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WASHINGTON—The federal government is increasingly taking money out of recipients’ Social Security checks to recover millions in unpaid student debt, leaving tho

WASHINGTON—The federal government is increasingly taking money out of recipients’ Social Security checks to recover millions in unpaid student debt, leaving thousands of retired and disabled Americans with below-poverty incomes, according to a report set to be released Tuesday. This is just pure, unadulterated evil.

new_hackers 10y ago
Maybe? If it was money owed by the individual, then maybe not? The question is, when do we absolve people of debit while still giving entitlements? If the some of the money from the entitlement should be used to pay down the debt, perhaps the government is just cutting out the middle man?
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  The question is, when do we absolve people of debit while still giving entitlements? It's a thorny question, in the general case. But fortunately we can rely on the time-honored constraints of common sense and general decency, in cases like these. For which the factors "Would this force the individual below sustenance level? Are they disabled, or do they have disabled dependents?" are actually pretty easy to assess, and verify.
  - civilian 10y ago
    "Common sense and general decency" my common sense and decency is pretty much at odds with yours. You took a loan? Good, repay it. You're an adult, you made a decision. Don't expect any help from others. My sense of decency says that we should probably not allow student loans, since so many people aren't mature enough to understand their impact and calculate the trade-off of taking one. //EDIT: So, my main argument is against the idea that we should use "common sense and decency" to make these decisions. That's stupid, because the majority of people don't understand economics and have a hard time guessing what the second and third order effects of a "nice" action would be. My arguments are a red herring. We should throw out the "common sense" of kafkaesq and I. We're both being stupid when we just poll our values to see what our knee-jerk reaction is. Let's just use a system that has the best outcomes. I'd like the policy that provides the highest outcome of: ("Grows GDP" x "Does not fail it's participants")
    - new_hackers 10y ago
      I would have not been able to attend college without Federal assistance in the form of student loans. I'm a twice degree'd engineer in the workforce for 15 years, and an expectancy to work at least 25 more years. All loans were paid back with interest. My earnings are generally far higher than those in my region that do not have a degree, and I pay higher income taxes accordingly. Do you feel that the reward was worth the risk for the Federal government?
      - justavoice 10y ago
        In your case, yes. But what he's saying is that with the opportunity came the responsibility to pay the debt back, which you did, which some are not doing. With no consequence for bad behaviour, why stop?
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        You were a good risk, and probably could have obtained loans privately without any governmental market meddling. That makes you quite different from the debtors under discussion. Bankruptcy exists for a reason. It was unwise to do away with it for education loans, even though doing so temporarily increased the volume of available education loans.
      - generj 10y ago
        I feel there is a massive difference in funding an engineering student's debts versus an art history major's debt. Every engineering degree typically results in 60K plus jobs straight out of school. I doubt a single engineering student has had their Social Security garnished, and if they did they almost assuredly made enough poor financial decisions I have a hard time feeling sympathy. We need to decide as a society what the point of university is. If our aim is to increase human capital, degrees should be invested in by the government in a way which maximizes that human capital increase. If we argue that university is essential for almost everyone for a republican democracy to work, we should provide or heavily subsidize it rather than using debts. Right now we allow people to take out massive debts which never disappear only to learn things which the market judges as not increasing their human capital whatsoever. I don't have anything against degrees which don't increase human capital, but they are basically luxuries which the government shouldn't intervene to fund. In the mean time the massive rise in student debt has allowed for a huge inflation in spending by university administrations and massive swelling in tuition.
  - new_hackers 10y ago
    I think you are trending toward "too-old-to-fail", and perhaps that is the answer?
    - justavoice 10y ago
      That's a good analogy for it - and, like the banks, these people should have to pay the costs of their bad behaviour. But it seems our society is trending more towards rights and less towards responsibility. Big business gets away with it, now individual feel they should be absolved of responsibility too.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- freehunter 10y ago
  Well the problem with social security is it's not really income that can be garnished. It's money that was paid into social security with the explicit promise that you'd get it all back upon retirement. This is garnishing wages in the past. It's kind of like repossessing someone's fully paid-for car and house to pay an unrelated debt. It's something you already owned and was not collateral for your debt, but they're taking it away from you anyway. If you're an American, check your pay stubs. You're paying for social security every pay period. It's not welfare, it's a refund of money the government forced you to pay when you were younger. If they're now taking it away from you, taking away a refund of money they already forced you to pay them years ago, that seems to me like a massive misuse of the social security system. People rely on that for their sole income, secure in the knowledge that they spent their entire lives paying into it.
  - h4nkoslo 10y ago
    "It's money that was paid into social security with the explicit promise that you'd get it all back upon retirement" That's not even close to true; there is no legal connection that requires you "get it all back" or that the government can't arbitrarily adjust benefits up and down. In practical terms the program is a transfer from present workers to past workers, it doesn't fundamentally operate as a savings account.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      Practical terms or not, that's the founding principle of the social security program. People can't/won't save for retirements, so we (the government) will take money from them now and pay it back later when they retire. If the government can say "we took all this money from you in the past but won't give it back now", there was literally no point in paying social security taxes.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - pilom 10y ago
        It makes much more sense if you don't think about SS as a pension. It is a tax you pay to not have old people destitute on the streets. That's all. It isn't a savings account or an annuity. It's a tax to take care of old people today. When you get old, you may be eligible for funding to keep you off the streets. You might not. That is what SS is and should be marketed as.
weberc2 10y ago
I can't help but feel this situation would be different if we did more to steer students away from low-demand degrees, or if employability factored more into the funding process.
- LesZedCB 10y ago
  society needs liberal arts just as much as workers which are useful to capitalists.
  - nickff 10y ago
    Does society really need a large portion of its population to be subsidized in binge drinking and partying for 4 years, as much as it needs people trained in technical skills? If you look at the study data on retained knowledge and hours studied in the liberal arts, they paint an unflattering view of what a 'liberal arts education' really is today. I am all in favor of people studying philosophy, history, and language, but I'm not sure how much it helps society, and students aren't learning anything anyway.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      this is a non-argument and doesn't address the point made by the post you're responding to. certainly engineering students are just as free to binge drink and party for 4 years and not learn anything. a fuck up who drops out of their engineering degree program and defaults on their student loans is just as much of a fuck up as someone who did the same while studying literary criticism.
      - nickff 10y ago
        I'm saying that the liberal arts majors who graduate are spending far more time drinking and partying than learning or thinking. If they are spending so much time partying, and don't retain any knowledge (as there are many studies which attest to that), I don't see the value in subsidizing this behavior.
solotronics 10y ago
borrowing money from the public and never repaying it is theft

new_hackers 10y ago

Maybe? If it was money owed by the individual, then maybe not? The question is, when do we absolve people of debit while still giving entitlements? If the some of the money from the entitlement should be used to pay down the debt, perhaps the government is just cutting out the middle man?

kafkaesq 10y ago
The question is, when do we absolve people of debit while still giving entitlements? It's a thorny question, in the general case. But fortunately we can rely on the time-honored constraints of common sense and general decency, in cases like these. For which the factors "Would this force the individual below sustenance level? Are they disabled, or do they have disabled dependents?" are actually pretty easy to assess, and verify.
- civilian 10y ago
  "Common sense and general decency" my common sense and decency is pretty much at odds with yours. You took a loan? Good, repay it. You're an adult, you made a decision. Don't expect any help from others. My sense of decency says that we should probably not allow student loans, since so many people aren't mature enough to understand their impact and calculate the trade-off of taking one. //EDIT: So, my main argument is against the idea that we should use "common sense and decency" to make these decisions. That's stupid, because the majority of people don't understand economics and have a hard time guessing what the second and third order effects of a "nice" action would be. My arguments are a red herring. We should throw out the "common sense" of kafkaesq and I. We're both being stupid when we just poll our values to see what our knee-jerk reaction is. Let's just use a system that has the best outcomes. I'd like the policy that provides the highest outcome of: ("Grows GDP" x "Does not fail it's participants")
  - new_hackers 10y ago
    I would have not been able to attend college without Federal assistance in the form of student loans. I'm a twice degree'd engineer in the workforce for 15 years, and an expectancy to work at least 25 more years. All loans were paid back with interest. My earnings are generally far higher than those in my region that do not have a degree, and I pay higher income taxes accordingly. Do you feel that the reward was worth the risk for the Federal government?
    - justavoice 10y ago
      In your case, yes. But what he's saying is that with the opportunity came the responsibility to pay the debt back, which you did, which some are not doing. With no consequence for bad behaviour, why stop?
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      You were a good risk, and probably could have obtained loans privately without any governmental market meddling. That makes you quite different from the debtors under discussion. Bankruptcy exists for a reason. It was unwise to do away with it for education loans, even though doing so temporarily increased the volume of available education loans.
    - generj 10y ago
      I feel there is a massive difference in funding an engineering student's debts versus an art history major's debt. Every engineering degree typically results in 60K plus jobs straight out of school. I doubt a single engineering student has had their Social Security garnished, and if they did they almost assuredly made enough poor financial decisions I have a hard time feeling sympathy. We need to decide as a society what the point of university is. If our aim is to increase human capital, degrees should be invested in by the government in a way which maximizes that human capital increase. If we argue that university is essential for almost everyone for a republican democracy to work, we should provide or heavily subsidize it rather than using debts. Right now we allow people to take out massive debts which never disappear only to learn things which the market judges as not increasing their human capital whatsoever. I don't have anything against degrees which don't increase human capital, but they are basically luxuries which the government shouldn't intervene to fund. In the mean time the massive rise in student debt has allowed for a huge inflation in spending by university administrations and massive swelling in tuition.
- new_hackers 10y ago
  I think you are trending toward "too-old-to-fail", and perhaps that is the answer?
  - justavoice 10y ago
    That's a good analogy for it - and, like the banks, these people should have to pay the costs of their bad behaviour. But it seems our society is trending more towards rights and less towards responsibility. Big business gets away with it, now individual feel they should be absolved of responsibility too.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
freehunter 10y ago
Well the problem with social security is it's not really income that can be garnished. It's money that was paid into social security with the explicit promise that you'd get it all back upon retirement. This is garnishing wages in the past. It's kind of like repossessing someone's fully paid-for car and house to pay an unrelated debt. It's something you already owned and was not collateral for your debt, but they're taking it away from you anyway. If you're an American, check your pay stubs. You're paying for social security every pay period. It's not welfare, it's a refund of money the government forced you to pay when you were younger. If they're now taking it away from you, taking away a refund of money they already forced you to pay them years ago, that seems to me like a massive misuse of the social security system. People rely on that for their sole income, secure in the knowledge that they spent their entire lives paying into it.
- h4nkoslo 10y ago
  "It's money that was paid into social security with the explicit promise that you'd get it all back upon retirement" That's not even close to true; there is no legal connection that requires you "get it all back" or that the government can't arbitrarily adjust benefits up and down. In practical terms the program is a transfer from present workers to past workers, it doesn't fundamentally operate as a savings account.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    Practical terms or not, that's the founding principle of the social security program. People can't/won't save for retirements, so we (the government) will take money from them now and pay it back later when they retire. If the government can say "we took all this money from you in the past but won't give it back now", there was literally no point in paying social security taxes.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - pilom 10y ago
      It makes much more sense if you don't think about SS as a pension. It is a tax you pay to not have old people destitute on the streets. That's all. It isn't a savings account or an annuity. It's a tax to take care of old people today. When you get old, you may be eligible for funding to keep you off the streets. You might not. That is what SS is and should be marketed as.

weberc2 10y ago

I can't help but feel this situation would be different if we did more to steer students away from low-demand degrees, or if employability factored more into the funding process.

LesZedCB 10y ago
society needs liberal arts just as much as workers which are useful to capitalists.
- nickff 10y ago
  Does society really need a large portion of its population to be subsidized in binge drinking and partying for 4 years, as much as it needs people trained in technical skills? If you look at the study data on retained knowledge and hours studied in the liberal arts, they paint an unflattering view of what a 'liberal arts education' really is today. I am all in favor of people studying philosophy, history, and language, but I'm not sure how much it helps society, and students aren't learning anything anyway.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    this is a non-argument and doesn't address the point made by the post you're responding to. certainly engineering students are just as free to binge drink and party for 4 years and not learn anything. a fuck up who drops out of their engineering degree program and defaults on their student loans is just as much of a fuck up as someone who did the same while studying literary criticism.
    - nickff 10y ago
      I'm saying that the liberal arts majors who graduate are spending far more time drinking and partying than learning or thinking. If they are spending so much time partying, and don't retain any knowledge (as there are many studies which attest to that), I don't see the value in subsidizing this behavior.

solotronics 10y ago

borrowing money from the public and never repaying it is theft