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59% of Americans worry student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse

38 points by donsupreme 4y ago

jollyllama 4y ago
The only way to "forgive" loans without causing inflation would be to screw over the banks by writing off the debt, forcing a credit crunch.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  Banks haven't held any standard student loans since way back in the Obama administration.
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    That actually happened, yo. Obama did a federal takeover of all standard student loans, way back in 2010. I mean, you can look it up. Over 90% of student loan debt is now held directly by the federal government (rather than merely being guaranteed by it, as was the case in the past).
- lapcat 4y ago
  > screw over the banks by writing off the debt The banks don't hold this debt, the federal government does. That's why the federal government can forgive it. That's why the federal government has been able to suspend payments for 2 years. The government can't forgive debt held by someone else.
  - jollyllama 4y ago
    "Most lenders are huge institutions, such as international banks or the government. After a loan is originated, however, it represents an asset that can be bought and sold on the market." Source: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/081216/who-actually-owns-student-loan-debt.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/08121...
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Look at the source of investopedia's stats: "The outstanding federal loan balance is $1.620 trillion and accounts for 92.7% of all student loan debt." https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics So yes, banks do hold some student loan debt, but most of it is held by the federal government.
    - Dma54rhs 4y ago
      I believe your federal good government has fully guaranteed these loans so it doesn't really matter. The lenders still get paid as the write off would mean government taking the hit.
  - suggestion 4y ago
    The federal government doesn't forgive debt, it just changes who's paying for it
    - washbrain 4y ago
      Right, they change the who from "former student" to "no one".
      - chii 4y ago
        Do they? Or are they (the gov't) just paying the loan using taxpayer money?
        suggestion 4y ago
        Hence the changing who's paying for it. Spending and revenue will be unaffected, which is the problem.
      - suggestion 4y ago
        No, if the federal government "forgives" student debt, neither spending nor budget receipts will decrease to compensate. If any other institution ventured to forgive such massive amounts owed, they would be forced to compensate with their budgets, but they don't have monopolies on violence.
superkuh 4y ago
Inflation? You mean price gouging?
esotericimpl 4y ago
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lapcat 4y ago
The entire student loan debt issue has been framed badly, because hardly anyone understands the real problem: "As of March 2021, 54% of borrowers with outstanding education debt owed less than $20,000; 45% of the outstanding federal education loan debt was held by the 10% of borrowers owing $80,000 or more." https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-pricing-student-aid-2021.pdf https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-p... Forgiving $10K across the board is dumb and mistargeted. $50K would be better but is still mistargeted. What we really need to do is get the unmanageable >$80K balances down to a manageable <$20K amount. It's the 10% minority of borrowers who are really hurting. In my opinion we should be talking more about years of debt held rather than amount of debt held. In theory, college is supposed to "pay for itself", but if some people are continuing to hold student loan debt 10 years, 20 years, 30 years after college, then college obviously did not pay for itself in those cases.
- edmcnulty101 4y ago
  This is a great way to look at it.
- codegeek 4y ago
  In America, we stopped being objective a while ago and everything is "The other side is out to get us. Other side BAD". One side there are people who are pissed because they had to pay off loans and why should kids get it for free now while the other side is crying about the uncontrollable rising costs of education where a History Major costs $80K for 4 years. No one is looking at this problem objectively which is to understand why and where the costs are rising and how we can control it instead of just band aids.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    'Affordable housing' is a euphemism for "unaffordable housing that is subsidized". Democrats refuse to see the problem (if the residents can't afford it, can the rest of us?) and Republicans just hope that if they don't build "affordable housing" the residents will go to some other town. One angle is that adding more money makes things more expensive. If the money isn't there then people will do with less or do without. People have long been concerned that student loans contribute to increasing tuition and the evidence is accumulating for that https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...
edmcnulty101 4y ago
Didn't they forgive a massive amount of bank debt during the 2008 financial crisis? And that didn't cause any worrisome inflation. Forgive these kids loans, who were just trying to go to college to learn and gain job skills to compete in the world and are now debt slaves.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Do you mean the taxpayer absorbing the debt should target loans given to people who did job skill-related degrees?
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >Forgive these kids loans, who were just trying to go to college to learn and gain job skills to compete in the world and are now debt slaves. Nah. Those kids spent 4 years partying and treating adult life like an extension of high school with no consequences and free rent. I graduated highschool in ‘08, and I can clearly remember wondering how in the hell all of my friends on social media were living the lives they were, as I scraped by working minimum wage jobs in the depths of the recession. I’m all for forgiving things like nurses and teachers who meet some public service requirements, but the people who spent $100k they didn’t have on a Communication degree can cry me a river.
  - edmcnulty101 4y ago
    I agree. But I also think that they should be able to bankrupt out of them like Trump and many other rich people have done numerous times. Trapping students into non-bankruptable student loans is pure debt slavery.
    - suggestion 4y ago
      Then every student will just declare bankrupty when they graduate and already have non-existent credit.
      - edmcnulty101 4y ago
electric_dreams 4y ago
whoomp12342 4y ago
wow, what an abstract and deplorable example of NIMBY. i.e. "we want people to suffer crippling debt because we are worried about bananas costing 10 cents more"
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  The macroeconomic literacy of your average voter is pretty poor unfortunately. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/393584/americans-view-higher-inflation.aspx https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/393584/ameri... https://morningconsult.com/2022/05/18/power-to-control-inflation-data/ https://morningconsult.com/2022/05/18/power-to-control-infla...
- dumpsterlid 4y ago
  To be fair the NIMBY cruelty of it all must really kind of sneak up on you when all you do is watch CNN or something for news
- mantas 4y ago
  If person A paid back his student loan, why would he have to cover other's student loan by his taxes (or price increase or whatever)?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    For the same reason my taxes and insurance premiums pay for someone else’s healthcare. Student loan debt at this scale should’ve never existed. It’s a policy failure (but so is a lot of US policy, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
    - mantas 4y ago
      Healthcare is insurance for possible future accidents. A may have higher risk of breaking a leg, B may have higher risk of cardiovascular accident. Eventually it evens out. No matter how healthy lifestyle you lead, you've a risk of ending up in hospital. For active lifestyle it may be even higher :) Meanwhile student loan is past decision. As well as paying it back or not. Some people may have lived on noodles to pay it back asap while others took the easy route. Maybe all payments shall be returned too? Of course, US high education costs are stupid. There needs to be more incentive to guide people towards degrees that will pay for themselves too.
Yahivin 4y ago
Just make student loans easier to eliminate in bankruptcy. Problem solved.
- sremani 4y ago
  and make the endowments of the Universities eat the loses.
- chii 4y ago
  but isn't that equivalent to just forgiving the loan?
  - dymk 4y ago
    No, loan forgiveness doesn’t wreck your ability to get a future loan.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      From the government's books its the same though
  - Yahivin 4y ago
    It changes the risk profile for the lender when thinking about future loans and gives people who got caught in a bad situation more options.
- dktokyo 4y ago
  Though result would just be a lot less people able to go to college.
  - polski-g 4y ago
    There are millions of people attending university who do not belong there, enrolled in programs that should not exist, in order to study theories that are wrong.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I’m not an economist, but it would seem reasonable that the printing of money would cause inflation, yes?
- washbrain 4y ago
  It's more complicated than that. Inflation is a combination of supply and demand. Too few goods for an extended period of time? Inflation. Excess money allowing people to bid up for the goods they want? Inflation. A sudden reduction of debt might contribute to people spending more for the same goods they already buy, or it might lead to more savings and investment as people are able to escape living paycheck to paycheck and start entering stock markets. It might mean they are able to buy goods and services they couldn't before, but those goods might have ample supply. It's just not as simple as, X therefore inflation.
  - gapplebees 4y ago
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ProjectArcturis 4y ago
I don't know how you can have a blanket forgiveness of student loans without also addressing college costs. Otherwise consumers become even less price-sensitive, expecting another round of forgiveness in a decade or so.
- dbingham 4y ago
  College isn't a consumer good. We need to stop thinking of it as such. It's a prerequisite for the vast majority of jobs. Which makes it a vital public good that should be run as a utility. We should be running a public university system with the goal and assumption that everyone has a seat at their local university - covered by their tax dollars.
  - sct202 4y ago
    College shouldn't be a prerequisite for so many jobs. My bachelors is directly related to the field I'm working in and I don't think the content that I learned was that useful and the most impactful thing has been the college recruiting job fairs where I got internships and a job.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Water and electricity are vital public utilities too, despite the taxpayers not being forced to pay for those for everyone else.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Obviously college isn't a prerequisite for the vast majority of jobs. The majority of people working today don't have college degrees. Look outside the tech industry bubble. In many cases, employers only list a college degree as a job requirement because it's an easy way to filter down an excess of job applications. If they were actually short of labor they would eliminate that requirement in order to get more applicants. Most people don't belong in college in the first place. It's just a waste of their time, and a waste of resources. I'm certainly not willing to pay higher taxes so that students can goof around and party for 4 years. What we really need is expanded access to trade schools and apprentice programs.
gapplebees 4y ago
daoist_shaman 4y ago
If student loans are forgiven, would those who already paid them off be eligible for rebates? If not, why would we want to reward large amounts of debt? Isn't that a recipe for disaster in a country where the average citizen already has ~6,000 dollars of credit card debt?
- Ekaros 4y ago
  And what about those who never took it? Wouldn't it be fair to them to also give them same amount of money possibly helping them to set up business or investment?
  - daoist_shaman 4y ago
    Yeah, they are also included. Anyone who had their education financed any other way should also be eligible, otherwise this doesn't seem very egalitarian. It punishes those who made the responsible financial choice of avoiding debt.
scottLobster 4y ago
Well, it would/will. It would be no different than if the government wrote everyone massive stimulus checks and those with student loans used said checks to pay them down. You'd see a huge spike in demand for various things as people would have more money to spend. That said I know a lot of people who were railroaded into college as 17 year old children before they even knew how credit cards worked, got a useless degree because they had no direction, and by the time they wised up were up to their eyeballs in debt and unable to get a well-paying job to pay it down. I'm hesitant to pile even more inflation on top of what we have already, but if I could wave a magic wand I'd want to forgive a lot of those debts as matter of justice. They were mostly kids who were given false promises by every person and every institution they ever trusted up to 17 years old, and then told to make a decision based on said information that ended up saddling them with a lifetime of irrevocable debt. Society at large should take responsibility for that misguidance.
- andyfleming 4y ago
  I’m not sure if it would be that significant in the short-term. Required student loans payments are still deferred, so cancelling them wouldn’t increase cash flow (at least today).
president 4y ago
Maybe the colleges and universities that made big money out of all these loans should be paying off these student loans. Why do I and other tax payers need to bail out Jimmy's fine arts degree in 14th century calligraphy?
recursivedoubts 4y ago
usury always eventually ends up in impossible situations like this there's a reason traditional societies had jubilees
- niij 4y ago
  > Usury: the illegal action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest. These are federal loans. The interest rate on these are currently mid-single digits (not accounting for 0% since March 2020). They've been low single digits for the past decade. This is not usury.
yuan43 4y ago
Setting aside the issues of ethics and fairness, it's worth noting that debt jubilee-type proposals are not a sign of a robust economy. They are a sign of an economy locked in a debt spiral.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  I thought we declared debt to be irrelevant years ago? Why not create a company that buys all the toxic debt after people declare insolvency and then safe that company with tax dollars? Then feign surprise about the toxicity of the debt. Seems to be the goto strategy.
rumblestrut 4y ago
FTA: "Some borrowers say they would not change their spending habits if their college debt — or a portion of it — is canceled." As someone who paid off student loans four years ago, I can tell you that this (at least for my family) wasn't the case. When you have more money, you find new ways to spend it (and enjoy doing so).
Shaddox 4y ago
I think the real crux of the issue is : why does education cost so much in the first place? Because it's excessively bloated. I thought European universities were bloated, but they look like lean running operations compared to American ones: high quality food, parks, gardens, recreational facilities, sports facilities including personal trainers, courts, etc. It's more like a vacation resort and I think students often end up treating it like one. Back in my day, the food at the university cafeteria was pig slop and we liked it!
clarionbell 4y ago
Inflation of university education is already terrible. What used to be a ticket up into middle class and beyond has become a way to get clerical work. Number of graduates across developed world has risen considerably in the past decades, but what kind of benefit it had? From something special and extraordinary, university education became mundane, expected, requirement. Something you just have to do. Never mind if it's going to give you anything. In all seriousness. How many graduates do you think society needs? Do we really need people to spend 4 years in school, just so they can sit behind desk and fill forms all day? I'm sorry I don't think we do. And this isn't a take from US btw, this is from Europe. And yes, I am mostly talking about liberal arts. At this point, the only thing the system works as is a buffer to keep youth from workforce.
m0llusk 4y ago
These are bad loans that are not being paid. We need to get over this.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
I think a first step should be to forgive all interest and fees on student loans in excess of the interest of the feds rate over the period of borrowing. That, in my opinion, is some of the worst of it. People are stuck making payments while at the same time seeing the amount they owe increases! So let's try that first. Eliminate the predatory interest and fees first and see how that works out.
taylodl 4y ago
59% of Americans are correct, but damn! Have they really thought through what they're saying? They've profited handsomely from these kids and now they're worried if these kids have more money so they can live then that'll make things harder for the rest of Americans? That's just messed up. That's not to say that student loan forgiveness across the board is necessarily a good idea, but inflation worries is not what we should be considering when discussing this topic.
1letterunixname 4y ago
Let this sink in: there are people today who owe over a million dollars in student loan debt who may never be able to pay it off. (Dr. Evil Pinky finger included) The "requirement" of "more $$ education always = good" lowered academic standards, increased costs to individual workers, and made university endowments extremely rich. Edit: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-you-get-to-1-million-in-student-debt-2017-5?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-you-get-to-1-million-in-... https://www.businessinsider.com/debt-vs-cost-vs-salary-medical-dental-law-school-2018-5?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/debt-vs-cost-vs-salary-medic... https://usdebtclock.org https://usdebtclock.org
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RickJWagner 4y ago
"(OP) an artist and administrative assistant, earned a bachelor’s degree from Temple University and master’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College. She now owes more than six figures in student debt." That pretty much sums it up. Why should taxpayers (especially blue collar taxpayers, who did not go to college) have to fund a bachelor's and a master's for people that don't choose paths that would likely lead to salaries that can repay? This is madness. Of course giving away money will lead to more inflation. Covid checks were used for the meme stock bonfire. Giving money to people who can't handle money will not result in anything good.
bastard_op 4y ago
Rather than loan forgiveness, why doesn't the government go after the corporations that ran these for-profit institutes for "higher education" that milked student loan programs year after year to provide useless education to suckers too ignorant to refuse? Having worked for some of the largest over the years to get the inside scoop (and now tend to refuse working for edu's as a result), they're all mostly scumbag organizations for the most part no matter how "christian" godly/goodly they pretend to be, or not, where I have more respect for the "nots". Flip side, look at the even community colleges, they're run like state programs, and hire generally only the worst people as they're institutionalized in for the state benefits and retirement. There is no winning if you actually need education anymore.
lcall 4y ago
It's a bribe, for votes. IMO, it's much better, and more effective, to let individuals and families decide for themselves how their charitable donations will be allocated. Local decision-making yields less fraud & waste, and it's just ... right to have charititable donations be unforced.

38 points by donsupreme 4y ago

The only way to "forgive" loans without causing inflation would be to screw over the banks by writing off the debt, forcing a credit crunch.

Turing_Machine 4y ago
Banks haven't held any standard student loans since way back in the Obama administration.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  That actually happened, yo. Obama did a federal takeover of all standard student loans, way back in 2010. I mean, you can look it up. Over 90% of student loan debt is now held directly by the federal government (rather than merely being guaranteed by it, as was the case in the past).
lapcat 4y ago
> screw over the banks by writing off the debt The banks don't hold this debt, the federal government does. That's why the federal government can forgive it. That's why the federal government has been able to suspend payments for 2 years. The government can't forgive debt held by someone else.
- jollyllama 4y ago
  "Most lenders are huge institutions, such as international banks or the government. After a loan is originated, however, it represents an asset that can be bought and sold on the market." Source: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/081216/who-actually-owns-student-loan-debt.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/08121...
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Look at the source of investopedia's stats: "The outstanding federal loan balance is $1.620 trillion and accounts for 92.7% of all student loan debt." https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics So yes, banks do hold some student loan debt, but most of it is held by the federal government.
  - Dma54rhs 4y ago
    I believe your federal good government has fully guaranteed these loans so it doesn't really matter. The lenders still get paid as the write off would mean government taking the hit.
- suggestion 4y ago
  The federal government doesn't forgive debt, it just changes who's paying for it
  - washbrain 4y ago
    Right, they change the who from "former student" to "no one".
    - chii 4y ago
      Do they? Or are they (the gov't) just paying the loan using taxpayer money?
      - suggestion 4y ago
        Hence the changing who's paying for it. Spending and revenue will be unaffected, which is the problem.
    - suggestion 4y ago
      No, if the federal government "forgives" student debt, neither spending nor budget receipts will decrease to compensate. If any other institution ventured to forgive such massive amounts owed, they would be forced to compensate with their budgets, but they don't have monopolies on violence.

superkuh 4y ago

Inflation? You mean price gouging?

esotericimpl 4y ago

[dead]

lapcat 4y ago

The entire student loan debt issue has been framed badly, because hardly anyone understands the real problem: "As of March 2021, 54% of borrowers with outstanding education debt owed less than $20,000; 45% of the outstanding federal education loan debt was held by the 10% of borrowers owing $80,000 or more." https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-pricing-student-aid-2021.pdf https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-p... Forgiving $10K across the board is dumb and mistargeted. $50K would be better but is still mistargeted. What we really need to do is get the unmanageable >$80K balances down to a manageable <$20K amount. It's the 10% minority of borrowers who are really hurting. In my opinion we should be talking more about years of debt held rather than amount of debt held. In theory, college is supposed to "pay for itself", but if some people are continuing to hold student loan debt 10 years, 20 years, 30 years after college, then college obviously did not pay for itself in those cases.

edmcnulty101 4y ago
This is a great way to look at it.
codegeek 4y ago
In America, we stopped being objective a while ago and everything is "The other side is out to get us. Other side BAD". One side there are people who are pissed because they had to pay off loans and why should kids get it for free now while the other side is crying about the uncontrollable rising costs of education where a History Major costs $80K for 4 years. No one is looking at this problem objectively which is to understand why and where the costs are rising and how we can control it instead of just band aids.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  'Affordable housing' is a euphemism for "unaffordable housing that is subsidized". Democrats refuse to see the problem (if the residents can't afford it, can the rest of us?) and Republicans just hope that if they don't build "affordable housing" the residents will go to some other town. One angle is that adding more money makes things more expensive. If the money isn't there then people will do with less or do without. People have long been concerned that student loans contribute to increasing tuition and the evidence is accumulating for that https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...

edmcnulty101 4y ago

Didn't they forgive a massive amount of bank debt during the 2008 financial crisis? And that didn't cause any worrisome inflation. Forgive these kids loans, who were just trying to go to college to learn and gain job skills to compete in the world and are now debt slaves.

robertlagrant 4y ago
Do you mean the taxpayer absorbing the debt should target loans given to people who did job skill-related degrees?
ramesh31 4y ago
>Forgive these kids loans, who were just trying to go to college to learn and gain job skills to compete in the world and are now debt slaves. Nah. Those kids spent 4 years partying and treating adult life like an extension of high school with no consequences and free rent. I graduated highschool in ‘08, and I can clearly remember wondering how in the hell all of my friends on social media were living the lives they were, as I scraped by working minimum wage jobs in the depths of the recession. I’m all for forgiving things like nurses and teachers who meet some public service requirements, but the people who spent $100k they didn’t have on a Communication degree can cry me a river.
- edmcnulty101 4y ago
  I agree. But I also think that they should be able to bankrupt out of them like Trump and many other rich people have done numerous times. Trapping students into non-bankruptable student loans is pure debt slavery.
  - suggestion 4y ago
    Then every student will just declare bankrupty when they graduate and already have non-existent credit.
    - edmcnulty101 4y ago

electric_dreams 4y ago

whoomp12342 4y ago

wow, what an abstract and deplorable example of NIMBY. i.e. "we want people to suffer crippling debt because we are worried about bananas costing 10 cents more"

toomuchtodo 4y ago
The macroeconomic literacy of your average voter is pretty poor unfortunately. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/393584/americans-view-higher-inflation.aspx https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/393584/ameri... https://morningconsult.com/2022/05/18/power-to-control-inflation-data/ https://morningconsult.com/2022/05/18/power-to-control-infla...
dumpsterlid 4y ago
To be fair the NIMBY cruelty of it all must really kind of sneak up on you when all you do is watch CNN or something for news
mantas 4y ago
If person A paid back his student loan, why would he have to cover other's student loan by his taxes (or price increase or whatever)?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  For the same reason my taxes and insurance premiums pay for someone else’s healthcare. Student loan debt at this scale should’ve never existed. It’s a policy failure (but so is a lot of US policy, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
  - mantas 4y ago
    Healthcare is insurance for possible future accidents. A may have higher risk of breaking a leg, B may have higher risk of cardiovascular accident. Eventually it evens out. No matter how healthy lifestyle you lead, you've a risk of ending up in hospital. For active lifestyle it may be even higher :) Meanwhile student loan is past decision. As well as paying it back or not. Some people may have lived on noodles to pay it back asap while others took the easy route. Maybe all payments shall be returned too? Of course, US high education costs are stupid. There needs to be more incentive to guide people towards degrees that will pay for themselves too.

Yahivin 4y ago

Just make student loans easier to eliminate in bankruptcy. Problem solved.

sremani 4y ago
and make the endowments of the Universities eat the loses.
chii 4y ago
but isn't that equivalent to just forgiving the loan?
- dymk 4y ago
  No, loan forgiveness doesn’t wreck your ability to get a future loan.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    From the government's books its the same though
- Yahivin 4y ago
  It changes the risk profile for the lender when thinking about future loans and gives people who got caught in a bad situation more options.
dktokyo 4y ago
Though result would just be a lot less people able to go to college.
- polski-g 4y ago
  There are millions of people attending university who do not belong there, enrolled in programs that should not exist, in order to study theories that are wrong.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I’m not an economist, but it would seem reasonable that the printing of money would cause inflation, yes?

washbrain 4y ago
It's more complicated than that. Inflation is a combination of supply and demand. Too few goods for an extended period of time? Inflation. Excess money allowing people to bid up for the goods they want? Inflation. A sudden reduction of debt might contribute to people spending more for the same goods they already buy, or it might lead to more savings and investment as people are able to escape living paycheck to paycheck and start entering stock markets. It might mean they are able to buy goods and services they couldn't before, but those goods might have ample supply. It's just not as simple as, X therefore inflation.
- gapplebees 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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ProjectArcturis 4y ago

I don't know how you can have a blanket forgiveness of student loans without also addressing college costs. Otherwise consumers become even less price-sensitive, expecting another round of forgiveness in a decade or so.

dbingham 4y ago
College isn't a consumer good. We need to stop thinking of it as such. It's a prerequisite for the vast majority of jobs. Which makes it a vital public good that should be run as a utility. We should be running a public university system with the goal and assumption that everyone has a seat at their local university - covered by their tax dollars.
- sct202 4y ago
  College shouldn't be a prerequisite for so many jobs. My bachelors is directly related to the field I'm working in and I don't think the content that I learned was that useful and the most impactful thing has been the college recruiting job fairs where I got internships and a job.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  Water and electricity are vital public utilities too, despite the taxpayers not being forced to pay for those for everyone else.
- nradov 4y ago
  Obviously college isn't a prerequisite for the vast majority of jobs. The majority of people working today don't have college degrees. Look outside the tech industry bubble. In many cases, employers only list a college degree as a job requirement because it's an easy way to filter down an excess of job applications. If they were actually short of labor they would eliminate that requirement in order to get more applicants. Most people don't belong in college in the first place. It's just a waste of their time, and a waste of resources. I'm certainly not willing to pay higher taxes so that students can goof around and party for 4 years. What we really need is expanded access to trade schools and apprentice programs.

gapplebees 4y ago

daoist_shaman 4y ago

If student loans are forgiven, would those who already paid them off be eligible for rebates? If not, why would we want to reward large amounts of debt? Isn't that a recipe for disaster in a country where the average citizen already has ~6,000 dollars of credit card debt?

Ekaros 4y ago
And what about those who never took it? Wouldn't it be fair to them to also give them same amount of money possibly helping them to set up business or investment?
- daoist_shaman 4y ago
  Yeah, they are also included. Anyone who had their education financed any other way should also be eligible, otherwise this doesn't seem very egalitarian. It punishes those who made the responsible financial choice of avoiding debt.

scottLobster 4y ago

Well, it would/will. It would be no different than if the government wrote everyone massive stimulus checks and those with student loans used said checks to pay them down. You'd see a huge spike in demand for various things as people would have more money to spend. That said I know a lot of people who were railroaded into college as 17 year old children before they even knew how credit cards worked, got a useless degree because they had no direction, and by the time they wised up were up to their eyeballs in debt and unable to get a well-paying job to pay it down. I'm hesitant to pile even more inflation on top of what we have already, but if I could wave a magic wand I'd want to forgive a lot of those debts as matter of justice. They were mostly kids who were given false promises by every person and every institution they ever trusted up to 17 years old, and then told to make a decision based on said information that ended up saddling them with a lifetime of irrevocable debt. Society at large should take responsibility for that misguidance.

andyfleming 4y ago
I’m not sure if it would be that significant in the short-term. Required student loans payments are still deferred, so cancelling them wouldn’t increase cash flow (at least today).

president 4y ago

Maybe the colleges and universities that made big money out of all these loans should be paying off these student loans. Why do I and other tax payers need to bail out Jimmy's fine arts degree in 14th century calligraphy?

recursivedoubts 4y ago

usury always eventually ends up in impossible situations like this there's a reason traditional societies had jubilees

niij 4y ago
> Usury: the illegal action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest. These are federal loans. The interest rate on these are currently mid-single digits (not accounting for 0% since March 2020). They've been low single digits for the past decade. This is not usury.

yuan43 4y ago

Setting aside the issues of ethics and fairness, it's worth noting that debt jubilee-type proposals are not a sign of a robust economy. They are a sign of an economy locked in a debt spiral.

raxxorraxor 4y ago
I thought we declared debt to be irrelevant years ago? Why not create a company that buys all the toxic debt after people declare insolvency and then safe that company with tax dollars? Then feign surprise about the toxicity of the debt. Seems to be the goto strategy.

rumblestrut 4y ago

FTA: "Some borrowers say they would not change their spending habits if their college debt — or a portion of it — is canceled." As someone who paid off student loans four years ago, I can tell you that this (at least for my family) wasn't the case. When you have more money, you find new ways to spend it (and enjoy doing so).

Shaddox 4y ago

I think the real crux of the issue is : why does education cost so much in the first place? Because it's excessively bloated. I thought European universities were bloated, but they look like lean running operations compared to American ones: high quality food, parks, gardens, recreational facilities, sports facilities including personal trainers, courts, etc. It's more like a vacation resort and I think students often end up treating it like one. Back in my day, the food at the university cafeteria was pig slop and we liked it!

clarionbell 4y ago

Inflation of university education is already terrible. What used to be a ticket up into middle class and beyond has become a way to get clerical work. Number of graduates across developed world has risen considerably in the past decades, but what kind of benefit it had? From something special and extraordinary, university education became mundane, expected, requirement. Something you just have to do. Never mind if it's going to give you anything. In all seriousness. How many graduates do you think society needs? Do we really need people to spend 4 years in school, just so they can sit behind desk and fill forms all day? I'm sorry I don't think we do. And this isn't a take from US btw, this is from Europe. And yes, I am mostly talking about liberal arts. At this point, the only thing the system works as is a buffer to keep youth from workforce.

m0llusk 4y ago

These are bad loans that are not being paid. We need to get over this.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

I think a first step should be to forgive all interest and fees on student loans in excess of the interest of the feds rate over the period of borrowing. That, in my opinion, is some of the worst of it. People are stuck making payments while at the same time seeing the amount they owe increases! So let's try that first. Eliminate the predatory interest and fees first and see how that works out.

taylodl 4y ago

59% of Americans are correct, but damn! Have they really thought through what they're saying? They've profited handsomely from these kids and now they're worried if these kids have more money so they can live then that'll make things harder for the rest of Americans? That's just messed up. That's not to say that student loan forgiveness across the board is necessarily a good idea, but inflation worries is not what we should be considering when discussing this topic.

1letterunixname 4y ago

Let this sink in: there are people today who owe over a million dollars in student loan debt who may never be able to pay it off. (Dr. Evil Pinky finger included) The "requirement" of "more $$ education always = good" lowered academic standards, increased costs to individual workers, and made university endowments extremely rich. Edit: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-you-get-to-1-million-in-student-debt-2017-5?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-you-get-to-1-million-in-... https://www.businessinsider.com/debt-vs-cost-vs-salary-medical-dental-law-school-2018-5?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/debt-vs-cost-vs-salary-medic... https://usdebtclock.org https://usdebtclock.org

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RickJWagner 4y ago

"(OP) an artist and administrative assistant, earned a bachelor’s degree from Temple University and master’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College. She now owes more than six figures in student debt." That pretty much sums it up. Why should taxpayers (especially blue collar taxpayers, who did not go to college) have to fund a bachelor's and a master's for people that don't choose paths that would likely lead to salaries that can repay? This is madness. Of course giving away money will lead to more inflation. Covid checks were used for the meme stock bonfire. Giving money to people who can't handle money will not result in anything good.

bastard_op 4y ago

Rather than loan forgiveness, why doesn't the government go after the corporations that ran these for-profit institutes for "higher education" that milked student loan programs year after year to provide useless education to suckers too ignorant to refuse? Having worked for some of the largest over the years to get the inside scoop (and now tend to refuse working for edu's as a result), they're all mostly scumbag organizations for the most part no matter how "christian" godly/goodly they pretend to be, or not, where I have more respect for the "nots". Flip side, look at the even community colleges, they're run like state programs, and hire generally only the worst people as they're institutionalized in for the state benefits and retirement. There is no winning if you actually need education anymore.

lcall 4y ago

It's a bribe, for votes. IMO, it's much better, and more effective, to let individuals and families decide for themselves how their charitable donations will be allocated. Local decision-making yields less fraud & waste, and it's just ... right to have charititable donations be unforced.