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The Supreme Court rejects Biden’s plan to wipe away $400B in student loans
- aluminum96 3y agoThe plaintiffs should not have had standing. None of the litigant states actually had a direct financial injury; instead, they relied on Missouri's financial interest in MOHELA as the basis for standing. But as Amy Coney Barrett inquired in oral arguments, why didn't MOHELA itself join the lawsuit, if it was really injured? SCOTUS reached the merits because they wanted to make a policy decision. The current court is making radical changes to established law, such as last term's decision to throw out much of the VRA simply because the justices felt it was too old and no longer needed. (It was re-authorized in 2006.) Allowing judges to throw out the decisions of the legislature or executive on major policy questions, with a flimsy and partisan legal basis, is not a sustainable way to run a democracy.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoMOHELA is owned and funded by the state of Missouri, any injury to it is an injury to the state. BTW I think current "standing" rules are a travesty and courts should stop dismissing cases on those grounds. It's just a way to weasel out of making certain decisions they don't want to. For example it's pretty clear that someone is harmed by the President giving out $400 million, there's no such thing as free money.
- ix-ix 3y agoWon't anyone think of the rich?!?!
- ompaLompa 3y ago*400 Billion
- nullocator 3y agoMOHELA is a public corporation. https://www.mohela.com/DL/common/publicInfo/financialStatements.aspx https://www.mohela.com/DL/common/publicInfo/financialStateme... and they make their income in large part from the processing of federal student loans. How is that being funded by the state? It seems MOHELA was pretty explicit that they did not wish to be part of the lawsuit and were simply being used as a way to try and gain standing https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/02/mohela-student-loan-forgiveness-lawsuit/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/02/mohela-s...
- endisneigh 3y agoGood. It was a dumb and regressive proposal anyway. And no, we shouldn’t be bailing out rich folks either.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago> And no, we shouldn’t be bailing out rich folks either. Okay, but don't you think it's at least a little fucked up that we already bailed out the rich people, but we stopped there?
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoSo we should keep doing dumb stuff?
- Sohcahtoa82 3y agoI do recognize that I'm essentially committing the sunken cost fallacy. But certainly you can understand the optics of it, right? We've spent billions bailing out rich people 3 times in the last 15 years, and suddenly there's a massive pushback against helping out the lower classes? I'd like you to at least acknowledge the optics.
- svnt 3y ago> we shouldn’t be bailing out rich folks either. We already did, though, at a much higher per-capita cost, and a total program cost of about twice what this would have cost. https://boingboing.net/2022/08/24/jared-kushner-kanye-west-jeff-koons-and-other-wealthy-celebs-received-big-ppp-loans-that-they-didnt-have-to-pay-back.html https://boingboing.net/2022/08/24/jared-kushner-kanye-west-j... https://www.nber.org/papers/w29669 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29669
- btreecat 3y ago[flagged]
- avgDev 3y agoI'm glad. Students got a break. 2 years+ of 0 payments and 0 interest. I took advantage of it and finished paying off my loans. Some individuals I know were purchasing fun cars because the loans were getting "cancelled". You take on DEBT, you should have an expectation of paying it.
- Workaccount2 3y agoTechnically taking advantage of it would have been setting that same money aside monthly into safe investments, then cashing it out and paying it off once interest begins accruing again.
- btreecat 3y ago[flagged]
- avgDev 3y agoHow is this view "fuck you I got mine". I took out loans, and I paid them. If this passed I would get money back. I don't think that is fair for people who paid off their loans before, or those who come after.
- flangola7 3y agoHow is it unfair to those before or after? What harm does it cause them?
- willcipriano 3y agoHow is it unfair that everyone chips in and pays my mortgage off? What harm does it cause them?
- taeric 3y agoOn the flip side, too much of the lending was taking on risk that shouldn't be taken. Not hard to argue that a large part of the reason there is so much lending here is regulatory capture that makes it hard to discharge these debts. Which... quite frankly, feels very non-US.
- housemusicfan 3y agoStudent debt cancellation was a cheap scheme to buy votes from some of the nation's dumbest. Most of the people underwater on student debt were seeking useless degrees in the first place, with no practical plan to pay back the debt from day one. It's similar to expecting the government to pay off your credit card bill after buying that jet ski.
- barbazoo 3y agoWould this proposal also have included tuition free education or would future generations still accumulate debt for overpriced education?
- housemusicfan 3y agoIt's a complex problem. Personally I don't think we should be issuing loans for degrees which will not render a successful career path in which to pay back that loan. Similar to how when you apply for a mortgage or other loan, your income and other means of paying the loan back are verified and approved before the loan is granted. Maybe one of the Europeans can chime in, don't the Germans offer tuition free education BUT it must be for a productive degree (e.g. STEM) and there are serious academic qualifications that have to be met. At that point you can just consider it a government-funded scholarship, it's not free money, there are conditions to be met.
- barbazoo 3y agoI'm not aware of a STEM-only tuition-free education. Having grown up there my gut feeling is that that would be against their spirit. AFAIR all public education is tuition free and only has administrative cost associated.
- avgDev 3y agoThis from polish gov site: Full-time studies (in the Polish language) at the state Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are free for Polish students and foreigners who commence studies in Poland on terms applicable to Polish citizens (see: define your status). These include citizens of the EU/EEA and students who hold the Polish Charter (Karta Polaka). All other foreigners are required to pay tuition fees that on average are the following: EUR 2000 per year for the first, second and long cycle studies, EUR 3000 per year for postgraduate as well as scientific, arts, specialist and post-doctoral internships, EUR 2000 per year for an annual preparatory Polish language course to commence studies in Polish
- logankeenan 3y agoI have mixed feelings about student loan relief. However, I find it super interesting hearing people talk about how terrible high inflation or high interest rates for loans/mortgages are today. All while student loan interest rates have been higher for decades.
- Workaccount2 3y agoStudent loan interest rates have to be higher because credit isn't a factor in determining loan eligibility. So it's basically the pooled risk rate where good debtors cover the additional risk of poor debtors.
- logankeenan 3y agoThat makes sense if they behaved like typical loans. However, student loans can’t declare bankruptcy, refinance, etc… The good debters are not covering the bad debters in this case.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoThis one was just clearly unconstitutional right? Not sure if I’m missing something. Not that the government can’t or shouldn’t do something along these lines, but it needs to be Congress right? Commentary about this seemed to split along party lines so not sure if there is some legitimate interpretation where this might be constitutional…
- aluminum96 3y agoThe court didn't find the HEROES Act unconstitutional; instead, they found that the executive action was not within the language of the HEROES Act. It's pretty bad, in my opinion, that the court even reached the merits, because the plaintiffs obviously do not have standing. None of the states were able to show direct financial injury. Instead, they tried to use Missouri's financial interest in MOHELA as the basis for standing. But then why didn't MOHELA itself join the lawsuit? SCOTUS reached the merits because they wanted to strike the program down, and this is becoming a theme with the current court. A court that doesn't concern itself with technical correctness is no court at all, but rather a legislature.
- gnicholas 3y agoThe merits of the case were much more straightforward than the standing analysis. But if the plaintiffs didn't have standing, the merits wouldn't be reached. I was slightly surprised that they ruled on standing the way they did, but the underlying merits decision was completely unsurprising (because, as you say, this was a very clear overstepping — as top dems had admitted just months prior).
- denverllc 3y agoI think this is just a terrible situation for everyone involved. When growing up it was hammered into us that you needed to go to university to be able to be successful in the world, and so a lot of people went into university not to get a specific degree or anything but to get that piece of paper. The price was hidden behind the easy availability of student loans and the fact that 18 year-olds don't have the career experience or even life experience to really put the total cost into perspective. Is $20,000/year good or bad if your salary is going to be $40,000? What if your salary is $100,000? In addition, the returns to education weren't very obvious, since data on graduate income has only recently been published, and because of the confound that in prior years, university graduation was heavily influenced by parental success, personal ambition, and intelligence, which meant that those people who were likely to go to university would also be the kind of people who would be at the top of the non-University class. I'm not saying they'd be just as well off if they didn't go to University; what I'm saying is this: In 1960, <10% of Americans graduated University. If you took the type of people who would go to University, and then had them not go to University, they'd likely have greater career outcomes than other people who didn't go to University because of characteristics that were not affected going to education such as parental success, personal ambition, intelligence, etc. This means that the supposed return to education is possibly less than how it appears because those characteristics are a confound that are entirely separate from the knowledge you learn at University. Universities seem to have taken advantage of the "need" to attend by raising prices, competing for students with excessive luxuries (compared to universities in other countries), and by achieving near perfect price discrimination through the use of scholarships (which allow them to charge each customer's willingness to pay -- a very desirable achievement!) At the same time, we've seen the Administrative class become more bloated, and the power and influence of professors decrease. For instance: "In 2003, when 5,307 undergraduate students studied on campus, the University employed 3,500 administrators and managers. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on student enrollment, only 600 more students were living and studying at Yale, yet the number of administrators had risen by more than 1,500 — a nearly 45 percent hike." [0] It seems that the increase in non-educational spending has no signs of slowing down, and as long as Americans are willing to pay the high education costs, we shouldn't expect University budgets or spending to decrease. Which brings the question: what happens if we make education free? It's obviously not actually free, someone has to pay for it, and it would be the American taxpayer in some way. But how can we get Universities to pull back spending? How do we get them to focus on educational spending and increasing human capital rather than administrative headcount or the university of experience? That's my issue with the situation. We shouldn't have this loan issue -- University shouldn't cost this much to begin, and paying the Universities to solve a problem (i.e. high cost) that they created seems like a terrible incentive. [0] https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-part-of-its-leadership-to-lead-yales-administration-increases-by-nearly-50-percent/ https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-...
- Drunk_Engineer 3y agoThis was a rather bizarre decision for the way Justices sidestepped the crucial issue of "Standing". There were 6 states that brought the case, and none of them would have suffered any harm from the loan forgiveness.
- adamredwoods 3y agoFrom https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-program/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow... : >> On Friday the justices upheld that ruling, finding that Missouri has standing to challenge the debt-relief program because the financial harms to MOHELA from the program will also harm Missouri. Missouri created MOHELA to help state residents obtain student loans to pay for college, Roberts reasoned. It is operated by “state officials and state appointees, reports to the State, and may be dissolved by the State.” If the debt-relief program goes into effect, he observed, MOHELA’s revenues will fall, “impairing its efforts to aid Missouri college students” – which in turn “is necessarily a direct injury to Missouri itself.”
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]