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I don't think so. It was once thought that student loans would be some panacea lifting poor people out of poverty by giving them access to education and the end

I don't think so. It was once thought that student loans would be some panacea lifting poor people out of poverty by giving them access to education and the end result is lots of people overburdened by debt while waiting tables because so many people have degrees that a degree isn't remotely some kind of reasonable assurance that you can get a job in a particular field.

adventured 5y ago
Absolutely. We'd be so much better off by semi copying Germany's culture of vocational training. And it wouldn't be expensive to do compared to the rather crazy sums we presently throw at higher education. Plus we very much need the skilled labor in a vast array of fields.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Fix K12 education first - that's where the highest plausible effects are. Vocational education can be a part of the picture, but it's actually really hard to do well.
- analog31 5y ago
  You also have to fix the vocations themselves with better workplace safety laws, non-discrimination, health care, retirement, safety net, unions. A trades person is exposed to high risk if something happens to their bodies and prevents them from working a full career, or there's a cyclic downturn in something like construction.
FollowingTheDao 5y ago
UBI is not a loan. Student loans have to be paid back and they also only resulted sun universities rising tuition. Education does not fix poverty. Money fixes poverty.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > UBI is not a loan Right: UBI together with any reasonable funding mechanism is a structural force working against economic inequality.
  - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
    In other words: a large-scale income redistribution that has no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      There are lots of large-scale income redistributions that have been adopted in the US (including EITC, which, while not a UBI, was directly inspired by Negative Income Tax, and earlier name for a policy exactly equivalent to UBI), and the American political landscape changes over time, largely through activism; civil rights, or even abolition, were once things with “no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape”, too.
      - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
        The EITC is a $70-75bn program in the context of a $1.5tn income tax - it is not, as such, the kind of large-scale redistribution that we're talking about for a UBI. I also would characterize it as the absolute opposite of a UBI: it is paid only to people who are working; and is more rooted in the history of offsetting increasing FICA taxes for low-income households than in the NIT experiments. Obviously it's hard to prognosticate about the future, but right now the "more left" of the parties with credible possibilities of election success in the U.S. has chosen $400,000 as the income level above which taxes can increase. There's simply no way you can create a UBI on that basis.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Obviously it's hard to prognosticate about the future, but right now the "more left" of the parties with credible possibilities of election success in the U.S. has chosen $400,000 as the income level above which taxes can increase. There's simply no way you can create a UBI on that basis. $200/month UBI, while obviously not a full, mature UBI, would approximately equal the maximum benefit of general assistance (means tested welfare for adults without dependents) in most of the US, and could probably be done with net tax increases in only that range (though the increases would need to go beyond just “regular” income tax and also include things like ending the favorable tax treatment of capital over labor income.) But, in any case, there is very likely a sea change coming in the Democratic Party, which is currently led by Boomers (and some Silents) who came into their political prime during and before the 1990s neoliberal consensus; the Boomer demographic wave is crashing and the Millennials (Gen X is both smaller and more Republican than the Millenials, so less relevant to the future direction of the Democrats) have a rather different understanding of political possibility not grounded in nostalgia for a bipartisan era that has long passed.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  There is no evidence that student loans led to colleges raising tuition, as opposed to other causes.
  - FollowingTheDao 5y ago
    No evidence? https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff... We find that increases in institution-specific subsidized (unsubsidized) loan maximums lead to a sticker- price increase of about 60 (40) cents on the dollar. --- It is basic supply and demand. How could universities charge so much if no one could pay for it? They would have to lower prices.
    - StevePerkins 5y ago
      I swear, the "facts" that are flatly asserted on this site, with zero questioning or critical thought, seem roughly equivalent to the "election was stolen!" facts that you find in other echo chambers.
    - afpx 5y ago
      Correlation does not mean causation. Tuition prices were already on their way up before 2007 (as the paper targets). I suspect that this is because in the 80s and 90s the data showed that a 4-year degrees increased income substantially, and tons of people applied for colleges.
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        Student loans and grants existed before 2007.
      - orhmeh09 5y ago
        Did tons of people apply for colleges because they heard about the data?
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "Education does not fix poverty." What the OP said was that education was once thought to be the magic bullet against poverty, much like UBI is now. People always dream of solving complicated problems with "one weird trick". If it fails, another one will appear.
farmerstan 5y ago
The problem is Clinton making student loans undischargeable via bankruptcy. That meant it was risk free for lenders to give student loans. That meant institutions could double or triple tuition without any fears because everyone could get an easy loan. The entire system is predatory and cancelling student debt is not the solution because it just means the lenders make all their profits off the backs of taxpayers. The real solution is to make student loans dischargable and for lenders to bear the risk of debt again. Then the markets will return back to normal.
- FollowingTheDao 5y ago
  Agreed. This is what is called "Socialism for the Rich".
- malandrew 5y ago
  > undischargeable via bankruptcy What I don't get is why more people trapped by student loans don't just leave the country and set up life elsewhere. Debt is country specific. If you're in debt in country A, you can move to country B and start anew. Undischargeable debt is only an encumbrance on income earned in the country in which you owe the debt.
  - doktorhladnjak 5y ago
    First, it’s a lot to ask of someone to leave the country where their friends and family live. Many aren’t interested in doing that. Immigrating elsewhere is also not easy if you’re in a less in demand profession. Of course these are the ones where it’s most likely to have unsupportable amounts of debt. If you’re a US citizen, you are still required to pay taxes on your global income no matter where you live in the world. If you ever get a tax refund, it can be garnished for federal student loans that are in default.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      "If you’re a US citizen, you are still required to pay taxes on your global income no matter where you live in the world." The first 108 000 dollars that you make elsewhere are exempt. You can live quite comfortably in most of Europe on 108 000 dollars brutto.
DarylZero 5y ago
Giving people money earmarked for education doesn't lift them out of poverty, because education is just a relative advantage in the job market.* A rising tide does not lift any boat's level relative to the water. [*] In theory, education makes a society produce more on an absolute level -- but only in theory. Giving people UBI is completely different. UBI is in itself a direct cure to poverty. The people receiving UBI are no longer poor at all. UBI abolishes poverty. You no longer have the issue of "the poor" anymore, as it's a category that does not exist. UBI is like giving food to a starving person. It directly cures the starvation. It reverses the very condition of starvation itself. Unlike the indirect approach to addressing poverty, there's no question about whether it would work. The remaining question is whether our economy depends on poverty as a negative incentive much like it depends on prison.
- jesusofnazarath 5y ago
- tomp 5y ago
  You explained why UBI wouldn't work in your own answer! "Money is just a relative advantage in the market." If everybody has $x, then competitive products/services will increase by $x in cost! (By "competitive" I mean those than cannot be easily scaled, like housing, education, medicine.)
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    That doesn't make any sense at all. You need to do some thinking.
  - hattmall 5y ago
    All of those can be easily scaled though. They are all simply protected industries with entrenched incumbents weilding political power to maintain their status quo at the expense of everyone else. We could easily have 10x more doctors, houses, and quality educators if the artificial barriers to entry were lowered or removed.
chernevik 5y ago
It doesn't help that we are sending to college a lot of people who don't actually need it and won't profit by it. The obsession with sending everyone to college was based on a correlation/causation mistake with college degrees and income levels.

adventured 5y ago

Absolutely. We'd be so much better off by semi copying Germany's culture of vocational training. And it wouldn't be expensive to do compared to the rather crazy sums we presently throw at higher education. Plus we very much need the skilled labor in a vast array of fields.

zozbot234 5y ago
Fix K12 education first - that's where the highest plausible effects are. Vocational education can be a part of the picture, but it's actually really hard to do well.
analog31 5y ago
You also have to fix the vocations themselves with better workplace safety laws, non-discrimination, health care, retirement, safety net, unions. A trades person is exposed to high risk if something happens to their bodies and prevents them from working a full career, or there's a cyclic downturn in something like construction.

FollowingTheDao 5y ago

UBI is not a loan. Student loans have to be paid back and they also only resulted sun universities rising tuition. Education does not fix poverty. Money fixes poverty.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> UBI is not a loan Right: UBI together with any reasonable funding mechanism is a structural force working against economic inequality.
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
  In other words: a large-scale income redistribution that has no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    There are lots of large-scale income redistributions that have been adopted in the US (including EITC, which, while not a UBI, was directly inspired by Negative Income Tax, and earlier name for a policy exactly equivalent to UBI), and the American political landscape changes over time, largely through activism; civil rights, or even abolition, were once things with “no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape”, too.
    - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
      The EITC is a $70-75bn program in the context of a $1.5tn income tax - it is not, as such, the kind of large-scale redistribution that we're talking about for a UBI. I also would characterize it as the absolute opposite of a UBI: it is paid only to people who are working; and is more rooted in the history of offsetting increasing FICA taxes for low-income households than in the NIT experiments. Obviously it's hard to prognosticate about the future, but right now the "more left" of the parties with credible possibilities of election success in the U.S. has chosen $400,000 as the income level above which taxes can increase. There's simply no way you can create a UBI on that basis.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Obviously it's hard to prognosticate about the future, but right now the "more left" of the parties with credible possibilities of election success in the U.S. has chosen $400,000 as the income level above which taxes can increase. There's simply no way you can create a UBI on that basis. $200/month UBI, while obviously not a full, mature UBI, would approximately equal the maximum benefit of general assistance (means tested welfare for adults without dependents) in most of the US, and could probably be done with net tax increases in only that range (though the increases would need to go beyond just “regular” income tax and also include things like ending the favorable tax treatment of capital over labor income.) But, in any case, there is very likely a sea change coming in the Democratic Party, which is currently led by Boomers (and some Silents) who came into their political prime during and before the 1990s neoliberal consensus; the Boomer demographic wave is crashing and the Millennials (Gen X is both smaller and more Republican than the Millenials, so less relevant to the future direction of the Democrats) have a rather different understanding of political possibility not grounded in nostalgia for a bipartisan era that has long passed.
HWR_14 5y ago
There is no evidence that student loans led to colleges raising tuition, as opposed to other causes.
- FollowingTheDao 5y ago
  No evidence? https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff... We find that increases in institution-specific subsidized (unsubsidized) loan maximums lead to a sticker- price increase of about 60 (40) cents on the dollar. --- It is basic supply and demand. How could universities charge so much if no one could pay for it? They would have to lower prices.
  - StevePerkins 5y ago
    I swear, the "facts" that are flatly asserted on this site, with zero questioning or critical thought, seem roughly equivalent to the "election was stolen!" facts that you find in other echo chambers.
  - afpx 5y ago
    Correlation does not mean causation. Tuition prices were already on their way up before 2007 (as the paper targets). I suspect that this is because in the 80s and 90s the data showed that a 4-year degrees increased income substantially, and tons of people applied for colleges.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      Student loans and grants existed before 2007.
    - orhmeh09 5y ago
      Did tons of people apply for colleges because they heard about the data?
inglor_cz 5y ago
"Education does not fix poverty." What the OP said was that education was once thought to be the magic bullet against poverty, much like UBI is now. People always dream of solving complicated problems with "one weird trick". If it fails, another one will appear.

farmerstan 5y ago

The problem is Clinton making student loans undischargeable via bankruptcy. That meant it was risk free for lenders to give student loans. That meant institutions could double or triple tuition without any fears because everyone could get an easy loan. The entire system is predatory and cancelling student debt is not the solution because it just means the lenders make all their profits off the backs of taxpayers. The real solution is to make student loans dischargable and for lenders to bear the risk of debt again. Then the markets will return back to normal.

FollowingTheDao 5y ago
Agreed. This is what is called "Socialism for the Rich".
malandrew 5y ago
> undischargeable via bankruptcy What I don't get is why more people trapped by student loans don't just leave the country and set up life elsewhere. Debt is country specific. If you're in debt in country A, you can move to country B and start anew. Undischargeable debt is only an encumbrance on income earned in the country in which you owe the debt.
- doktorhladnjak 5y ago
  First, it’s a lot to ask of someone to leave the country where their friends and family live. Many aren’t interested in doing that. Immigrating elsewhere is also not easy if you’re in a less in demand profession. Of course these are the ones where it’s most likely to have unsupportable amounts of debt. If you’re a US citizen, you are still required to pay taxes on your global income no matter where you live in the world. If you ever get a tax refund, it can be garnished for federal student loans that are in default.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    "If you’re a US citizen, you are still required to pay taxes on your global income no matter where you live in the world." The first 108 000 dollars that you make elsewhere are exempt. You can live quite comfortably in most of Europe on 108 000 dollars brutto.

DarylZero 5y ago

Giving people money earmarked for education doesn't lift them out of poverty, because education is just a relative advantage in the job market.* A rising tide does not lift any boat's level relative to the water. [*] In theory, education makes a society produce more on an absolute level -- but only in theory. Giving people UBI is completely different. UBI is in itself a direct cure to poverty. The people receiving UBI are no longer poor at all. UBI abolishes poverty. You no longer have the issue of "the poor" anymore, as it's a category that does not exist. UBI is like giving food to a starving person. It directly cures the starvation. It reverses the very condition of starvation itself. Unlike the indirect approach to addressing poverty, there's no question about whether it would work. The remaining question is whether our economy depends on poverty as a negative incentive much like it depends on prison.

jesusofnazarath 5y ago
tomp 5y ago
You explained why UBI wouldn't work in your own answer! "Money is just a relative advantage in the market." If everybody has $x, then competitive products/services will increase by $x in cost! (By "competitive" I mean those than cannot be easily scaled, like housing, education, medicine.)
- DarylZero 5y ago
  That doesn't make any sense at all. You need to do some thinking.
- hattmall 5y ago
  All of those can be easily scaled though. They are all simply protected industries with entrenched incumbents weilding political power to maintain their status quo at the expense of everyone else. We could easily have 10x more doctors, houses, and quality educators if the artificial barriers to entry were lowered or removed.

chernevik 5y ago

It doesn't help that we are sending to college a lot of people who don't actually need it and won't profit by it. The obsession with sending everyone to college was based on a correlation/causation mistake with college degrees and income levels.