3 ms·

That doesn't sound intuitive to me. Who are these people with $80k balances of debt? How did that happen? Are they maybe correlated with higher earnings e.g. me

That doesn't sound intuitive to me. Who are these people with $80k balances of debt? How did that happen? Are they maybe correlated with higher earnings e.g. med students? Would they benefit the most from aid in terms of actually improving society? They might not actually be the "poorest" even if they have the lowest net wealth, if they have high incomes. More surprising to me: > As of March 2021, 23% of the $1.59 trillion outstanding federal loan balance was held by borrowers who were 50 or older, up from 18% in 2017. (Figure SA-12A Off the cuff, this group seems like the least important to pay off

lapcat 4y ago
> Who are these people with $80k balances of debt? A lot of them are graduate students. > Off the cuff, this group seems like the least important to pay off Why do you say that? We're now seeing senior citizens get their Social Security garnished for student loan payments! Do you want to see people with a lifetime of student loan debt?
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  What kind of grad students? Excluding PhDs because people don't typically take on debts for those we've got med school, and masters programs. The former should be cheaper but it seems very inappropriate to bucket them in with the general population. The latter could vary wildly in terms of ROI.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > Excluding PhDs because people don't typically take on debts for those I can tell you from personal experience that you're very wrong about this.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      Well... that's dumb. TIL STEM phd programs with teaching requirements and piss poor stipends are not the bottom of the barrel
    - nradov 4y ago
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - tzs 4y ago
    > Excluding PhDs because people don't typically take on debts for those we've got med school, and masters programs. Also law school.
- peteradio 4y ago
  > We're now seeing senior citizens get their Social Security garnished for student loan payments! You can find a person for every situation. How many people on this earth have a nickle up their ass this very instant? Also, incentives matter.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  > We're now seeing senior citizens get their Social Security garnished for student loan payments! Do you want to see people with a lifetime of student loan debt? shrug. If you're old and not working anymore and have debts you can sell your shit to pay off the debts. If you don't have shit to sell then you're poor. I do agree that debts shouldn't be able to take your income below a certain livable level, but there's some level between liveable and full social security payments, then sure, let people who lived a life of debt drop to the lower bound. There is basically no upside to subsidizing these folks. There's quite a lot of benefit to freeing young people from debt at the beginning so that they can build up wealth. *I'm aware a 50 year old person is often not "old and not working anymore"

lapcat 4y ago

> Who are these people with $80k balances of debt? A lot of them are graduate students. > Off the cuff, this group seems like the least important to pay off Why do you say that? We're now seeing senior citizens get their Social Security garnished for student loan payments! Do you want to see people with a lifetime of student loan debt?

spywaregorilla 4y ago
What kind of grad students? Excluding PhDs because people don't typically take on debts for those we've got med school, and masters programs. The former should be cheaper but it seems very inappropriate to bucket them in with the general population. The latter could vary wildly in terms of ROI.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Excluding PhDs because people don't typically take on debts for those I can tell you from personal experience that you're very wrong about this.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Well... that's dumb. TIL STEM phd programs with teaching requirements and piss poor stipends are not the bottom of the barrel
  - nradov 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- tzs 4y ago
  > Excluding PhDs because people don't typically take on debts for those we've got med school, and masters programs. Also law school.
peteradio 4y ago
> We're now seeing senior citizens get their Social Security garnished for student loan payments! You can find a person for every situation. How many people on this earth have a nickle up their ass this very instant? Also, incentives matter.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
> We're now seeing senior citizens get their Social Security garnished for student loan payments! Do you want to see people with a lifetime of student loan debt? shrug. If you're old and not working anymore and have debts you can sell your shit to pay off the debts. If you don't have shit to sell then you're poor. I do agree that debts shouldn't be able to take your income below a certain livable level, but there's some level between liveable and full social security payments, then sure, let people who lived a life of debt drop to the lower bound. There is basically no upside to subsidizing these folks. There's quite a lot of benefit to freeing young people from debt at the beginning so that they can build up wealth. *I'm aware a 50 year old person is often not "old and not working anymore"