31 ms·

Billionaire Robert F. Smith pledges to pay Morehouse 2019 grads’ student loans

yanarchy 7y ago
That's incredible.
ourmandave 7y ago
Anyone know the odds of winning Free Tuition From a Billionaire vs Lotto scratch tickets? Also you know there's gotta be a guy that buckled down and graduated last year instead of this year that's kicking himself.
- SapporoChris 7y ago
  In addition, some parents are probably reflecting on their choice to pay for everything. I'm not as concerned about the very wealthy for whom the cost of sending their child(ren) to school was a minor expense, I'm more concerned about the parents that made extreme sacrifices. And then there's the student that juggled work and school to minimize or eliminate any student loans. The generosity of Robert F. Smith is admirable. I'm unsure how to reconcile it with some students paying vs others getting a free ride.
  - lowercased 7y ago
    i'd read he was expecting people to 'pay it forward'. it may be consistent of him to give some sort of one-time payment to the "debt-free" folks in order for them to be equally able to 'pay it forward'.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    Those people are no worse off today than they were yesterday.
    - daveFNbuck 7y ago
      The point is that they're worse off today than they would have been if they hadn't been so responsible. Their sacrifice ended up being for nothing and put them at an overall disadvantage.
      - mikeash 7y ago
        This is the same sort of idiotic thinking that gets people depressed about selling their stock before it skyrocketed. You can’t predict the future. You do the best you can. Your choices mean that you didn’t get to benefit from a gift that nobody knew was coming? Might as well complain about not winning the lottery. That some people was helped doesn’t mean the others have been hurt. I’m amazed and appalled at how common this sentiment is. So many comments here are complaining that some of these graduates will miss out on this charity because they have no debt. At the risk of violating site guidelines, what the fuck is wrong with you people? (For the record, I went to a cheap school and was fortunate to have family support that left me with no student debt.)
        daveFNbuck 7y ago
        You could make the same argument if he had given the money only to people without any debt as a reward for their good planning. There are two problems with rewarding only the least responsible people. The first is that it will encourage people going into college to behave less responsibly due to the hope that their debt will be forgiven. The second is that this gift isn't happening in a vacuum. It's happening as part of a political movement to make this sort of charity part of public policy. People don't want public policy to move forward in a way that puts the people who tried to do the right thing in the least advantageous position.
        mikeash 7y ago
        Responsible people with good planning get rewarded for it constantly. People rarely complain about it. You certainly could, and should, make the same argument about them, because the argument also applies to them.
  - protomyth 7y ago
    Life is full of serendipity and chaos. Yep, some folks are going to get a massive break and some are going to be mad because they scraped by and are not going get a benefit. Neither diminishes the great generosity of a man who should be praised. Envy will destroy your soul and frankly is the most deadly of emotions. Celebrate the good fortune of others and remember you are no worse off then you were yesterday. Nothing has been lost and you were caused no harm.
    - toomanyrichies 7y ago
      Well-put. If someone is going to get mad that they lost out on this windfall, they may as well get mad every time anyone other than them wins the lottery.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I'm more concerned about the parents that made extreme sacrifices. Those parents should have insisted that there children go to a much cheaper school....
    - daveFNbuck 7y ago
      You could say the same about everyone with student loan debt.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        And I wouldn’t disagree. I told my children that they would get loans in their own names and that if/when they graduated, we would help them pay it off up to a certain amount. I also suggested that they stay at home and go to a two year college and then transfer.
  - ralusek 7y ago
    Turns out "to each according to their need" is harder than it sounds.
- qzw 7y ago
  Or how about the student who’s taking an extra semester to finish a double major? Anyone who missed out on this deal must be feeling pretty sad. This is why we can’t only rely on philanthropy to solve systemic problems.
- mc32 7y ago
  It’s true. But those are the breaks. Don’t dwell on it and move on; life awaits.
qzw 7y ago
While I’m happy for the students and appreciate the “pay it forward” message, I am just shocked that the collective debt for 396 students is $40 million. That’s $100k per student on average, just for a bachelor’s degree. How could this be sustainable?
- austenallred 7y ago
  It’s not
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    Is that because the cost for a useful vocational education should be closer to $30,000? Or are you saying that people with millions of dollars of productivity ahead of them can't afford $100,000?
    - austenallred 7y ago
      Starting life with $100,000 in debt compounding at 4-10% per year is a rough start, even with millions of dollars of productivity ahead.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        The real handicap is the lost compounding as many will sacrifice saving for retirement, emergency funds, or otherwise use funds that can be invested for long term security.
      - maxerickson 7y ago
        Sure, I think huge student loans are bad for society, I was just wondering what your reasoning was, and I'm obnoxious enough to prod you to make the case that a $30,000 obligation is materially different.
        austenallred 7y ago
        It’s only a $30,000 obligation if you’re making more than ~$90,000/year, and there’s no interest attached. A non-trivial number of those students would never make enough to pay off the loans. Ever. That’s not an exaggeration and happens in more than 50% of cases at expensive HBCs.
supernova87a 7y ago
Not to begrudge anyone's generosity, but if my parents / I had worked to save for my tuition completely and I got no benefit in a scenario like this, I think I'd feel a little frustrated. Of course you'd be lucky to have had that position in life, but frustrated nonetheless. Why didn't I just take out loans like everyone else?
- scarface74 7y ago
  As you said, you got the benefit of having parents that are able to afford to send you to college debt free...
  - jimmydddd 7y ago
    Some of the students who took loans might also have parents who are able to afford it, but the students decided to take loans instead.
    - ujoh1 7y ago
      Hello See also how you can start making steady daily extra living incomes on virta stock trading without you risking your money and your investment visit the website here http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php for more details
  - supernova87a 7y ago
    Maybe you think that the only people who save and pay for their kids' college are rich people. Probably that they can "afford" not to be the beneficiaries of generosity like this as well. Far more common is for middle class (and immigrants) to be in this situation, not even to mention the 2-shift-a-day poor parents who paid outright to stay out of debt, worked overtime, scrimped, and planned ahead. They get nothing. I'm sure they can afford not getting any gift... As I said, I don't begrudge a generous benefactor's actions that help people. It's his choice. It would be a wholly different matter if government took this approach. In that case, you'd better be dammed sure that someone else getting something and you nothing, isn't going to remain at "be grateful for what you have". Cf. that company experiment a few years ago (or think through if it applied at your job) that everyone got paid the same. You're probably not so eager in that case.
hugh4life 7y ago
Looks like an opportunity for a longitudinal study. Compare life outcomes of this class vs classes that come before and after. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitudinal_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitudinal_study ' https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/ https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/ - The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is a long-term study of a random sample of 10,317 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. The WLS provides an opportunity to study the life course, intergenerational transfers and relationships, family functioning, physical and mental health and well-being, and morbidity and mortality from late adolescence through 2011. WLS data also cover social background, youthful aspirations, schooling, military service, labor market experiences, family characteristics and events, social participation, psychological characteristics and retirement.
killjoywashere 7y ago
For those shedding a tear for the kids and families who worked hard to cover their bills ... I assure you, this leavening of a playing field is relatively minor in the scheme of setbacks people face in a career. And I say that having just finished paying my student loans at the tender age of 43. Those who suddenly find themselves with no debt may in fact end up worse off because their razor-sharp, college-educated judgement, finely honed by the whetstones of education and capitalism, just got blunted. We've yet to see how this experiment of Mr. Smith's plays out.
- season8sucked 7y ago
  I paid my debt off a year out of uni, and if anything I’d say the lifted burden has sharpened my ability to think.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
addicted 7y ago
This is the issue with all the discussions about loan jubilee. The people who busted their asses to do things the right way are the ones who get shafted. The better approach is to just give out cash to all grads. How do you account for people who are richer vs those who are poorer benefitting similarly? Simple. Progressive income taxes, wealth taxes, and inheritance taxes. Keep everything else blind to income/wealth.
- mikeash 7y ago
  Graduating debt-free is a curious definition of “get shafted.”
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    This piece tries to explain how conservatives think about fairness. Including making sense of the Tea Party cry “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”. It will make you understand this thought, if perhaps not agree with it. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/why-conservatives-hate-warrens-loan-debt-relief-plan/588322/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/why-conser...
- logicchains 7y ago
  >Simple. Progressive income taxes, wealth taxes, and inheritance taxes. Your argument that "The people who busted their asses to do things the right way are the ones who get shafted" could also be applied to progressive income taxes: why should the student who busted their ass through college to get good grades and a well-paying job upon graduation pay more tax to support the D-student who drank their way through college and bullied people who cared about intellectual things?
mikeash 7y ago
And thus we see how the wealthy are able to control our society. A rich man performs an act of generosity to wipe out the student debt of an entire college class, and you complain. What do you complain about? Do you complain about how students are being burdened with massive debts before they even begin their careers? Do you complain that university education is becoming ever more necessary while simultaneously becoming ever more unaffordable? Do you complain that a skilled chemical engineer gave up his career and turned to moving little green pieces of paper around to make his fortune, because society rewards certain types of paper pushing orders of magnitude more than it rewards inventiveness, skill, and hard work? Do you complain that the billionaire who made this gift pays a lower tax rate on his income than these students will pay on their part of the gift? Do you complain that, while a few hundred graduates got an incredible gift, a million other students around the country will graduate this spring with a huge amount of debt and no billionaire to pay it off for them? No, you complain about the fact that some of these students won't benefit from this gift because they were fortunate enough not to have any debt to pay off. Never mind the systematic problems that led to this situation, never mind that a few hundred people got an incredible gift and the only person who lost anything was a billionaire giving up a negligible fraction of his wealth. The important thing is that some of the peasants are getting more than the others, and they must be destroyed!
- sabujp 7y ago
  i was following you until you started talking about destroying peasants
  - p1necone 7y ago
    I think that bit was tongue in cheek.
- lefstathiou 7y ago
  Burn them! Burn them at the stakes!!! ;)
- Despegar 7y ago
  This isn't very complicated to solve: redistribute more of the wealth. MMTers say that isn't even necessary, but it is to fix inequality.
pbreit 7y ago
I don't totally understand the idea of forgiving student debt. Isn't it fairly healthy to take out a loan to invest in yourself and then pay it back?
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  It should be. The things that fucks this whole calculation up is that student loans in the U.S. can't be gotten out of via personal bankruptcy, so, in reality, a lot of dumb young people rack up way more student loan debt than they really should. And the people lending them that money have no incentive to think about the student's ability to pay the loan back, due to the bankruptcy exemption. Oh, right, and the loans are often guaranteed by the government, so there's yet another thing which screws up the incentives.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    The private student loan market is almost non-existent now. The “people lending them that money” is the federal government. And the combination of no credit checks on the front end and non dischargability on the back-end is a deliberate policy to make loans universally available.
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      > make loans universally available. That's the part that I think is a bad idea.
      - chongli 7y ago
        The whole point of student loans is to make a university education universally available. It's an attempt to avoid the regime of the old days when only the children of nobles and members of the clergy (also usually children of nobility) could go to university. Whenever I hear people advocating for an end (or a severe curtailment) of student loans, I have to wonder what people ought to be expected to do in order to achieve upward mobility.
jshc 7y ago
Any idea why college education is so expensive? here's just my cynic view from personal experience but I don't have enough data to back it. 1. some professors in some public state schools can get paid a ridiculous amount of salary 2. The administration is inefficient and bureaucratic.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  One theory is that it's mainly the strongly subsidized student loans: https://reason.com/2015/12/21/new-study-the-main-thing-making-college/ https://reason.com/2015/12/21/new-study-the-main-thing-makin...
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    It’s the only correct and obvious answer. Things don’t get expensive unless the purchasers have the money to pay for it. Considering the net worth of most US families, who struggle to get a loan for a house worth a few hundred thousand dollars, the only way they’re getting tens and hundreds of thousands for college is due to taxpayer funded loans.
- cheerlessbog 7y ago
  Absurd level of non curricular services. Stadia, prestige buildings, lazy rivers... When I went to college in the 90's we organized our own sports and the college handled the educating.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Price is where supply curve meets demand curve. Demand curve is extremely far to the right due to everyone believing college will land them better, whiter collar prospects than otherwise available to them. Also, it’s a very conspicuous social status marker and greatly contributes to the network of people that you have for the rest of your life. Not that it’s worth it for most colleges, but people believe, and no one likes to make less than rosy assumptions about themselves or their child. Couple this extreme demand with an unlimited source of money, e.g. taxpayer funded student loans. Now a college can state whatever price they want, and the buy will be able to pay it! All they have to do is apply for a loan they are guaranteed to be approved for, and many times the parents are on the hook as well due to co-signing in the case of private student loans. Not a single person does any cash flow modeling during this business of borrowing tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on an unproven adolescent. Imagine a lender’s requirements for any other scenario where this much money is borrowed. All because it’s all taxpayer guaranteed.
platform 7y ago
list of companies in Vista's portfolio (if anyone is interested) https://www.vistaequitypartners.com/companies/ https://www.vistaequitypartners.com/companies/ I though of them as private equity firm, more than an VC. but could be totally wrong...
mdturnerphys 7y ago
I'm reminded of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_Vineyard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tehjoker 7y ago
Nice of him, but college should just be free. Charity cannot build a decent society, only a determined society can... one that prevents the creation of billionaires in the first place. If the dominant ladder to the middle class will place those who take it in indentured servitude, you're not building a great society.
httpsterio 7y ago
Scott's tod... Wait sorry, Smith's kids.
sharoncoolidge 7y ago
i live in USA, i applied for a loan of $120,000.00 some weeks ago from a scam who pretended to be a loan lender, they ripped me off my money and they ran away from me and i was totally confused in life but luckily for me, a good friend of mine Mrs. Sharon Coolidge testified of how she was rescued by a God-sent loan lender who rescued her and gave her the loan amount of $75,000.00 United State Dollars so she gave the email address to me (barrymoreloans12@gmail.com)or send a text +15852823682

That's incredible.

Anyone know the odds of winning Free Tuition From a Billionaire vs Lotto scratch tickets? Also you know there's gotta be a guy that buckled down and graduated last year instead of this year that's kicking himself.

SapporoChris 7y ago
In addition, some parents are probably reflecting on their choice to pay for everything. I'm not as concerned about the very wealthy for whom the cost of sending their child(ren) to school was a minor expense, I'm more concerned about the parents that made extreme sacrifices. And then there's the student that juggled work and school to minimize or eliminate any student loans. The generosity of Robert F. Smith is admirable. I'm unsure how to reconcile it with some students paying vs others getting a free ride.
- lowercased 7y ago
  i'd read he was expecting people to 'pay it forward'. it may be consistent of him to give some sort of one-time payment to the "debt-free" folks in order for them to be equally able to 'pay it forward'.
- mikeash 7y ago
  Those people are no worse off today than they were yesterday.
  - daveFNbuck 7y ago
    The point is that they're worse off today than they would have been if they hadn't been so responsible. Their sacrifice ended up being for nothing and put them at an overall disadvantage.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      This is the same sort of idiotic thinking that gets people depressed about selling their stock before it skyrocketed. You can’t predict the future. You do the best you can. Your choices mean that you didn’t get to benefit from a gift that nobody knew was coming? Might as well complain about not winning the lottery. That some people was helped doesn’t mean the others have been hurt. I’m amazed and appalled at how common this sentiment is. So many comments here are complaining that some of these graduates will miss out on this charity because they have no debt. At the risk of violating site guidelines, what the fuck is wrong with you people? (For the record, I went to a cheap school and was fortunate to have family support that left me with no student debt.)
      - daveFNbuck 7y ago
        You could make the same argument if he had given the money only to people without any debt as a reward for their good planning. There are two problems with rewarding only the least responsible people. The first is that it will encourage people going into college to behave less responsibly due to the hope that their debt will be forgiven. The second is that this gift isn't happening in a vacuum. It's happening as part of a political movement to make this sort of charity part of public policy. People don't want public policy to move forward in a way that puts the people who tried to do the right thing in the least advantageous position.
        mikeash 7y ago
        Responsible people with good planning get rewarded for it constantly. People rarely complain about it. You certainly could, and should, make the same argument about them, because the argument also applies to them.
- protomyth 7y ago
  Life is full of serendipity and chaos. Yep, some folks are going to get a massive break and some are going to be mad because they scraped by and are not going get a benefit. Neither diminishes the great generosity of a man who should be praised. Envy will destroy your soul and frankly is the most deadly of emotions. Celebrate the good fortune of others and remember you are no worse off then you were yesterday. Nothing has been lost and you were caused no harm.
  - toomanyrichies 7y ago
    Well-put. If someone is going to get mad that they lost out on this windfall, they may as well get mad every time anyone other than them wins the lottery.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I'm more concerned about the parents that made extreme sacrifices. Those parents should have insisted that there children go to a much cheaper school....
  - daveFNbuck 7y ago
    You could say the same about everyone with student loan debt.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      And I wouldn’t disagree. I told my children that they would get loans in their own names and that if/when they graduated, we would help them pay it off up to a certain amount. I also suggested that they stay at home and go to a two year college and then transfer.
- ralusek 7y ago
  Turns out "to each according to their need" is harder than it sounds.
qzw 7y ago
Or how about the student who’s taking an extra semester to finish a double major? Anyone who missed out on this deal must be feeling pretty sad. This is why we can’t only rely on philanthropy to solve systemic problems.
mc32 7y ago
It’s true. But those are the breaks. Don’t dwell on it and move on; life awaits.

qzw 7y ago

While I’m happy for the students and appreciate the “pay it forward” message, I am just shocked that the collective debt for 396 students is $40 million. That’s $100k per student on average, just for a bachelor’s degree. How could this be sustainable?

austenallred 7y ago
It’s not
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Is that because the cost for a useful vocational education should be closer to $30,000? Or are you saying that people with millions of dollars of productivity ahead of them can't afford $100,000?
  - austenallred 7y ago
    Starting life with $100,000 in debt compounding at 4-10% per year is a rough start, even with millions of dollars of productivity ahead.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      The real handicap is the lost compounding as many will sacrifice saving for retirement, emergency funds, or otherwise use funds that can be invested for long term security.
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      Sure, I think huge student loans are bad for society, I was just wondering what your reasoning was, and I'm obnoxious enough to prod you to make the case that a $30,000 obligation is materially different.
      - austenallred 7y ago
        It’s only a $30,000 obligation if you’re making more than ~$90,000/year, and there’s no interest attached. A non-trivial number of those students would never make enough to pay off the loans. Ever. That’s not an exaggeration and happens in more than 50% of cases at expensive HBCs.

supernova87a 7y ago

Not to begrudge anyone's generosity, but if my parents / I had worked to save for my tuition completely and I got no benefit in a scenario like this, I think I'd feel a little frustrated. Of course you'd be lucky to have had that position in life, but frustrated nonetheless. Why didn't I just take out loans like everyone else?

scarface74 7y ago
As you said, you got the benefit of having parents that are able to afford to send you to college debt free...
- jimmydddd 7y ago
  Some of the students who took loans might also have parents who are able to afford it, but the students decided to take loans instead.
  - ujoh1 7y ago
    Hello See also how you can start making steady daily extra living incomes on virta stock trading without you risking your money and your investment visit the website here http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php http://www.virtatrade.com/index.php for more details
- supernova87a 7y ago
  Maybe you think that the only people who save and pay for their kids' college are rich people. Probably that they can "afford" not to be the beneficiaries of generosity like this as well. Far more common is for middle class (and immigrants) to be in this situation, not even to mention the 2-shift-a-day poor parents who paid outright to stay out of debt, worked overtime, scrimped, and planned ahead. They get nothing. I'm sure they can afford not getting any gift... As I said, I don't begrudge a generous benefactor's actions that help people. It's his choice. It would be a wholly different matter if government took this approach. In that case, you'd better be dammed sure that someone else getting something and you nothing, isn't going to remain at "be grateful for what you have". Cf. that company experiment a few years ago (or think through if it applied at your job) that everyone got paid the same. You're probably not so eager in that case.

hugh4life 7y ago

Looks like an opportunity for a longitudinal study. Compare life outcomes of this class vs classes that come before and after. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitudinal_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitudinal_study ' https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/ https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/ - The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is a long-term study of a random sample of 10,317 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. The WLS provides an opportunity to study the life course, intergenerational transfers and relationships, family functioning, physical and mental health and well-being, and morbidity and mortality from late adolescence through 2011. WLS data also cover social background, youthful aspirations, schooling, military service, labor market experiences, family characteristics and events, social participation, psychological characteristics and retirement.

killjoywashere 7y ago

For those shedding a tear for the kids and families who worked hard to cover their bills ... I assure you, this leavening of a playing field is relatively minor in the scheme of setbacks people face in a career. And I say that having just finished paying my student loans at the tender age of 43. Those who suddenly find themselves with no debt may in fact end up worse off because their razor-sharp, college-educated judgement, finely honed by the whetstones of education and capitalism, just got blunted. We've yet to see how this experiment of Mr. Smith's plays out.

season8sucked 7y ago
I paid my debt off a year out of uni, and if anything I’d say the lifted burden has sharpened my ability to think.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

addicted 7y ago

This is the issue with all the discussions about loan jubilee. The people who busted their asses to do things the right way are the ones who get shafted. The better approach is to just give out cash to all grads. How do you account for people who are richer vs those who are poorer benefitting similarly? Simple. Progressive income taxes, wealth taxes, and inheritance taxes. Keep everything else blind to income/wealth.

mikeash 7y ago
Graduating debt-free is a curious definition of “get shafted.”
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  This piece tries to explain how conservatives think about fairness. Including making sense of the Tea Party cry “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”. It will make you understand this thought, if perhaps not agree with it. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/why-conservatives-hate-warrens-loan-debt-relief-plan/588322/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/why-conser...
logicchains 7y ago
>Simple. Progressive income taxes, wealth taxes, and inheritance taxes. Your argument that "The people who busted their asses to do things the right way are the ones who get shafted" could also be applied to progressive income taxes: why should the student who busted their ass through college to get good grades and a well-paying job upon graduation pay more tax to support the D-student who drank their way through college and bullied people who cared about intellectual things?

mikeash 7y ago

And thus we see how the wealthy are able to control our society. A rich man performs an act of generosity to wipe out the student debt of an entire college class, and you complain. What do you complain about? Do you complain about how students are being burdened with massive debts before they even begin their careers? Do you complain that university education is becoming ever more necessary while simultaneously becoming ever more unaffordable? Do you complain that a skilled chemical engineer gave up his career and turned to moving little green pieces of paper around to make his fortune, because society rewards certain types of paper pushing orders of magnitude more than it rewards inventiveness, skill, and hard work? Do you complain that the billionaire who made this gift pays a lower tax rate on his income than these students will pay on their part of the gift? Do you complain that, while a few hundred graduates got an incredible gift, a million other students around the country will graduate this spring with a huge amount of debt and no billionaire to pay it off for them? No, you complain about the fact that some of these students won't benefit from this gift because they were fortunate enough not to have any debt to pay off. Never mind the systematic problems that led to this situation, never mind that a few hundred people got an incredible gift and the only person who lost anything was a billionaire giving up a negligible fraction of his wealth. The important thing is that some of the peasants are getting more than the others, and they must be destroyed!

sabujp 7y ago
i was following you until you started talking about destroying peasants
- p1necone 7y ago
  I think that bit was tongue in cheek.
lefstathiou 7y ago
Burn them! Burn them at the stakes!!! ;)
Despegar 7y ago
This isn't very complicated to solve: redistribute more of the wealth. MMTers say that isn't even necessary, but it is to fix inequality.

pbreit 7y ago

I don't totally understand the idea of forgiving student debt. Isn't it fairly healthy to take out a loan to invest in yourself and then pay it back?

toasterlovin 7y ago
It should be. The things that fucks this whole calculation up is that student loans in the U.S. can't be gotten out of via personal bankruptcy, so, in reality, a lot of dumb young people rack up way more student loan debt than they really should. And the people lending them that money have no incentive to think about the student's ability to pay the loan back, due to the bankruptcy exemption. Oh, right, and the loans are often guaranteed by the government, so there's yet another thing which screws up the incentives.
- rayiner 7y ago
  The private student loan market is almost non-existent now. The “people lending them that money” is the federal government. And the combination of no credit checks on the front end and non dischargability on the back-end is a deliberate policy to make loans universally available.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    > make loans universally available. That's the part that I think is a bad idea.
    - chongli 7y ago
      The whole point of student loans is to make a university education universally available. It's an attempt to avoid the regime of the old days when only the children of nobles and members of the clergy (also usually children of nobility) could go to university. Whenever I hear people advocating for an end (or a severe curtailment) of student loans, I have to wonder what people ought to be expected to do in order to achieve upward mobility.

jshc 7y ago

Any idea why college education is so expensive? here's just my cynic view from personal experience but I don't have enough data to back it. 1. some professors in some public state schools can get paid a ridiculous amount of salary 2. The administration is inefficient and bureaucratic.

BurningFrog 7y ago
One theory is that it's mainly the strongly subsidized student loans: https://reason.com/2015/12/21/new-study-the-main-thing-making-college/ https://reason.com/2015/12/21/new-study-the-main-thing-makin...
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  It’s the only correct and obvious answer. Things don’t get expensive unless the purchasers have the money to pay for it. Considering the net worth of most US families, who struggle to get a loan for a house worth a few hundred thousand dollars, the only way they’re getting tens and hundreds of thousands for college is due to taxpayer funded loans.
cheerlessbog 7y ago
Absurd level of non curricular services. Stadia, prestige buildings, lazy rivers... When I went to college in the 90's we organized our own sports and the college handled the educating.
lotsofpulp 7y ago
Price is where supply curve meets demand curve. Demand curve is extremely far to the right due to everyone believing college will land them better, whiter collar prospects than otherwise available to them. Also, it’s a very conspicuous social status marker and greatly contributes to the network of people that you have for the rest of your life. Not that it’s worth it for most colleges, but people believe, and no one likes to make less than rosy assumptions about themselves or their child. Couple this extreme demand with an unlimited source of money, e.g. taxpayer funded student loans. Now a college can state whatever price they want, and the buy will be able to pay it! All they have to do is apply for a loan they are guaranteed to be approved for, and many times the parents are on the hook as well due to co-signing in the case of private student loans. Not a single person does any cash flow modeling during this business of borrowing tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on an unproven adolescent. Imagine a lender’s requirements for any other scenario where this much money is borrowed. All because it’s all taxpayer guaranteed.

platform 7y ago

list of companies in Vista's portfolio (if anyone is interested) https://www.vistaequitypartners.com/companies/ https://www.vistaequitypartners.com/companies/ I though of them as private equity firm, more than an VC. but could be totally wrong...

mdturnerphys 7y ago

I'm reminded of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_Vineyard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tehjoker 7y ago

Nice of him, but college should just be free. Charity cannot build a decent society, only a determined society can... one that prevents the creation of billionaires in the first place. If the dominant ladder to the middle class will place those who take it in indentured servitude, you're not building a great society.

httpsterio 7y ago

Scott's tod... Wait sorry, Smith's kids.

sharoncoolidge 7y ago

i live in USA, i applied for a loan of $120,000.00 some weeks ago from a scam who pretended to be a loan lender, they ripped me off my money and they ran away from me and i was totally confused in life but luckily for me, a good friend of mine Mrs. Sharon Coolidge testified of how she was rescued by a God-sent loan lender who rescued her and gave her the loan amount of $75,000.00 United State Dollars so she gave the email address to me (barrymoreloans12@gmail.com)or send a text +15852823682