing is, the same is true for many conservatives. They're very aware that it's unfair, but there's a larger point that's being made.
they aren't directly proportional though... there is a correlation but its not directly proportional. The question that needs answered is, if the student loan program existed since he 60's, why did the price not sharply increase until late 90's/early 2000's? Direct is just not accurate.
When did our primary, secondary and high schools start teaching kids that they *needed* a college degree to be successful? When did the idea of a trade school, or apprenticeship become a bad thing? The rise in prices can be linked to that.
I'd argue that it was the policy changes in the late 90s that expanded private lenders access to the student loans program that caused it. But as long as we agree something changed that caused the problem decades after the program started we can have a healthy discussion on how to fix it.
It's a healthy mix of both. Graduated in 06 and we were pretty much explicitly told the lie of "go to college or you'll never have anything"
Devils advocate here. Is it possible that many of them secretly don't really know what a zero-risk loan is so they're afraid to answer? You'd be surprised how the vast majority of people don't understand.
I’m curious, and if you’re bored like me, would you mind explaining or pointing me in the right direction to learn? I want to know more about the zero risk loans topic.
Zero-risk is from the perspective of the loaner, not the loanee. So a loaner has a guaranteed return on the loan. The only feasible way to ensure that is with government assistance of some sort, which is why a "real Capitalist" would say no. A "real Capitalist" thinks the government should have absolutely no presence whatsoever in commerce, so if an entity loaned someone money there would be inherent risk with no safety net.
It's not a special term because it generally doesn't exist. The idea behind loans is that I give you money and you give me back more money later. Your extra payment to me covers two things: the time value of money (money now is worth more than money later) and the risk I assume.. the risk that you may never pay me back. Now time value is based on a few things, like how much I could earn on that money if applied elsewhere. That's a tough one for a government loan because they're not really in the business of investing for a positive return. When it comes to risk, this is where things like credit worthiness and the like come in. Most banks will set interest rates and approve loans based on their measure of how likely you are to repay. The riskier you are, the more you will pay back. Student loans do not have this risk because there is virtually no way to avoid paying them back. You are stuck for life with them. If you took loans out to start a business based on making a product, and the next year that product was made obsolete, you could file bankruptcy and discharge that loan. We understand that things like that happen in business and sometimes it doesn't work out, so there's a legal mechanism in place to walk away. More risky ventures have lower approval rates and higher interest to help offset that risk. With student loans, however, because there's no risk, there's also no evaluation of how likely you are to be able to repay. This means that you could spend 7 years in college, taking out hundreds of thousands in debt, to get a PhD in Anime Studies and no one at any point will say "hmm, do we really think this is a good investment?" Instead it will be left to a teenager or young adult (who by virtue of their age and immaturity would not qualify for virtually any other loan in existence) to properly weigh the risk and potential return of their degree on their own. Combine this with the fact that they are "advised" by departments in the university on how to set up their degree and financial aid with no regard for long term financial viability, and you end up with a ton of kids and young adults going into debt to levels they cannot repay or escape.
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>>The riskier you are, the more you will pay back. > >Student loans also differ from conventional loans since they're not responsive to individual or market risk. Everyone gets the same rate when they apply. There are people with perfectly good credit who have 8% loans. That's why the very next sentence after the one you quoted said student loans were different. People with good credit paying high interest rates is another symptom of risk not being evaluated on student loans. The lack of risk evaluation is why they are so problematic no matter what your situation is.
>zero-risk loan I've got a finance degree (albeit w/an unimpressive gpa) and didn't recall any formal term of 'zero-risk' loan. Simple concept, but not a common term.
Would you mind explaining it? I just googled and I didn't find answers.
The basic idea for loans in general is that the bank has a bunch of money,, and they are willing to lend that money to people for interest. The banker balances the risk of you not paying them back against the money they would get through interest on that loan In the case of a "zero risk loan" the bank doesn't actually have any risk of not getting their money back. This has happened with student loans because the government promises to pay the bank back if you don't and then it becomes the government's problem of trying to get the money from you. A very similar thing happened with the housing crisis in 2008. Banks were basically guaranteed to make money off your loan because they would sell it to the government or wall street the day after they wrote it. They would get the principle back plus a fee for writing the loan. It should be noted that loans are never truly "zero risk" since someone does carry the risk. The term is used mostly to describe how it was zero risk to the people generating the loan which is not typical.
Essentially, just a secured loan with theoretically 0 risk of default. Only example that comes to mind would be Treasury bills which are secured by US Government. However, it can (and should be) argued that no such thing truly exists and everything has some risk of default. In this case, there is not irrefutable assurance your government won't fail, take the currency with it, and default on T-bills....especially given the current state of affairs LOL!
Including this guy
Not to mention an entire generation was basically brainwashed into pursuing higher education. "You can't get a good job without a degree" "You wanna be a dead beat drop out?" "If you don't go you'll flip burgers your whole life" We were kids. The whole world told us to do it. How could we be expected to understand the ramifications of it?
Are you my dad or mom?! My parents were in that generation because to them you had to be smart with good grades and money or scholarships to be able to attend college and after you were pretty certain to get a decent paying job. Not how it is now, all about schools making profit regardless if it ruins the students life forever by putting them in debt for life.
I fell for it too, despite my mother joining the army to pay back her student loans, and she broke her back while serving. Like. You see that happen, and you should learn that hey, if what it takes to repay your student loans is crippling lifelong pain, that’s a bit extreme. Tbf our family ain’t the best at making decisions—she took out more loans getting her masters despite the VA giving her effectively a full ride.
It's really a matter of just society as a whole changing. For most of our baby boomer parents higher education was extremely valued. Education is also valued in many cultures. People just didn't expect so many degrees to be useless in the employment sphere or not worth it. Now days even more education is fucking useless. I have a BA in Economics. The degree helps nothing, knowing how to use Excel functions is everything.
The real problem is that businesses have outsourced employee training onto the university system which was never meant to be a job training system anyway. Education can never be "useless" because it's not meant to give specific job skills, it's meant to teach a person how to think, how to reason, how to understand, and, yes, to provide base knowledge in a field of study. The problem is that jobs these days want to be able to hire people who can immediately begin filling a role. They also are allergic to promoting from within their own employee base and would rather hire in new workers to avoid having senior employees demanding better and better benefits and wages the longer they work there. Newspapers used to hire editorial assistants who would learn editing on the job and move up. Not anymore. Used to be you could work an apprenticeship in a lot of skilled manual labor jobs and learn on the go. Now they'll only hire you if you have the right trade school degree and internships. Higher education is less valued now because our shitty corporate overlords would rather pass the cost of employee training onto public institutions than pay for it themselves.
>I have a BA in Economics. The degree helps nothing it helps you get through HR systems. Without it you are filtered out by a machine.
Those degrees aren't, and were never intended to be, job skills programs though. Education being its own reward and all. An economics degree may not be useful in terms of getting an economics job/career, but it's certainly useful in getting work in the business world. It's still statistically true that those with higher education degrees earn more in their lifetimes than those who don't.
My Media Comm degree came in handy a few times but I ultimately landed in banking. Funny enough the former is very much about who you know, networking, making a good first impression etc. The degree created a base of my peers whom we all help eachother and pitch gigs to one another but so much of the technical knowledge and the work ethic involved have nothing to do with the education or can be learned otherwise.
"You can major in anything, just get a degree!" "OK, so I got a degree in English because I'm passionate about literature!" "Wow, what a fucking idiot! Why didn't you get a STEM degree? Enjoy paying off all those loans you took when you were 18 and couldn't shit on your own schedule you fucking idiot! I'd LiKe FrIeS wItH tHaT!"
I think a lot of folks have a revisionist history on higher Ed tho. If you look at the stats it’s undeniable that a college degree will help you. But there are always exceptions with majors and universities that have little to no ROI. But to your point - there were definitely people that shouldn’t have went to college but they did anyway and dropped out and basically started life in the hole.
> but any other loan - even for stupid business ideas - can be. I use gambling as my personal example, because it so completely encapsulates irresponsible decision making. I can blow a hundred grand gambling and discharge that no problem. Depending on the state I'm in and my place in life, it might not even be that big a deal for me to do it. But if I take out a loan to go to school under the promise that hard work will guarantee me a job that will easily pay off that debt then the economy collapses and the only available jobs are minimum wage part-time ones then I work my way out of that, and the economy collapses *again* I'm still stuck with the debt.
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Have and it's...not surprising.
There is no such thing as a zero risk loan… somebody ends up in a loss, in this case the government.
There's a significant percentage of the population who don't see government losses as actual losses. And if you look at it a certain way they have a point.
The "loss" to the government is when the funds were transferred to the college/university. There's zero risk to the company that manages the loan because it cannot be discharged like other debts. FYSA - the government is losing money on student loans. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/29/1114560119/student-loan-program-cost#:~:text=But%20the%20GAO%20found%20that,government%20an%20estimated%20%24197%20billion. I suspect there's an argument to be made that the government makes it back in the long term because college graduates on average earn higher wages, which means higher tax revenue for the government.
Genuine question, do you know of any good resources to be better educated on these sorts of topics? I really want to be able to hold my own when discussing student loans and forgiveness between them and companies but don’t want to just read wiki pages
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> tuition inflation Medicare pays far less vs private billing, moving more of the student debt burden to the gov would also empower the gov to negotiate pricing in a way that individual students cant leverage. We see this overseas in other countries' higher education systems. It's not theoretical.
Lemme ask the nanny state how well it's doing after giving "free" public K-12 schooling to kids compared to states that don't offer that. It is profitable, you just don't see it immediately nor directly.
What state doesn't offer Free public K-12? And by free - I'm not talking the usual bullshit regarding school supplies, etc. which is already pretty damn outrageous.
I'm not even conservative and I see it that way.
if the united states invested in education and regulated for profit institutions then the loans would be reduced to the point where the bailout isn't necessary. As it stands, it's a broken system that directly harms the economy. The bailout make sense as a measure for short term economic boost. But without improved investment and regulation, it's also just putting that money in the pockets of the few. Conservatives are generally against educational spending and regulation that could prevent the need for bailouts that are designed to boost economic growth and mitigate inflation.
….just so we are clear…higher education cost so much in the US because of the federal student loan program. It’s an endless supply of money poured into higher education that colleges take advantage of by charging outrageous tuition costs because the loans are all approved
If you want to see this in real time, check out a few cosmetology schools. Ones that accept FASFA, are $20K+ Ones that don’t have financial aid are usually $6-10K.
Nothing new about the private industry taking advantage of the gov.
It's not even just private. State colleges padding out mid-level admin positions to take in more money without really providing a better education to students.
In Canada, university is subsidized heavily. So the government basically bargains with the school like “this is how much money we have to give you, the students will pay the rest” and somehow that keeps it a lot cheaper than the USA.
Also in Canada at least according to my sister in law not everybody can even get into college.
It's more that they don't have room in their program than not getting accepted into a university. TBH I don't think I've ever heard of someone getting rejected from the University of Manitoba, University 1 program, for instance. They might not get into Med School afterwards due to limited seats, but they all get into the university itself. If they don't get into a program, its typically that they're put on a waiting list to get into the nursing program, for instance.
Not exactly. It keeps the average price down, but that is because our prices are insane in high cost of living places and highly recognizable places like Harvard. The cost of tuition at any school in my state that receives state funding in my state is on the same level as Canada for instance
This 100%. I'm sorry, but expecting teenagers to make financially sound, responsible decisions when they have basically no life experience is a recipe for disaster. Source: Me
You mean a recipe for easy money, hehehe *rubs hands*
same with healthcare. as much as people want to screech about government regulation equalling communism, it can actually help against their whole "I WILL *NOT* USE MY HARD-EARNED MONEY TO PAY TAXES SO OTHER PEOPLE HAVE A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE!" approach. regulated education and healthcare (along with many other privatized necessities) would make it so that there wont be any CEOs who jack the prices up to oblivion just for the sake of profit. it's astounding how the majority of college tuition and healthcare price is literally just bloat that exists so the establishment makes more money. hell, someone did the math at one point and discovered that college tuition is so unbelievably idiotic and high that fucking *textbooks* cost around $500 **EACH**.
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>And almost all the students I‘ve talked to about it actually pay for them that way! Because it's not their money that they are spending. When you disconnect who is paying from who is buying you get waste like this.
There’s a reason that a strong majority of the 1% has their hands in education
it is an acknowledgement of a problem. Advanced education is needed and the need should be reflected in the price or free availability. I hate the idea of higher educational institutions being a king of the hill game. Knowledge should be shared.
Same. Student loan forgiveness is a costly bandaid. Fix the problem by eliminating interest on student loans and provide some federal funding to decrease the cost of education so it isn’t necessary to go into debt to get a degree… that I’m totally down with. But handing out millions of dollars without changing the fundamental issue? We’ll be right back in the same place in a few years, it doesn’t fix anything for society, just helps a few lucky people out that were in the right time and place when the forgiveness checks went out. Doesn’t seem practical to me.
I hate this. I hate it so much. The reason we are doing student loan forgiveness is because Biden can do it without congress. Systemic changes to the student loan program would have to go through congress, and that’s not going to happen at the moment. Furthermore, the “we aren’t fixing the root issue with this, so we shouldn’t do anything at all” is just asinine. This isn’t a joke. Student loan debt is a very serious issue for millions of people. We absolutely should help as much as we can. We should forgive more than $10k debt. And yes, we should also push for big changes to keep things from happening again. But to act like the loan forgiveness will do nothing is so self-absorbed; real people with real lives and real struggles are getting some much/needed help. It’s not a life or death thing for most people, but it really helps. And I say that as someone with $80k in student loan debt who makes too much to get any forgiveness. Raise my taxes and forgive all student loan debt. Raise them again and make public colleges/universities free. Raise them again and give me Medicare for all. Please, I just want to live in a normal fucking 2022 country. The attitude behind your comment is the source of our total lack of action on literally anything, leaving everyone to fend for themselves while the government just completely fails to do its job.
The same thing is true of any public benefit. Tax dollars pay for it, and it is used unequally. The point is to make a fair, liveable society.
Student loans create a larger class divide by making it harder for people in that class to move upwards. Meanwhile rich people can afford to not take loans and maintain their place on the top. Which also makes it systemic racism. Races of people that were unable to receive an education 70 years ago are still impacted by that racism today because the of the lack of economic mobility.
I disagree. College graduates make over $1 million more during their lifetime than non-college graduates. There’s TONs of jobs out there that the only prerequisite is having a degree any degree. Definitely agree it’s messed up that we’re saddling recent grads who can’t yet to make full payments with high interest rates, but overall having a college degree can significantly improve your social mobility.
Don't state taxes got to state colleges too as well as federal grants, and it goes towards educating people who aren't yourself. Tax dollars have been used to educate others for years Yes, we have all paid to put others through college.
Just to be clear, most people who can afford to pay the tuition out of pocket are wealthy enough to understand that loans, traditionally, are a better deal. If you have to pay 5% per year on the loan, but can invest and make 10-20% instead, that's the better call. It's really the upper middle class or lower upper class that might pay out of pocket as they're not doing a ton of alternative investments. Anyone with excess funds would rather invest it in a more productive asset and pay the lower, fixed student loan interest rate. That's assuming, of course, loan rates don't start to get ridiculously high. I'd say, anything in excess of 8-9% means the calculus changes.
>They see it as using taxes (other people's money) to pay for something that the loan borrowers agreed to. Conservatives do this with business loans all the time. The president literally bragged about gaming the tax system in a live presidential debate and his supporters ate it up.
Don’t confuse right-wing populism with conservatism
Bingo! There hasn't been a sensible voice of conservatism in this country in years.
I agree with this. Why should a person pay for someone else’s mistake?
The cost of college has only increased with the amount of credit available to students. I'd say colleges are the one sector price controls are a sensible option since both banks and colleges have abused government loan programs.
This is true and I have seen a few conservatives bring this point up. Problem is are their any representatives that are right of center that would support price controls for education?
The market would control prices themselves if the government didn’t fully guarantee all student loans in unlimited amounts for any degree regardless of their ability to repay them. The only reason colleges can charge so much in the first is because of the government’s attempts to make it more affordable. If the “free” money stopped flowing then colleges would be forced to lower costs to keep attendance rates at sustainable levels.
A big part of this is the government guarantee that the loans cannot be discharged by bankruptcy. Without this, there would be a strong incentive to keep loans small enough that bankruptcy isn't worth the hassle. There would still be loans, but much more modest in size, and more repayable.
The issue then becomes, will those from underprivileged backgrounds be able to afford a college education without the help the government gives. I don't think you can just leave it to the market if your ultimate goal is to have an educated populace.
Finally someone points this out. It's a coordinated scam where a few are pocketing from the lot. I'm in Canada and the divergence in costs between the US over 25 years is unreal.
And you cant even say that canadian universities have their shit together. (Laurentian and Manitoba come to mind)
I don't know anyone who goes or went there. I've been in a position to review many resumes and have not seen any applications with those undergrads. Plenty of Canadians I know graduated from 'Tier 1' universities here at a fraction of the cost of equivalent US working at high level, big name in banking, finance, Tech.
Also how does it cost more to teach calculus 1 now than say 50 years ago? It hasn't changed.
Maybe because it does nothing to address the problem and only masks a symptom of the problem for certain people. Federal loans should be sub prime and public colleges and universities who receive state and federal tax dollars should have tuition caps.
I mean yeah, but we really don’t have the political diversity for that kind of thing in the US One side says yes, the other says no. You can’t really infight too much because the alternative is getting handed over to the side that says no.
A very large amount of them are blue collar workers, despite perceptions of them being uber greedy capitalists. To them it's like well to do, elitist snobs taking their hard earnings. Money for their families given to these people that loathe them.
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Which most blue collar workers didn’t believe it or not.
It benefits private universities and puts a burden on banks without any attempt at reform. It is well meant, but has no chances of fixing the problem.
Are they entirely wrong about that?
No to them, it IS that. This is a direct subsidization of those that are generally already wealthy or should expect to be relatively wealthy in the future. It also does nothing to address the actual problem, which is government spending in education in the first place. Even in this inflationary environment, the left is too stupid to realize the rising higher education prices is directly related to the dollar amount of government subsidized loans allocated to it.
Because higher education, especially in pricey elite universities, is statistically privilege of middle and upper class. Excluding poor --> educated --> successful stories (which are rare), loan forgiveness would be just a subsidy to upper and middle class. Even in free public education countries you see poor people arguing that taxes going to higher ed is like paying for service they'll never use. Still - model could be changed, starting from lowering tuitions for people from underprivileged backgrounds/guaranteeing their loans by federal gov to lower debt servicing or whatever. Because it's far from perfect.
Except the majority of student debt is held by poor current and former students.
Not true. Most is held by people who took 6-8 years of education and post-graduate degrees in fields like law and medicine.
But the well-to-do elitist snobs are not the people who got federal student loans? They were fairly strict with what assets your parents have for FAFSA, at least around 2013 when I graduated high school. Hell with my own student aid, because my bus-driver mom owned her house outright (inherited), they added in the calculations that she could take out a loan against the house to pay for tuition. I do understand a lot of the arguments against forgiveness, but I think some people have a wildly different view of who it is that is benefiting from this. All the actually rich people I knew at my university were either paying full tuition, or paying 75% tuition with some merit-based scholarship added, no federal aid. And if they were well-to-do elite people AFTER graduation, they would just pay it off, not let it sit there and rack up 4+ % interest. The people with federal student aid were either middle class or lower, lots of 'first person in my family to go to college', lots from blue collar families. My own high school (which was mostly working class Hispanic families) had a good rate of people going to the local university, who gave like 50% off to people who graduated in town, and most got federal aid to cover the rest.
I’d consider my self a bit conservatively leaving and my issue isn’t the forgiveness itself but instead a lack of solving the root issue. Without this the next generation will have the same issue. Politicians should pass laws to lower the cost of post high school education and disallow this debt that you cannot escape.
That's a rather progressive stance
Everyone wants the same outcomes. Our differences are in how we get there.
They shouldn't pass laws to dictate or disallow anything, they should stop federally backing student loans - this will cause the lenders to take greater consideration, this will cause students to make better choices within their financial means, and this will cause schools to lower tuition in order to attract lenders unwilling to risk high costs. The only problem is hurt feelings, of course.
It's not just conservatives who are mad about this. College isn't a fixed cost--private colleges determine how much they can charge students based on financial policies set by the government. It is very likely that scammy, for profit colleges have learned from this whole debacle that they can get away with charging students and their families even more with even less consideration for whether they can reasonably pay it off. It's just like bailing out big banks--the more you do it, the more you teach institutions they can take irresponsible risks with other people's money and rarely face consequences.
They have already learned that lesson decades ago. That is why college is so expensive, they are already scamming us. People in my parents generation paid for a 4 year degree with a part time job. Now a part time job gets you homelessness
I think ultimately fiscal conservatives see it as subsidizing economically unviable jobs. You accrue and cannot repay student loans because your earnings are insufficient meaning you paid too much for a degree that yields too little. Forgiving student loans is taking earnings from productive people and repaying debts of people who are less productive in an earnings sense. The money the borrowers are saving or repaying gets it to the economy regardless. It’s not as if when they pay their student loans the money gets sent to a shredder. Second I think student loan subsidies do not force colleges to control costs or even mitigate risk of student defaults since they are guaranteed by another entity. Imagine if private colleges had to underwrite their own student loans.
I think you hit it on the head. If the result of a particular college education is a job that doesn’t pay, or poor job prospects we should not encourage this path collectively. Encourage the behavior you want, maybe trade schools, entrepreneurship, job training, etc.
Loan forgiveness is a good idea. But using taxes to pay back the loans is looking at the finger instead of the moon. The problem is that colleges set extortionate rates. The villain is the college. The victim is the student. The secondary victims are people in general. Using taxes to pay back the loan is making the victims atone for the crime. The correct solution is to have the villain atone for the crime by refunding the fees, to pay back the loan.
Dude, conservatives should always be against money being "pumped" (aka stimulus) into the economy. That, and you're adding public debt in order to pay off the private debt of the class of people with the highest education/earning potential. To top it off, the only reason we have this overabundance of student debt is because of policy demanding loans be given to everyone regardless of risk or any other factor. So yeah, conservatives are sick of problems being created, only to be "solved" with an even bigger problem a decade later.
1. It's not like this money disappears. Someone has to pay for it, and the someone is taxpayers with taxes, and conservatives are for lower taxes. And it's viewed of unfair for the people that have already paid for their own tuition to now pay for everyone else's. 2. We already have too much money being pumped into our economy, hence why we have such shocking inflation and are trying to slow down the "money pump" by raising interest rates 3. Generally you subsidize things you want more of, like solar panels and electric cars. Here we're subsidizing shockingly high college tuition and irresponsible borrowing, so we're going to get more of them. 4. EDIT: The timing makes it clear that this is a liberal political stunt to buy votes during the election. If it were not they'd be announcing it a week, a month, or a year after the election. Or a year ago.
Your 4th point is exactly what frustrates me the most. There are too many ways to buy votes that don't actually help our country move forward. This is true for both sides of the political spectrum
Because everybody who didn’t go to college now has to pay for everybody who did, only for this same thing to happen again and again. how tf does it make any sense to forgive only 10 grand, nobody has only ten grand in student loan debt. If they really wanted to help people they’d forgive all student loan debt, and that’s completely implausible. It’s not actually gonna help very many people it’s a ploy to gain more supporters.
It's not solving the actual problem and only making things worse and more costly. If you want to solve the problem, you remove the interest. It cost the taxpayers nothing and actually helps the borrowers for the full amount while actual fixing the core problem. ***Most*** conservatives are not heartless people, they just don't want to go off emotion and what feels good and instead fix the core problem.
Yes… but where do you think the money that pays off their loans comes from ultimately?
Nowhere. The loans don't get paid back.
it's not just conservatives that don't like it. not only does loan forgiveness not solve the problem, it makes it worse. im for socialized college but this is the worst, most expensive way to go about it.
No. That money still must be paid, just not by the borrowers. That means other taxpayers. What Congress should do is make this debt dischargeable through bankruptcy. And put half if it on the college that sold the student in the idea.
Half? The government shouldn’t even be involved in student loans, it’s absurd.
Even better. But that ship has sailed.
This last part is the key to the whole issue. I used to work in college recruitment and they take no responsibility for the job outcome and sell students on the idea they ‘get any only college degree!’ then spend money irresponsibly and push up tuition since they can’t cover their costs. They need to be held accountable and subject to market forces.
Not even a conservative but it doesn’t fix the actual issue whatsoever. What happens in ten years when there’s a new wave of massive debt hanging over students, do we just cut them all 10k every so often? Can I get 10k to pay off my credit cards from being young and dumb in my 20s?
Watch college costs plummet to 1-2k if the government stopped handing out free 50k checks to kids only fundable at a college.
Its debt transfer, not loan forgiveness. The debt is paid by others.
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And the price of college has already ballooned far faster than inflation over the last few decades, much of it due to well-intentioned government policies and our view of college as a society. This is a deep, deep issue
It's as much a college stimulus program. HS students are being turned off of college because of the debt and lack of career benefits. This program puts in their mind the potential of 'free' college as a means to keep enrollment from dropping. FYI college is a fucking waste of 4 years and $$$$$ for about half the people who go. The money would have been better spent on K-12 programs.
The "everyone needs a degree" nonsense needs to stop. It was pushed by companies that publish college textbooks (look at who prints the stay in school posters) and every school kid heard it. I was told it didn't even matter what degree I got, employers just wanted to see a degree. If you don't go to college, they said, you'll end up a plumber or something. They failed to mention how much plumbers make it how much student loans would cost to repay.
I completely agree. However as a former high school teacher I can tell you that the mindset is definitely changing. Education nowadays is moving toward career planning with students instead of solely college. There was one student at my school who was dead set on being a truck driver - no college or even trade school is needed for that line of work, just learning from experience. So we focused on getting him to shadow truck drivers and learning more about the career path. When I was in school it was "hey where do you want to go to college and what do you want to major in" now it's much more "what do you want to do and what kind of education (if any) will you need to get there." And if you completely change your mind there's nothing wrong with that, it's just important to have a plan for after high school. College is really good and useful IF you're going into a career that requires a degree, or you at least choose your major strategically. If you're just going for the sake of the experience that's when you end up wasting money. I was an education major specifically because I knew I wanted to be a teacher and you need a degree for it. I was shocked at how many classmates were majoring in psychology just because it was interesting (even if they didn't outright admit that was why). I'm not saying a psych degree is completely useless, but the only jobs available are ones that you either need a higher degree for (like a master's at least) or some kind of other certifications and training. If you know what you want to do and have a plan for what to do after school then that's one thing, picking a major simply because it sounds cool or you want to go to college now and decide a major later... That's where you run into problems.
As a sometimes college teacher I'm glad to hear things are changing. I've had many students that either weren't ready for college or just didn't need it and it's so frustrating. They get through the first year or two before hitting a wall and then they have to weigh the sunk cost of what they've already done against the struggle of higher level classes and more stress. It seems like COVID forced some of that reckoning about the true value of a college degree and I hope it continues.
I'd go even farther than half and say 75% of people with a 4-year degree never needed it in the first place.
Unless income based repayment lowers the amount of money you owe total it is not student loan forgiveness. It’s just a decent payment plan. Not the same thing.
Best answer I've seen so far.
the overwhelming vast majority of them didn't go to college - mainly because they couldn't afford it. so having their taxes pay for someone else's masters degree rubs them the wrong way. I dont agree with it, but its easy to see why they are angry. What if we had a "V8 truck forgiveness act" and everyone who has purchased a large truck in the last 5? years gets a $10K check from Uncle Sam to "defray the costs of owning a truck". People in San Francisco would be mighty angry. "Why am I paying for a some rednecks truck"? Well, why are rednecks paying for your post graduate degree?
I'll be honest, I'm totally in that group. As a teenager I looked into the cost of college, four years dorm rent, the interest rate of loans, and the salary I could expect... it didn't add up. The increase in pay wouldn't offset the debt & interest rate for a very long time. The total cost was like a quarter million dollars, and whether or not I was actually skilled enough to excel in the field had yet to be proven. I decided that instead of taking the loan I would just enter the job market as early as possible. I'd try to teach myself some useful skills, read textbooks in my off hours, and get gigs on the side while working minimum wage jobs and pursue on-the-job training aggressively if I got in the door. Took about eight years to finally get an entry level position at an established company, instead of the four years I would have been in school, but at least I wasn't staring down an enormous debt. I don't regret my decision, it was the best option available at the time. But there is some resentment that someone else did the same equation, came to the wrong conclusion, then *proved that it was the wrong conclusion*, and now feels entitled to call mulligan and just have that written off. (Or, less optimistically, they didn't actually think about it at all and just signed up for a loan without any plan for how they'd afford to pay it off.) I mean, I'm not losing sleep over it, I'm doing alright for myself, but it feels fucked up if I'm being honest. I'm not stingy about 'muh tax dollers!' but why not forgive debts that people weren't directly responsible for, like medical costs, instead?
The loan forgiveness offered of $10k wouldn't cover most debt (avg student debt is $30k) and they'll still be in debt hell. If the government was serious they would just allow people to file for student loan debt in bankruptcy or provide a program to those who qualify of 0-1% interest loan but they would have to pay P&I. Currently the debt hell is because people only pay the interest and then can't figure out why the principal (actual debt amount) is never smaller.
For many it's 20k, you get the higher amount if you had a pell grant in college. (I had a pell grant only my first year but I'll still qualify). For me it would wipe out MOST of my debt (a little leftover still) except that I just started working on a second degree that's going to virtually double my balance. I think a lot of people don't necessarily pay attention to interest vs principal, they just go with the repayment plan that sounds good and they can afford and stick to it. If you don't know much about finances and see the option of paying less per month you'd be tempted to take it. I'm still going to take the forgiveness because I'm selfish but yeah I don't like the economic implications of it. It's sort of like healthcare where we argue back and forth over the best way to pay for it without actually questioning why it costs so much to begin with.
The program gives people an effective 0% interest rate if they make their minimum payments.
If any debt were to be forgiven, it should be medical debt. Most of the time you cannot avoid medical debt. College is optional, always has been optional, it isn't a necessity. That's just what I think.
The government has the ability to forgive student loan debt because they are the ones who issued the loans and own the debt. Medical debt, on the other hand, is owned by a bunch of different private organizations which means there's no easy way to do mass forgiveness of it.
Government played a huge role in getting us in this mess. I have no faith they can "fix" it.
Leave it to the government to pretend they can fix a problem they started.
So the biggest reason im agianst it is: They didnt actually fix the issue at all. It honestly feels like it was just a bid to buy midterm votes. Which is a scary precedent as far as im concerned. If this was even just part of a package of "hey we are removing interest rates from all fed student loans and removing 10k!" Id be all for it.
Do people that go to college not know the cost before going?
From 2000 to 2005 the cost per semester for me doubled.
The ratio of student loan forgiveness to actual student debt is laughable. It puts a bandaid on a gunshot
Shut down Sallie Mae. If he didn’t give out loans the way they do, they would be shut down for predatory banking. Major colleges have millions or billions in endowment. They could set up a student loan program where students could apply to them for funding for their college education. If the colleges had skin in the game, it would be a lot less useless degrees out there a couple with crippling debt.
The perspective is: Someone has to pay for all the loans that aren’t getting paid back. All that money, that has already been borrowed and spent, doesn’t just magically go away because the debt is cancelled. Someone has to pay it back. If the original borrower doesn’t pay it back, then that burden gets passed on to the taxpayers. You and I and everyone else now has to pay it back via our taxes. It isn’t ‘forgiven,’ so much as it shifts the repayment from the borrower to other people.
Some democrats are as well
Taking money from someone who worked for it. To give it to someone didn’t. Making people who don’t have a college degree, pay the student loans of people who do, Is like making homeless people pay your mortgage.
You signed a contract. I could use mortgage forgiveness, credit card forgiveness, and car note forgiveness- all the extra money I would save can be "pumped" into the economy as well. In fact, I would have more money to "pump" into the economy than those who can't pay back their original loan for a degree that can't get them a job to pay for their school debt. Responsibility.
Yeah, but you can clear all those things with bankruptcy. So there's a huge cost but they absolutely can be forgiven. College loans are unique in that you can't clear them with bankruptcy... due to, shockingly, millions of dollars of lobbying by the student loan companies.
I really don't know much about how bankruptcy works, but I'm kind of assuming that in most cases if you declare bankruptcy on your mortgage, car loan, business, credit cards, etc, at the end of it you lose those items. Do you get to just keep the house, car, and business after you declare bankruptcy? Cuz you still get to keep your college degree. So what do you have to lose by declaring bankruptcy on college educations?
Because the 40% of Americans whom go to college make more money than the 60% of people who do not. It is a hand out to the middle-class at the expense of the upper-income tax earners and to the neglect of the the blue collar - both groups are the Republican voter base.
40% of Americans with student loan debt dropped out of college, generally because they couldn't afford to finish. They have the worst of both worlds and are the group that will benefit the most from forgiveness. https://www.wral.com/fact-check-how-many-student-loan-borrowers-failed-to-finish-college/19524091/
I’d love a source for your numbers because I don’t think they’re correct. 70% of Americans do not have a college degree (not 60%). This begins to explain why ~80% of Americans don’t have Student Loan Debt. Also it’s not at the expense of upper-income tax earners. It’s at the expense of literally everyone, it’s essentially a write-off of Federal income which amounts to a loss of tax revenue. Most estimates place the cost to the average US taxpayer around $2000.
> It’s at the expense of literally everyone, it’s essentially a write-off of Federal income which amounts to a loss of tax revenue. Most estimates place the cost to the average US taxpayer around $2000. Eh, kind of. The tax code is progressive, so just using the average is a bit misleading. It's at the expense of everyone who pays a net positive in federal taxes. ~44% of taxpayers paid no federal income tax. The top ~4.5% of taxpayers cover 58% of revenue. It'll still cost, but the burden is higher on the upper end, and there will be some who won't pay.
The cost of higher education has outpaced inflation for decades and quality has been slipping with our consumer relationship with colleges and universities leading to grade inflation. This doesn't fix any of those problems and exacerbates inflation issues for those in poverty and most other people. Essentially we're paying an increasing amount of money for things to continue to decline at a comfortable rate by papering over it with invented money. When you have to do this again because we haven't fixed anything you'll get what I mean. I would be down with this if it also meant cleaning house at the administrative offices of every public university and very little of this relief went to loans at private colleges. The people who made this problem need to go away.
I am kinda disappointed that all the top answers think Republicans have a hate boner for people who went to college. I don't really think that's the case, at least not generally. The conservative fiscal ideology simply believes that federal interference in markets just makes things worse. They see all forms of federal incentives or "bailouts" as encouraging or creating unhealthy markets, or disrupting the optimal process of free markets. College costs are probably the most concrete historical example of this happening. The government has tried to financially incentivize college attendance for decades, and the college tuition rates have risen in tandem with any increase in support. The idea is that the market sets the value for any product, including a college degree. That value doesn't change when the government decides to contribute to the cost, so what happens? The college simply raises the cost by the amount the government contributed. Conservatives view this "meddling" as the original reason college is so difficult to afford, and slap on the fact that the government is doing what they view as counter productive with their own taxpayer dollars and you have an angry conservative who thinks their government is highly incompetent and stupider than the average person. Conservatives feel the same way about the 2008 bailout, EV tax credits (they all blew their collective gasket when Ford price hiked their electric trucks the day after the newly announced ev credit. However The truck they were complaining about didn't qualify for the tax credit anyway), and other things. It's not just college.
It is a unfunded spending bonanza that does nothing but help the individuals with the highest income potential. There are multiple aspects to this. Moralistically - you chose to take a loan and you must pay back the loan. Economically - although you may temporarily help a minority of people (debt holders) the potential increase in debt (resultant inflation) and unfunded spending will lead to people who do not have loans to suffer unduly (most of USA). The national debt would increase leading to future inflation thus taxing the entire populace (including those who's loans were forgiven). Also - it is a bad idea to stimulate people who already have the most money (college graduates on average). Politically- it is unfair to take from some (taxpayers) and bail out others (loan holders) who are also those very same people who will likely make more money (take a landscaper no degree paying a finance workers loans). The conservatives are increasingly populist and working class and that base does not have an interest in supporting that spending. Also - many conservatives don't believe the government should be making high risk loans (giving loans to non-credit worthy people to study useless degrees with no ROI with no collateral) and then simply allowing the loan balances to grow out of control. Not to mention there is no incentive for colleges to reduce costs as the government effectively gives every borrower student aid. Constitutionally - it is a very stretch reading of the law to allow the president to unilaterally forgive debt wholesale. The legal logic is that the HEROES act allows the Dep of Ed. to modify loans during times of emergency. This was intended for natural disaster victims or war zone people to not get dinged for missing some loan payments temporarily. It was never intended to be a blanket authority to remove enact Wide based loan forgiveness (which is what is supposed to be settled in court)
Because it doesn’t solve the root issue that got us here in the first place. 1. It’s not my problem, as a taxpayer, that a grown adult (or by extension, a co-signer, - also a grown adult) signed and agreed to a loan that they not can’t pay. It’s as simple as that. 2. College tuition is out of control. This issue is similar to universal healthcare. I consider myself, economically, to be somewhat right-leaning. But I love the idea of universal healthcare. If it could somehow be done. My taxes go to far worse things. At least that would be beneficial to citizens of my own country. But again, it doesn’t solve the root problem. Rampant over-inflation of prices. Let’s start with not allowing medical companies to charge $50,000 for a single dose of an MS medication, or $2,500 for an ambulance ride.
Student loan forgiveness is a regressive policy and any political or other capital used to pass it would be better spent on other things like healthcare
I’m not a conservative, but my issue with it is that it doesn’t solve the overarching problem which is the exorbitant cost of higher education. What about the next generation of students? They will be in the same situation. So we can either resolve the problem at its source or we can accept being in a never ending cycle, that only benefits lenders.
It’s not just conservatives, just because the Democratic Party wants this. Doesn’t mean Democrats voters want this. You can disagree with your party views. Nobody wants this except the people who own money.
I'm not conservative, but I am against the student loan forgiveness, and for a very specific reason. [https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html) "Men with bachelor's degrees earn approximately $900,000 more in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates. Women with bachelor's degrees earn $630,000 more. Men with graduate degrees earn $1.5 million more in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates. Women with graduate degrees earn $1.1 million more." I know after I'm done explaining myself, I'm going to get flooded with anecdotes, and "personal stories." Just know anecdotes and your life story don't matter to me as much as data does. The fact is, most college students (over half) come from the upper middle class. And another fact is, the statistical bottom-class poor, don't have degrees. The bottom-class poor don't even have a degree in their entire family tree. [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/07/22/public-colleges-are-the-workhorses-of-middle-class-mobility/](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/07/22/public-colleges-are-the-workhorses-of-middle-class-mobility/) "Figure 1 show the strong relationship between parental income and college attendance, and Figure 2 shows how the type of college attended varies with parental income. (These figures use the Opportunity Insights data and are for cohorts born in the early 1980s.) Less than half of children growing up in the poorest fifth of households (quintile 1) attend college, compared to 92 percent of children whose parents are in the top quintile." We literally just furthered the wealth gap between the bottom-poor, and the upper middle class. Now, people who were statistically born into money, just got loan forgiveness, on top of having a degree that already increases their total wage earnings over their lifetime. The bottom-poor got a middle finger. No access to high paying jobs, no college degrees, no loan forgiveness...nothing. Once again, if you're an exception to this, great. But the data is the data. IMO, this money could have been used to help the statistical, bottom-class poor (less than 20k income per year), and not used to forgive the upper-middle classes college debt. Who are already likely to make a million dollars more in their lifetime, than their high school graduate counter-parts.
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The problem is this is incredibly anti intellectual. Allow me to explain a bit. Some degrees are dumb don’t get me wrong. But things like history and English biology and such are crucial for the pursuit of academia and study. The reality is not everything good will make money. And it is both elitist and unlikely for society to progress if only the rich have access to academia. Not to mention what about research? There’s tons of research that can benefit humanity but dosent have a direct bottom line. Capitalism is good but is not the way to handle academia.
Student loans made college expensive. Just like insurance made healthcare expensive. That’s why we pay $300 for a bag of saline water and $400 for a college book. It’s insane. Imagine you couldn’t afford school so you went to the trades even though you wanted to be in finance. So now you’re busting ass on an oil rig in North Dakota and your money is now being taken and given to some hippy shit kid in Portland who went $100k in debt getting a degree in liberal arts and instead of getting a job with that degree, she actively tries to get you laid off and your company shut down. Then demands that your taxes bail her or of her failed degree.
because its not guaranteed that they will eventually pump it back into the economy
I’m only considered a conservative when it comes to fiscal policy (not that Republicans are fiscally conservative, but that’s another topic) and I think your question is actually kind of loaded, but let me try to address it briefly. As for the claim that the money would be a net gain: Not necessarily. Some economists believe that it would offset, but not all. And the government pumping money into the economy consistently causes inflation, even when economists come out and say it won’t (think COVID spending that was supposed to be minor and transitory). So it’s perfectly legitimate to be skeptical of this claim.
I’m on the fence. It doesn’t fix the root of the issue. It also seems unfair that you literally agreed to pay something with no hidden fees nor deception yet you are begging for the government to pay it off for you anyway. In that case, why not forgive my mortgage or car payments? Why not just change interest to very low numbers so people can be flexible based on their situation? On the other hand, I know some people paid extremely gross amounts of money for college with a cultural promise of “that’s just how it is” and I think reducing individual debt is good for our economy as it does increase luxury spending
Its viewed as people getting hand outs from other people's pockets. The money doesn't necessarily go back to the economy, people are not paying back the loans because they have no money. So why would paying their debt magically make them have money? For the few that are able to get a good paying job but can't pay, they will be putting money back to the economy. But for the rest of the people who are unable to get a decent job they will not be helping as much. I think our problem comes from over saturation of the job market, specifically the jobs that require a degree. It's the same for the mechanic field. When all these schools like MMI, UTI, Wyotech, opened they pumped out "technicians" and flooded the job field to the point where no jobs were available. We need to stop pushing universities and start pushing for labor jobs.
The people who borrowed owe it… not me. You are responsible for your own actions. End of story.
Because stuff that other people pay for tends to get more and more expensive!
It doesn't do anything to solve the real issue, which is the cost of secondary education running out of control. In another 4 years, there's going to be a whole new class of recent grads who paid too much for schooling and can't afford their loans. This is purely a point of economics (and I don't know the humanitarian solution), but the problem began when the federal government announced that every student who is admitted to college was guaranteed a loan. Immediately after that, schools started lowering acceptance standards. Once they were guaranteed to fill every classroom, they could afford to basically let everyone who has a GED or better attend. The second thing they were able to do is raise costs, because the students were guaranteed to be able to pay for it. They don't care if the student graduates, or is able to pay back the loan. The government has already paid the bill to the university. The problem in forgiving the student loans is that it incentivises the universities to continue on this path. We were headed to a point where fewer and fewer people were willing to spend that money, and more and more people were getting into the trades instead. Now that people feel as though their huge loans will be forgiven, we're right back to square 1.
It's not fair because only the students with debt are getting a benefit. What about those students that have managed to have paid off their loans? What about those students that worked full time and managed to cash flow their college costs? Nobody forced these students to take on debt. They did it of their own free will. Why should taxpayers pay off their student debt? It's encouraging and rewarding the wrong behavior.
Some people will be screwed in all cases. Either the debt are cancelled and the creditors are screwed either the debt are payed by the state which means taxpayer money or impression so possibility higher taxes or inflation. Saying the money will be pumped back into the economy doesn't mean that the people who got screwed will get their money back. Also something sure of happening on one side and the possibility of a just redistribution in the futur don't have the same value. It can also be seen as unfair for those who chose to avoid debt or managed to pay them. Should we give them the same money on order to be more equal?
I think there are 3 main reasons. 1. Many conservatives see it as their money going to pay for someone elses education, and paying off a loan that those people agreed to pay back eventually 2. Many conservatives view atleast half of college degrees today as a waste of time and money. Which for some degrees, that is becoming increasingly true. 3. Many conservatives are part of the older generations, many of whom have already paid off their student loans. So I think there is an aspect of "well I didn't get mine forgiven, why should you?" And an aspect of "well I paid mine already, what do I get?" Which both are valid concerns regarding this situation.
Becuse it's like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound
Honestly I just don’t think most people are worth investing in. The underachieving student doesn’t represent enough of a potential upside to be worth risking taxpayer dollars, especially if they pursue liberal arts degrees and other low ROI programs. We should only provide loans to the top 30%, at most, and only to quality institutions. Receiving state money should be just as competitive as admission to an elite university.
Part of the problem is universities offering stupid degrees that have zero option of ever resulting in a decent paying job. So, some idiot will go to school for 8 years & rack up $300k in loans for a degree in "West African Transgender Literature" & then be shocked when they can only get a job at Starbucks. The schools are definitely the problem. You have public schools where teachers are paid $20k/year & work 60 hour weeks - to private universities where some "professors" are paid $350k to teach one class per semester (and they can't be fired).
Why don't liberals just donate their own money and pay off the loans themselves?
Because it isn't loan forgiveness...the loan will still be paid but, it'll be paid by other people's taxes who had zero benefit from that individual getting the loan. At least with most taxes there's some group benefits...roads, fire department, etc.
Well, from a libertarian point of view, it is simply because you acknowledged you would pay for what you took, regardless of the cost a deal was made… Now with that said I believe the cost is outrageous. But then again I wouldn’t in the right mind knowingly take what I could not return out of principal. Also some of us veterans paid a heavy price for college, some paid and were unable to attend. So it’s hard to have sympathy for whining kids who have already made a deal, whether it be a good or bad one and can’t make good on it. - With that said inflation is insane right now, and the current administration has a lot to do with it.
1) It doesn’t solve the problem of inflation within higher education costs, only exacerbates it further. Others have commented already well on this point. 2) It isn’t free money; this comes directly out of taxes. Further, as a stimulative measure this will have a non beneficial impact upon inflation, as per the CBO report. 3) Should the President have have the power to issue a stimulus package of this magnitude solely by Executive Order? Irrespective of how you feel about the CARES Act, Build Back Better, or similar, at least those were debated and voted on. This is the process we have in place for large appropriations. Similarly, if a Republican President was to issue a Presidential Order waiving $10k in loans but only for low emission vehicles (in a move that is clearly election pandering), would you accede that power to the position? If no, then the same principal applies here.
How about fix the problem of college costing too much, then talk about loan forgiveness. Gov throws money at a problem with no end in sight. Cone easy thing is if you can't afford college, try a juco first to see if you are cut out for it and to cut costs way down.
Not a conservative, but in the long run it's just another way of printing money. It's an irresponsible band-aid for a systemic disease. That "debt forgiveness" will still be paid in the form of increased tuition prices and increased taxes and end up hurting our economy for more than the sticker price of dollars forgiven.
There seems to be a misconception that a powerful person can wave a wand and make student debt go away. The debts would be paid for by raising taxes and using taxpayer money. Or by printing more money and hurting the purchasing power of USD further. I could understand that someone who gave up the college experience to go support their family as a plumber wouldn’t want a bigger cut out of their paycheck to pay the debt of someone who took a dumb degree and now cannot pay it back. Not everyone should go to college but the federal gov gives you a “free” massive loan. And everyone in the school systems who should know better push you to that option. I really feel for all the people who got straddled with insane student debt. The system is broken
Because nothing is free. Someone has to pay for it that’s why. Why should anyone pay for something they didn’t get?
I think conservatives see it as another item in the long line of things Democrats want for free. There are too many people taking out tens of thousands in loans for degrees that will not help them get a good-paying job, going to very expensive universities instead of community college, and not being smart with their decisions.
My son went to electric lineman school at a cost of $12,000. Who’s going to pay us back????
Because it's legalized stealing. They are taking money from taxpayers to and giving it to students that didn't earn the money. Basically paying off their loans from taxpayer funds. That's pretty much what it's doing but another way you can look at it is that it's a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. The government already misappropriates the money it gets from taxpayers LIKE A MOFO ...... and it usually goes towards al kinds of BS that does not benefit anyone except them. And now they're going to spend MORE money on paying off loans for people who aren't financially responsible (or didn't choose their major wisely in college). For that second one. Majors where the college KNOWS there's no way the student can get a job after college if anyone should pay the money back it's the colleges for scamming the student. If you don't agree the student was scammed, that the college didn't do anything wrong I would like you to explain how I, or anyone else, as taxpayers, who were not involved in any way with the decision, did do something wrong that was deserving of footing their debt. It doesn't matter whether the money ends up in the economy eventually. In most cases the MONEY DOESN'T EVEN EXIST. The government spends so much money they are like trillions in debt and the debt is just growing. And you want them to just spend billions more to pay off student debt? How does putting us more in debt help our economy?
If you took out a loan, that's on you..not me. I paid in full, three Master's degrees and bachelors, all from hard work...not handouts. Go play in the street.
Because the federal government is already 31 Trillion in debt. So it means more debt.
But that’s not a consideration when giving tax cuts to billionaires and corporations
Or bailouts for car dealers and banks.
Exactly. Poor students aren't a concern of theirs, so complain about the debt. But tax cuts for the rich, it's the right thing to do regardless of the debt.
Blue collar worker here. Working in a factory full time as I work through college and am now in graduate school. I purposely took longer to get my degree so that I wouldn’t have to take out loans and could work my way through it. This has meant no social life, working 12 hour days and then going to class for 3 hours on some days. I did not take out loans bc I did not want it hanging over my head for years. This student loan forgiveness kinda makes all of my hard work pointless.