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U.S. forgives 40k student loans
- qntty 5y ago> At least 40,000 borrowers will receive immediate debt cancellation under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program. How is this news?
- protonimitate 5y ago> Several thousand borrowers with older loans will also receive forgiveness through income-driven repayment (IDR) forgiveness, plus another 3.6 million borrowers will receive at least three years of additional credit toward IDR forgiveness, the Education Department said in a statement. I think this is the actual news. Although it doesn't state what the selection process is.
- adoxyz 5y agoI think historically, the number of loans actually forgiven by the PSLF program has been very very low, even for people that qualify.
- Spellman 5y agoParticularly a while ago it was nearly impossible to utilize the program because it was a bureaucratic and underfunded mess. So the number who qualified was effectively zero. Now it's marginally less terrible and actually forgiving some people's loans.
- jhpaul 5y agoSpecifically, the previous Dept of Ed administration torpedoed the program. When the first class of PSLF candidates hit the 10 yr mark in 2017, 99% were rejected [0]. [0]: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/23/public-service-loan-forgiveness-program-1442311 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/23/public-service-loa...
- _moof 5y agoI know folks who have worked towards PSLF and ended up getting screwed because they weren't on the right repayment plan. Absolutely devastating to find out you've spent ten years working on something only to have it fall apart because you checked the wrong box once. And apparently this is a very, very easy mistake to make.
- dv_dt 5y agoIt's news in that they're actually unblocking programs which actually had been long legislatively approved paths for forgiveness and were already supposed to have been operating to this end for years. It's not news in that these are not new categories of, nor expansions of previous commitments to student loan forgiveness. When you look at the overall stats of student loans, a increasing number of them (a majority!) look like they will be never paid off over their lifetime, and we are still in a situation where if an individual has a small loan problem it's the responsibility of an individual. But if an entire class or multiple-generations (or a big enough individual loan), has problems, then it's a problem for the bank - in this case the US gov't and an even bigger problem of our overall society and providing an sustainable economically competitive skilled labor pool.
- musicale 5y agoIt used to be that for PSLF you had to make 120 sequential "on-time" payments and if your loan provider claimed (correctly or incorrectly) that one of them was late then the clock would reset, making it next to impossible for anyone to claim the benefit. A 10-year clock that can be reset at any time by the bank isn't good. I believe they fixed it (possibly temporarily) so that the clock no longer resets. This is a partial fix. The full fix would be to have PLSF pay out incrementally, say 10% after each 12 payments.
- ffggvv 5y agois it really next to impossible to pay on time? i assume you can dispute if they claim late incorrectly
- bombcar 5y agoThe real solution is to stop figleafing the problem and have the government handle all aspects of the loans directly without the involvement of any banks. The government already has a large department of the Treasury that handles this kind of thing.
- Fomite 5y agoGiven it was actively blocked during the previous administration? The PSLF Program actually working as intended is news.
- mark_l_watson 5y agoI am a liberal, but I must say the President Biden is the most chicken-sh@t president in my adult lifetime when it comes to breaking virtually all campaign promises. I voted for him and regret it.
- Proven 5y ago
- theandrewbailey 5y agoIf we're going to be forgiving loans, we shouldn't be giving them out in the first place. Otherwise, we're going to be in the same spot in one generation's time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- oh_sigh 5y agoThey were cancelled because it turns out the schools were scams. So it was a situation where the students got into a lot of debt, and got nothing(like an education or a worthwhile diploma) in return.
- thatguy0900 5y agoAre the schools no longer scams? All this does is help the schools, if new students think they might not actually have to pay that debt at the end.
- oh_sigh 5y agoDo you think the schools aren't punished for being scams, and they're just free to keep scamming students? And debt relief helps the debtor, not the original receiver of the funds. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Technical_Institute#Legal_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Technical_Institute#Legal_... > On August 25, 2016, the U.S. Department of Education banned ITT Tech from enrolling students who receive federal aid. The Department also doubled the surety funds that ITT Tech was required to have, and to produce those funds within 30 days. Stock markets reacted with a punishing 35% drop, which triggered a halt in trading, raising concerns about whether ITT Educational would be able to survive this latest decision.[73] On September 6, 2016, ITT Tech ceased operations and closed all of its locations, issuing a statement that attributed the closing to the Department of Education's actions.[28]
- bombcar 5y ago
- hahaxdxd123 5y agoFuel for inflation
- glial 5y agoI wish they'd just make the interest on existing federal loans 0 and be done with it.
- dan_quixote 5y agoSounds ideal in principle (principal?), but low interest/risk on student loans is what allowed tuition to inflate well beyond general inflation in the last several decades.
- musicale 5y agoIt was probably a mistake for the government to provide the funds and low interest rates and for private banks to reap the profits. And of course universities continue to raise tuition and fees with complete impunity.
- bombcar 5y agoWhich is why they need to allow bankruptcy. If the answer is "students will just declare bankruptcy after graduation" then at least the moral hazard is on the other foot.
- juskrey 5y agoHow about giving back money to people who paid back their loans, possibly going through even greater difficulties to do that.
- fortran77 5y agoPeople in the US are always punished for being financially responsible.
- nr2x 5y agoMore people are punished for being born poor - lead paint, air pollution, and crumbling schools don’t exactly lend themselves to upward mobility.
- Ancapistani 5y agoRewarding people who have worked for decades to climb out of that situation by lifting those who didn't do the same to the same financial position doesn't exactly encourage upward mobility, either.
- omegaworks 5y agoSo you would rather your neighbors be poor?
- nr2x 5y agoSome people can’t accept the fact that nothing separates them from a common beggar beyond luck.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 31098347 5y agoPeople who have paid their student loan debt are in exactly the same situation they were after this forgiveness than they were before: that is, they have no student loan debt. People in the US are not punished for being financially responsible. They are rewarded for taking risks, but not punished for being responsible. Very different.
- henriquez 5y agoCan Biden forgive my mortgage while he's at it? Why should I be in debt for 30 years, it's very inconvenient. Not everyone has the money to get a fancy university education, even with loans and other financial assistance, so we should be cancelling debt across the board. We should nationalize the banks and print money until all the debt is gone. Or it's racist.
- aaaaaaaaata 5y agoWhy didn't they think of that?
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoWe did print money, multiple times over the last two recessions. Guess who got the money? Why are you angry at a small number of poor students?
- henriquez 5y agoI'm not angry at students, I think everyone should have their debt forgiven. I think banks should be canceled to provide equity.
- cr__ 5y agoHe probably won’t forgive your mortgage but he (and virtually every politician of either party) will give you plenty of free money through the continuation of all the regressive policies that favor property owners to prop up the economy via the “property values always go up!” con game. So, I am not sure that you need to feel too aggrieved. Cheers!
- henriquez 5y agoNah I don't feel too aggrieved. At the rate they're printing money they'll inflate away everyone's debt in no time at all.
- beart 5y agoThis is the result of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program started in 2007.
- loourr 5y agoIt's crazy to cancel student loans and still keep issuing the exact same loans. If we believe the loans are unjust then the government should stop handing them out as the very first step.
- fortran77 5y agoYes! And if they stopped issuing these loans, tuitions will drop quickly. Im against loan forgiveness, but if they’re going to do it that also need to stop backing these loans.
- mr_spothawk 5y ago> the government should stop handing them out Minor nit: The gov't doesn't give the loans, they underwrite & insure the loans.
- mywittyname 5y agoI had plenty of loans from the DoE. Getting the DoE into the student loan market was intentional and is seen as the first step to reworking the entire system. Navient et al are keen to keep the gravy train rolling.
- outside1234 5y agoBut there is a important point here too - these loans are issued with too low of an interest rate BECAUSE they are guaranteed by the government. Drop that guarantee and the interest rate is going to float to more of a credit card level, which will make them prohibitive for funding tuition, which will put an extreme downward pressure on tuition rates.
- mr_spothawk 5y agoI believe you are absolutely correct.
- loourr 5y agoSemantics, they should stop underwriting them.
- pastor_bob 5y agoUnderlying problem just keeps getting worse though: USC cost of attendance for 2022/23: $85,648[0] [0]https://admission.usc.edu/learn/cost-financial-aid/ https://admission.usc.edu/learn/cost-financial-aid/
- bombcar 5y agoHeh that's 1/3rd the cost of a median LA home in just four years.
- abnry 5y agoNow universities can continue to raise tuition and pay the administrative class even more. Uncle Sam has shown they'll pay it on his dime.
- honksillet 5y agoEnd federal involvement in student loan and allow student loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy. Problem solved.
- outside1234 5y agoAmen - tuitions are skyrocketing because of the "free money". It is also awful public policy to train people to get into debt right out of the gate - this just has all sorts of bad long term consequences.
- nradov 5y agoDebt isn't inherently evil, it's just a tool. But any tool whether it's a hammer or a gun or a student loan can be used for good or evil.
- aksss 5y agoPredatory debt traps are evil. The student loan industry (the schools being the marketers and beneficiaries) seem like predatory debt traps to me.
- throwawayboise 5y agoThis is the answer. Lenders would then have to do proper qualification on borrowers, would be more limited in their lending, and this would put downward pressure on tuition.
- mrep 5y agoSo unsecured personal loans? Those depend on your credit which most students don't have much/any and your debt-to-income which is normally infinite for students because they don't work. You would massively screw over kids whose parents cannot pay/co-sign a normal loan as it would force them to work and study. Also, you normally cannot get very much with such low income and cherry on top, they have awful interest rates which range from about 6% to 36%. The APR on loans for borrowers with excellent credit is around 12%; it's about 29% for bad credit borrowers which students with no credit are likely to be. As an example: say you work at target for 2 8 hour days on the weekend making 15 an hour and with a 36% debt-to-income ratio limit, you could afford a payment of $374.4 a month. $15,000 punched in a 30 year repayment at 29% interest rate equals a $362.57 payment. So you might be able to do it but I would hate to be working every single day between weekend work and weekly school and that is assuming an entire 4 year degree could be pushed to to $15,000.
- swarnie 5y agoI'm not tuned in to American politics so can someone more knowledgeable fill me in... How many more loans are likely to be forgiven? When will people be told to start repaying?
- bombcar 5y agoThis is mainly a policy called Public Service Loan Forgiveness which says that IF you make 120 payments on schedule and on time (ten years) AND you work during that time for a qualified 'public service' job (think government, teacher, non-profit) THEN after 10 years the government will pay the remainder of your loan. There's some other stuff but the majority of it is that, a policy that's been in place for many, many years, but has been a bureaucratic hell to correctly navigate (you need to check each year, perhaps each month, that your payment has been recorded correctly, and reported correctly, etc). This is not general loan forgiveness by a long shot.
- Miner49er 5y agoJust to add, the program was a complete failure. 99% of applicants for it were rejected. This news is just that they are trying to fix it, from my understanding.
- Jiro 5y agoThey should require banks to forgive loans, rather than forgiving Federally-backed loans. If you require banks to forgive loans (or if you allow loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy), you create an incentive for the banks to loan money only for college education that results in useful careers. The Federal government is immune to market forces, so forgiving Federal loans just means you encourage the type of college degrees that are not useful.
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoNot convinced - a sensible bank will look at the likelihood of a person to get a good job after their education, and might conclude that while choosing Engineering over Art History is a factor, there are far stronger factors like - parents wealth and social position - wealth of parents of peer group at the university - skin colour, gender - propensity for drug alcohol abuse in the family - heart and other medical conditions that might result in early death We choose welfare insurance at the state level to avoid / correct these undesirable features of our current society, not to continues them into the next generation
- bombcar 5y agoThen the government should handle the loans directly and not involve the banks at all. All other debt can be discharged in bankruptcy, so the banks have free reign to be racist on mortgages and credit cards, but somehow student loans is the problem? Also see who asked for student loans to be non-dischargeable hmmm.
- nonameiguess 5y agoYou're missing the point of the PSLF. It's intended to provide incentives for highly qualified people to choose public service rather than go into lucrative careers. These are considered "useful" careers, but they don't pay well. For instance, I currently work as an individual contributor platform developer for the US Air Force and I make more than the 4-star chief of the entire Air Force, yet presumably he has more of an impact on the country at large than I do. I believe the president is the only federal employee with a higher salary than me. The purpose of programs like this is to make sure we still have people willing to work for the government at all, given everything else they need to give up to do it.
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoI know every European seems to ask this of every American but what is the resistance to a welfare state? if you look at a government as investing in its citizens like a VC fund, then providing education and medical care is sensible, and some will turn out fine and others will be Bezos and then you can get your investment back via tax. I am honestly trying to avoid the flame war here - but I do it know how else to frame the question?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lallysingh 5y agoWe don't want others not like us to get benefits, especially if it's paid out of a common tax pool. Even if it's not, if we're not eligible for the same benefits. The US population has had decades (almost centuries) of us vs them politics within the country.
- outside1234 5y agoThis is right on. There is an additional layer to this that some "blue collar" workers feel it is unfair to tax them for education benefits they don't utilize as a working class. Hopefully we can reframe the debate to include technical skills training like this in addition to university to be inclusive of all of the modern skills people are going to need and that we as a nation need to invest in.
- manuelabeledo 5y agoThere are "us vs them politics" everywhere. What the US has is more like "I'm fine with being screwed as long as the others are too" kind of mentality. Look at healthcare. There would be people rejecting Obamacare just because it has "Obama" in its unofficial name, then not be able to pay for treatments.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoI am fully on board with this idea. The government provides education for people who want it. They better themselves, they better the economy and taxes. A side benefit is that educated people also better the human race as a whole.
- _moof 5y agoPlease, please, please take note before commenting: These are being forgiven under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, created in 2007 (fifteen years ago), which eliminates your remaining debt after you've made ten years of payments while working in the public sector (government or non-profit). This has nothing to do with current debates around loan forgiveness.
- endtime 5y agoThat's where the 40,000 in the headline comes from. But the article also says this: > Several thousand borrowers with older loans will also receive forgiveness through income-driven repayment (IDR) forgiveness, plus another 3.6 million borrowers will receive at least three years of additional credit toward IDR forgiveness, the Education Department said in a statement.
- colpabar 5y agoI'll believe it when I see it. I vividly remember getting "credits" for $1 from fafsa, so if it's anything like that, it will be meaningless.
- stonogo 5y agoI think you might be misremembering, because the FAFSA is just the application you fill out to apply for student aid. Maybe the Department of Education issued the credits?
- branon 5y agoDoes this mean full-time public service workers with pre-PSLF loans, or are the feds debating broadening the scope of loan forgiveness to include persons in other careers as well?
- tedivm 5y agoThey aren't changing the scope at all- they're just fixing some problems that meant people who should have gotten their loans forgiven but didn't will finally get that problem corrected, and they're granting credits for people who are already in the system. This will now allow a single person outside of that program to benefit, and it won't add new people to the program. This may change with future actions, but quite frankly it's kind of embarrassing that they're claiming this is a win when all they did was follow through on a promise made years ago that was basically ignored.
- convexfunction 5y agoYou might wonder whether it's actually regressive for people who have college degrees (or who at least attempted to get one) -- overwhelmingly not the neediest people in our society, even if I do sympathize with how terrible our student loan system is -- to be targeted for help from the government!
- eric4smith 5y agoYup we live in a clown world now. What’s next, forgiving all the student loans? Does no one think of the consequences of these kinds of actions?
- fasteddie31003 5y agoAnd the student loan debt cycle continues. I'm all for canceling student debt if it is attached to a longterm plan to reduce the cost of higher education so that the next generation is not strapped with the same problem. My cynical side thinks the higher education lobby is deeply entrenched with the Federal Government and loves the never ending conveyer belt of young adults with large bankrolls provided by government backed debt.
- musicale 5y agoIt's an insane system that has enabled universities to drastically increase tuition and fees, outpacing inflation for more than half a century.
- bombcar 5y agoUS: We should use the power of our massive government to subsidize and guarantee 30 year fixed home mortgages. House prices: shoot up US: Surprised pichachu face US: We should use the power of our massive government to subsidize and guarantee loans for college education so people can afford houses! College prices: shoot up US: Surprised pichachu face
- Invictus0 5y agoLet's do healthcare now
- janejeon 5y agoAll of this seems like a problem of leverage: the government's fiscal policy encouraged people to be levered up, then the fed's monetary policy allowed people to be levered up. The "value" for any given thing (housing, college) remains similar, but more leverage for everybody means that same thing gets proportionally more expensive. I don't see any way out of this except for popping the debt bubble.
- gzer0 5y agoMy master plan is to eventually have 13 graduate level Master's degrees under my belt. Why you may ask? If one is enrolled as a full time "student", the student loan monthly payments are paused. Since, at least for me, I can handle being a full time Master student and also my full time remote-only job, this isn't an issue. The reason I am doing this is because there is $1.6 trillion in student loan debt; the government is definitely not seeing most of that money. Someone will have to come in and save us all. And well, I am willing to bet 13 master's degrees on this. Currently at 3. ;)
- merpnderp 5y agoAny of your masters programs cover the tragedy of the commons?
- musicale 5y ago> the student loan monthly payments are paused And the interest is capitalized at the end. That's what the banks are counting on.
- bombcar 5y agoHe who dies with the most debt wins.
- __ryan__ 5y agoI assume you’re joking, but just in case: in-school deferment only automatically applies to federal loans. For private loans, you have to apply and they can reject you or put a cap on the deferment duration. For federal loans, your eligibility depends on income and has an aggregate maximum of $138,500 including your undergraduate federal loans. Source: https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized-unsubsidized https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized...
- Waterluvian 5y agoI hope every single person who is vocal about cancelling student debt, but doesn’t talk about fixing the underlying problems, recognizes that they’re just another generation of unremarkable hypocrites. It’s a real problem deserving a real solution. Well beyond people just sticking their hands out, saying “gimme!”
- rc_mob 5y agowhy not both?
- Waterluvian 5y agoAbsolutely both. But not just the one.
- emurillo510 5y agowhat happened to the free market economy? the incentive structure is fucked. As a person who worked my ass off this decade, it is unfair :(
- bombcar 5y agoFree market needs to be allowed to fail, so bring back student loan bankruptcies and watch the problem mostly fix itself. Anyway, you could get loans paid off if you worked public sector, but you usually come out ahead working private sector in the same field.
- nfRfqX5n 5y agothis program has been available for 15 years, you could’ve used it
- Miner49er 5y agoit died in '08.
- marricks 5y agoThe title can be read in an extremely misleading way. The US has forgiven forty thousand individuals loans. Not 40k per individual. It’s how I first read it. Since there are millions of US citizens with student loans that’s far less than 1% and doesn’t seem… news worthy. Whatever broader relief the government is offering could be news but the details are extremely scant so far.
- temp8964 5y agoThis is literally an attack on blue collar workers. What do they get from this?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- moralestapia 5y agoJust to have some perspective, that's 40k out of ~40 million, or about 0.1%. The cynic in me is already speculating on why/how that 0.1% was chosen ...
- merpnderp 5y agoBy working for the government. People must be rewarded for taking jobs that pay more on average, have better benefits on average, and are much harder to be separated from on average.
- EnderWT 5y agoThis NPR article goes more in depth about this: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/19/1093310151/student-loans-income-based-repayment https://www.npr.org/2022/04/19/1093310151/student-loans-inco...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rafaelreinert 5y agoOne question for the economists, how can U.S fight inflation if all I see on the news is the government printing money? As Brazilian I got used to that, the government create popular projects in order to increase the public opinions but it only generates more poverty’s. Obs: I’m Brazilian and I really don’t know nothing about USA economy and politics but seems the same that happened here.
- andrewfong 5y agoActual DOE press release here: https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department-education-announces-actions-fix-longstanding-failures-student-loan-programs https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department-education-...
- skizm 5y agoWhy is the government so afraid of allowing new student loans being issued to go into bankruptcy? Wouldn't this solve most issues going forward? Separate note: instead of loan forgiveness programs, just pay for people's school up front if they go into these public sector jobs. Then if they quit before the end of their contract, they're on the hook for whatever. Same as the military academies system. Free college, 5 years of service, and you're done. I'm guessing they don't because they can weasel their way out of paying the forgiveness later through technicalities / miring the candidates with red tape, and the program is actually in bad faith.
- mrep 5y agoBecause unsecured loans are awful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31099683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31099683
- Fomite 5y agoThere's a couple reasons why not to do this, primarily flexibility. The program is expressly designed to allow people to move between positions, as long as they remain in a state, federal, local, tribal or 501c3 job. Those jobs also aren't guaranteed, nor is the government obligated to find you a posting. The program wasn't started in bad faith, spent some time there under the Trump administration where it was effectively non-functional, and is now functioning again.
- photochemsyn 5y agoI think the solution is to allow student loan debt to be discharged under normal bankruptcy proceedings, on one hand, and to return to c. 1980 costs for a university education, on the other. The latter requires cuts of administrative salaries across the board in the American higher education system. For example: > "The university’s highest paid chancellor is UC San Francisco Chancellor Samuel Hawgood, whose salary increased from $795,675 to $819,545. At the bottom of the pay scale are the chancellors of UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside and UC Merced, whose salaries increased from $394,655 to $406,495." https://www.dailycal.org/2017/09/18/uc-gives-pay-raises-8-10-chancellors/ https://www.dailycal.org/2017/09/18/uc-gives-pay-raises-8-10... In contrast, the governor of California makes $220K or so in salary. In 1980 UC tuition was $300 for the academic school year, plus a student services fee of $419. That sums to about $2500 a year inflation-adjusted today. Today's UC tuition is about $12,500 per year. On top of that, a minimal $20,000 per year for rent + food is tacked on. So if this is all paid by loans, ~120K debt is created for a four-year education - unless you have quite wealthy parents of course, then you get out free as a bird. In reality what's going on here is the conversion of the American 20th century education system - which put America on the leading edge of technological development for over half a century - to the British Empire education system, in which a small aristocratic class attends exclusive colleges to get networked into the posh system of aristocratic class privilege. Everyone else just becomes a victim of the parasitic investment capitalist sector which collects interest on the debt for the next 20 years (oh yes that includes feeding into 401K boomer retirement plans, so there's that lovely angle too).
- exabrial 5y agoWhen you say "cancelled", do you mean "told the creditors to eat shit" or "we paid the creditors off"? Because everyone thinks #1 is happening, when usually it's #2.
- moralestapia 5y agoI could imagine there's a lot of people who: 1. Are paying/had paid their mortgage properly. Usually implies being down to earth and choosing a home you can actually afford. 2. Paid their student loans. 3. File and pay their taxes properly. 4. Have never went unemployed, or better yet, they're self-employed. 5. Never played stock market bets, as they're more conservative and prefer to save money in a predictable way through the years/decades (yes, decades). 6. Didn't get bailed out for COVID as they were not eligible because of 4, or they didn't need it because of 5 and their own savings bailed them out. They should feel really pissed off right now, with just cause.
- vmception 5y agoThis is about a 15 year old program and nothing to do with current political sentiment. Those same people always had the choice of complying with this program as well.
- moralestapia 5y agoIt was a tangential comment and I never mentioned politics, at all. 15 year old program or not, what do citizens who meet all those things I mentioned get in return? Please don't tell me it is "the satisfaction of knowing that their hard work and taxes benefit others who are less fortunate than them".
- vmception 5y agoI don't view it as getting something in return. They made a choice. The people complying with this other program made a choice. Both choices result in less debt they have to worry about. This leads me to think we're having a different conversation than the one you want to have.
- moralestapia 5y agoSigh ... You are a teacher and have two kids, A and B. Kid A is the ideal student, never gets in trouble, always send assignments in time and comes out really well in all tests. Kid B is the complete opposite and is basically a mess (for whatever reason). At the end of the school year you decide to give both students the same grade. You (could) justify it by saying that this measure is going to motivate Kid B to behave more like Kid A. Nice, but, how do you think Kid A is going to feel? What if, instead, it makes Kid A behave more like Kid B onwards. You don't want this to happen. See, https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12913-envious-monkeys-can-spot-a-fair-deal/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12913-envious-monkeys...
- ffggvv 5y agoExtremely misleading title. i assumed 40k was the dollar amount cap for each loan. not the number of loans forgiven.
- Barrera 5y ago> Some 43.4 million borrowers are carrying about $1.6 trillion in outstanding student loans from the Federal Loan Portfolio, an average of more than $37,000 each, according to the Education Data Initiative. And yet the content of a college education can be had for free on YouTube. Colleges don't sell education, they sell a credential. Public policy has been lagging behind technological reality for decades on this one.
- lr4444lr 5y agoDo the recipients have to pay tax on the amount forgiven?
- xwdv 5y agoCanceling student loans will never happen. It’s crazy how so many people have hung their hopes on this event occurring. To the point where they will likely die or become very poor if it doesn’t happen.
- blippage 5y agoI'm a UK guy in my 50's. I went to uni (the US term for college) in '83. At the time I was in the minority of the population. I was given a grant of £3000pa and was able to make ends meet. I might have lived in, shall we say, the most salubrious of environments, but I emerged without debt. Same thing when I did my masters and PhD a few years after that. I basically caught the tail end of uni, when it was for the minority of folk. I shake my head at the monster that higher education has become. I'm hardly in the loop anymore, but I've noticed that the UK want to nickel-and-dime the students with tuition fees, graduation fees, and whatever fee that they seem to concoct on an ongoing basis. The US seems even worse, with books costing 100's of bucks. Shocking. Truly shocking. The whole thing is a shameful scam, and no-one is calling it out for what it is. The truth is, one rarely /needs/ a university education. It's really just a piece of paper to get you into an office job - if you're lucky. The problem is, now that everyone's got a degree, they're not particularly valuable in their own right. It's a foot in the door to a club that keeps upping its membership fees. Dare I say it, but it was better when a uni education was the preserve of the elite few. Now, I appreciate it that this is going to rankle a lot of sensibilities about "fairness". If fewer people had a uni education, then it wouldn't be considered quite so important, as employers would have to take what they could get rather than insisting on a degree. Plus it would also put an end to a large swathe of the population starting their young adult life with a small mortgage. In my eyes, what we're seeing today is morally unconscionable. Lambs to the slaughter.
- strictnein 5y agoA college degree, home ownership, etc were incorrectly seen by lawmakers as pathways to success as opposed to signals of success.
- MarcelOlsz 5y agoI find myself in a very funny situation where I have a very high paying and great job, that I got without any education. Now that I want to emigrate to Japan, I need a degree, so I am going to study in Finland as real estate is cheap and I can get a degree for free there before moving. I literally just need that piece of paper.
- sgjohnson 5y agoThere should be no student loan forgiveness. But bankruptcy should get you out of them. As it stands, not even bankruptcy gets rid of student loans. This is true in the UK too.
- uoaei 5y agoThey're not forgiving student loans so much as forgiving themselves for not administering them correctly, and then taking steps to rectify the years-long errors.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoThis is fine but I would really like to see an effort to get the rising costs under control. Otherwise colleges will just suck up more money the same way health care is happy to accept subsidies while raising costs.
- weezin 5y agoI wonder what the pause in student loans has done to contribute toward inflation? I would be paying 200 dollars a month right now, but no way I'm paying 0% interest loans that may get partially forgiven one day.
- apetresc 5y agoOne technical question I've never understood about this debate: when the government "forgives" loans like this, what are they actually doing? Is the government paying the creditors off on the debtors' behalf (like a bailout)? Or are they simply declaring a refusal to prosecute the debtors?
- paulpauper 5y agoa lot of borrowers, a lot of debt, that's for sure
- yumindev 5y agomiddle class people are fucked
- alfor 5y agoSo tired of government meddling in people's affairs. So if you work for government you are eligible, in private business not! That money is going to come out of someone else pocket. In this case it’s going to be more inflation and more taxes. Where I live (Canada) the system is so complicated that 95% of people don’t even understand how it work. We have to run simulations of typical cases to trace graphs and make a decision.
- macdaknife 5y agoI paid off my student loans each month until I was 34. I did it, and it made me stronger. Making other citizens pay for your loans is selfish, and it will come back to bite the people who accept this largess.
- rc_mob 5y agothings sucked for you and so you are determined to make it suck for others
- torbTurret 5y agoPut myself through college with some very shiny work and living conditions only to be met with medical debt from a congenital issue later. Can never wrap my head around why America would forgive student debt and not medical debt, especially when the former is always a choice.
- rc_mob 5y agogenerally ... American policy is designed by the wealthy of the wealthy and for the wealthy. So unless a problem is effecting the wealthy is has a low chance of getting fixed.
- sudosysgen 5y agoBecause only one of the two is dischargible through bankruptcy.
- bnjms 5y agoI have an unpopular opinion that forgiving loans hurts those that did not go to college because of ability or cost. This font read to me like a blanket forgiveness is object to though. I understand the support from those who’ve already paid off their loans but this does not apply to those who did not go. Also I suspect it depresses wages as people will not need to demand higher wages and this seems to be used to funnel them into government jobs.
- matt321 5y agoI wont support any loan forgiveness. I worked my but off to work fulltime and pay tuition at the sate university. It took 6 years of hard work for a 4 year degree. I graduated with no debt. That my hard work might make me no better off than those who took the easy route, infuriates me.
- johnqian 5y agoWhether it be healthcare, housing, or education, the government always responds to rising costs by subsidizing demand rather than helping increase supply or fix incentive structures. Really frustrating but almost inevitable because subsidizing demand is the one "solution" that sounds good to almost everyone involved. The suppliers make more money, some consumers benefit short-term, few understand that this just drives prices up further. Anyone have ideas on ways this cycle could end? (I realize this article isn't what it seems, but I'm still taking the opportunity to discuss this issue)
- randyrand 5y agoLoan forgiveness is a big FU to those that chose not to go to college to save money.
- quags 5y agoI don't see allowing bankruptcy as a problem. Companies are in the business of lending to students, that doesn't dry out overnight. There are periods of more risk on, and risk off so there would also be cycles. A car analogy: cars can be repossessed but minus covid area a used car tends to be a bad investment (not an investment at all) - a money looser and even on repossession ends up at a loss. Yet banks still lend out to cars. What happens when banks don't lend? Dealer incentives and financing. Colleges are not going to simply put their hands up and say, well students can't afford us anymore. Colleges, which are in the business of selling degrees, will evolve and find a way to lend money. Their main target market depends on getting these loans.