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It fixes a lot for the people struggling with them right now. We need to solve the bigger issue too, but that shouldn't preclude shorter term action to correct

It fixes a lot for the people struggling with them right now. We need to solve the bigger issue too, but that shouldn't preclude shorter term action to correct past mistakes.

bavell 3y ago
Except it was rejected, so it didn't fix anything for anyone. It just wasted a bunch of time (it was doomed to fail from the start) and tricked people into thinking something was being done. Aka, politics as usual.
- oddtuple 3y ago
  That’s patently untrue. We saved tens of thousands of dollars in the interest pause alone.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > That’s patently untrue. We saved tens of thousands of dollars in the interest pause alone. The interest/payments pause is not the same thing as the student loan forgiveness plan. They're entirely different things.
    - oddtuple 3y ago
      Sure, but I know that YOU know that people talk about these items together. The general tone of this convo has been that nothing helpful has come from these actions, and that’s not true. It’s been stated it was all politics, and we know that’s not fair, as some good has happened as a result. Now, if we’re going to argue about the very specific loan forgiveness being effective, then sure, it has been currently struck down. But I have trouble believing that nothing good has come from it, if only by forcing this convo, and convos like these taking place. Sometimes you have to do something loud to get people’s attention; it certainly got yours.
      - tivert 3y ago
        > Sure, but I know that YOU know that people talk about these items together. If I know anything, it's that "people" are often simply wrong about stuff. If a bunch of people wrongly thing two different things are the same, that doesn't make it so. > The general tone of this convo has been that nothing helpful has come from these actions, and that’s not true. I don't care about the general tone, I was only responding to the statement that A "did" good because different-thing B "did good." My understanding is this thread is specifically about the student loan forgiveness plan that was just ruled unconstitutional, not some amorphous larger thing (which may be how you personally think about it).
        oddtuple 3y ago
        I don’t know what more to say, so please read this and get back to me. Research shows this would actually be a good thing https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/rpr_2_6.pdf https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/rpr_2_6.pdf
        Anticlockwise 3y ago
        You've written at least half a dozen comments linking to this study and claiming that it disputes everyone's opposition to the student loan cancellation plan. I'm skeptical that you've even read it. I just did. It says that the cancelation will not raise the deficit as much as naively would be expected (but will raise it some) because of the general economic benefits that will come from the people spending money on things other than student loan payments. It doesn't say anything about the moral hazard of paying off student loans for those who haven't paid them, while ignoring those who have. Or about the likelihood that a student loan cancelation will need to happen again. Or that those two things together will encourage people not to pay their student loans in the future, hoping for another cancelation. Or that universities will be able to raise prices even more because they expect further cancellations. Sure, the deficit may not go up as much as naively you'd expect it to. And we won't have to pay it off with taxes immediately. (we'll just have more debt instead). But you seem to not care about all of the reasons that people oppose this, and just throw a pdf in their face, hoping it'll shut them up even when it doesn't argue what you want it to argue. Please stop.
  - room500 3y ago
    The interest rate pause and the loan forgiveness are different policies - one can exist without the other. The interest rate pause was not declared unconstitutional today - and it will continue until the loans are scheduled to be started again in the next couple months.
    - gochi 3y ago
      Technically, but one does not exist without the other in its current implementation. Hence the continuation shortly as this forgiveness was struck down.
      - leftandright 3y ago
        I don’t understand. The two policies were begun by different administrations. The pause did exist without the forgiveness policy; it was done first. The pause will continue until September (it was not effected at all by this ruling) so it once again exists without the forgiveness policy. Why do you think one cannot exist without the other? The pause is fine with or without the forgiveness, and the pause existing didn’t save the forgiveness.
        neon_electro 3y ago
        The pause can also no longer be extended due to Congressional action: > Congress recently passed a law preventing further extensions of the payment pause. Student loan interest will resume starting on Sept. 1, 2023, and payments will be due starting in October. We will notify borrowers well before payments restart. Source: https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/covid-19/payment-pause-zero-interest https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/covid-19/payment...
sanderjd 3y ago
Sometimes band-aid solutions mess up the incentives to fix underlying problems. Personally, I think this is one of those times. It's like the debt ceiling thing; once you set the precedent that a problem can be "solved" by kicking it down the road until after the next election, there is essentially no incentive for anybody to ever fix it for real. This is not a problem that is going to be solved by injecting more unaccountable government cash into the system. Students would just take on more debt, expecting more forgiveness, and schools would thus simply continue raising prices. Why would anybody do anything differently?
- oddtuple 3y ago
  I dont even know where to start with this. How many times do we all have to have this same conversation. “Student loans being forgiven does not increase inflation, as no new money is being injected into the economy”. It’s either spent before being collected, or spent after being collected by the gov”. Guys, seriously, we’re not talking about people taking loans out to do blow and hookers, they’re trying to get an education. You’re all acting like we’re just going to give out forgiveness and then throw our hands up and doing nothing after that.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    I'm not sure you responded to the right comment here? I didn't say any of the stuff you seem to be responding to. Maybe you're responding to what I said about unaccountable government cash? But you seem to be thinking I'm saying it's the students who lack accountability and whose incentives are screwed up by the government cash? That's not it at all, it's not the students' incentives that are a mess under the current system and an even worse mess under the perpetual forgiveness system. It is schools whose incentives are messed up. They have no reason to keep from raising tuition and fees indefinitely because they are guaranteed to be paid. It's that problem that setting a precedent for forgiveness makes worse. It has nothing to do with what people with student debt spend their money on.
    - oddtuple 3y ago
      Then nationalize the schools like every other major OEDC nation. This isn’t rocket science. I swear this country sometimes.
deelowe 3y ago
More often than not, politics is about optics, not solutions. This was doomed to fail from the beginning and I bet they knew it. Status quo continues, crisis remains, talking points for the next election cycle established. Sorry guys, we couldn't get it through this time, but next time, trust us, we'll succeed.
- tivert 3y ago
  > More often than not, politics is about optics, not solutions. This was doomed to fail from the beginning and I bet they knew it. Status quo continues, crisis remains, talking points for the next election cycle established. Sorry guys, we couldn't get it through this time, but next time, trust us, we'll succeed. Also points scored in the last election. IIRC, this plan was announced a single month before the 2022 election. They got to benefit from the votes of people who thought they were getting their loans forgiven, without ever actually doing that.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
    Only because the plan was opposed on equally political grounds. The idea was a welcomed one by the people who voted for the politicians in favor of it, and not welcomed by the ones they didn't vote for, so the points went where they belonged. If it was so certain that they had no intention of going through with it, why not call their bluff and turn the responsibility for killing it back on them?
    - tivert 3y ago
      > If it was so certain that they had no intention of going through with it, why not call their bluff and turn the responsibility for killing it back on them? That's the wrong question. It was never if they had "intention of going through with it," it was about if they would be able to actually pull it off. The GGP stated "This was doomed to fail from the beginning and I bet they knew it," and I have to agree. Their plan to push this through purely via executive action was very likely to fail (and did), and the lawyers and politicians who formulated almost certainly knew the odds.
bitshiftfaced 3y ago
If it's just about people struggling with their finances today, why not forgive any type of debt? Money is fungible after all. Suppose a grad has a net debt because they routinely spend more than they earn and like to go on all inclusive destination vacations every year. Now suppose you have someone who didn't take out student loans but had some unfortunate life circumstances that caused them to be in the same amount of debt. Forgiving either person's debt will improve each one's finances, but won't affect whether they've gone to college in the past. Edit: in case it wasn't obvious, the question is rhetorical. I'm not advocating for forgiving any kind of debt.
- foogazi 3y ago
  > why not forgive any type of debt? You can already do that with bankruptcy, but it specifically does not apply for student loans
  - bitshiftfaced 3y ago
    There are long lasting negative repercussions of going into bankruptcy.
    - foogazi 3y ago
      Yes
      - bitshiftfaced 3y ago
        I'm sorry. I assumed you were trying to make a counterpoint and not simply naming factual information. When I asked, "why not forgive any type of debt," I was making a point about how there's no reason we would judge either debt to be more worthy of forgiveness if we accept parent poster's claim that this was just about peoples' present-day financial struggle. Bankruptcy is very different than student loan forgiveness. For example, 91% of people hire an attorney to do the bankruptcy, there are court fees, you take a huge hit on your credit score, you can't get credit, you either get put on a payment plan or you have to liquidate your assets, etc. Compared to that, student loan forgiveness is basically a freebie. When I asked, "why not forgive any type of debt," I meant it in the same kind of way that student loan forgiveness works.
tivert 3y ago
> It fixes a lot for the people struggling with them right now. > We need to solve the bigger issue too, but that shouldn't preclude shorter term action to correct past mistakes. But this plan stretched the law past its breaking point, which why it was struck down. IIRC, the plan would have been OK if Congress had only passed a law explicitly granting the authority to forgive the loans, which it didn't even when Democrats controlled Congress. IMHO, They'd fix the student loan issue immediately if Congress passed a law to allow the debt be discharged in bankruptcy (but maybe with some kind of delay or different fix to prevent the previous abuses of bankruptcy that led to the current regime), and perhaps added a claw-back from the schools for future government loans.
- oddtuple 3y ago
  Disagree, this is a lot of word salad to justify not helping people.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Disagree, this is a lot of word salad to justify not helping people. Come on. It's not no "unintelligible, extremely disorganized speech or writing manifested as a symptom of a mental disorder" to disagree with you. Furthermore, framing this as just about "not helping people" is simple-minded. There are almost always trade-offs between different goods, and maintaining separation of powers is an important good as well. There are serious, serious problems with allowing small provisions of law meant to solve small problems to be re-interpreted to allow the executive to unilaterally make massive policy changes.
    - oddtuple 3y ago
      You’re the one approaching this like it’s some incredibly complex issue, it’s really not. But okay, let’s play your game. Describe the real material harm caused by this forgiveness. Is it inflation? There’s a lot of research saying that’s bogus. Is it an overstretching of powers? Seems pretty minimal compared to existing powers, and it seems like this is right up the executive and DOE alley… what exactly are you upset with in the real tangible sense? What concrete harms are happening that are backed by data and not just a myopic world view? Please, really, enlighten me

It fixes a lot for the people struggling with them right now. We need to solve the bigger issue too, but that shouldn't preclude shorter term action to correct past mistakes.

bavell 3y ago

Except it was rejected, so it didn't fix anything for anyone. It just wasted a bunch of time (it was doomed to fail from the start) and tricked people into thinking something was being done. Aka, politics as usual.

oddtuple 3y ago
That’s patently untrue. We saved tens of thousands of dollars in the interest pause alone.
- tivert 3y ago
  > That’s patently untrue. We saved tens of thousands of dollars in the interest pause alone. The interest/payments pause is not the same thing as the student loan forgiveness plan. They're entirely different things.
  - oddtuple 3y ago
    Sure, but I know that YOU know that people talk about these items together. The general tone of this convo has been that nothing helpful has come from these actions, and that’s not true. It’s been stated it was all politics, and we know that’s not fair, as some good has happened as a result. Now, if we’re going to argue about the very specific loan forgiveness being effective, then sure, it has been currently struck down. But I have trouble believing that nothing good has come from it, if only by forcing this convo, and convos like these taking place. Sometimes you have to do something loud to get people’s attention; it certainly got yours.
    - tivert 3y ago
      > Sure, but I know that YOU know that people talk about these items together. If I know anything, it's that "people" are often simply wrong about stuff. If a bunch of people wrongly thing two different things are the same, that doesn't make it so. > The general tone of this convo has been that nothing helpful has come from these actions, and that’s not true. I don't care about the general tone, I was only responding to the statement that A "did" good because different-thing B "did good." My understanding is this thread is specifically about the student loan forgiveness plan that was just ruled unconstitutional, not some amorphous larger thing (which may be how you personally think about it).
      - oddtuple 3y ago
        I don’t know what more to say, so please read this and get back to me. Research shows this would actually be a good thing https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/rpr_2_6.pdf https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/rpr_2_6.pdf
        Anticlockwise 3y ago
        You've written at least half a dozen comments linking to this study and claiming that it disputes everyone's opposition to the student loan cancellation plan. I'm skeptical that you've even read it. I just did. It says that the cancelation will not raise the deficit as much as naively would be expected (but will raise it some) because of the general economic benefits that will come from the people spending money on things other than student loan payments. It doesn't say anything about the moral hazard of paying off student loans for those who haven't paid them, while ignoring those who have. Or about the likelihood that a student loan cancelation will need to happen again. Or that those two things together will encourage people not to pay their student loans in the future, hoping for another cancelation. Or that universities will be able to raise prices even more because they expect further cancellations. Sure, the deficit may not go up as much as naively you'd expect it to. And we won't have to pay it off with taxes immediately. (we'll just have more debt instead). But you seem to not care about all of the reasons that people oppose this, and just throw a pdf in their face, hoping it'll shut them up even when it doesn't argue what you want it to argue. Please stop.
- room500 3y ago
  The interest rate pause and the loan forgiveness are different policies - one can exist without the other. The interest rate pause was not declared unconstitutional today - and it will continue until the loans are scheduled to be started again in the next couple months.
  - gochi 3y ago
    Technically, but one does not exist without the other in its current implementation. Hence the continuation shortly as this forgiveness was struck down.
    - leftandright 3y ago
      I don’t understand. The two policies were begun by different administrations. The pause did exist without the forgiveness policy; it was done first. The pause will continue until September (it was not effected at all by this ruling) so it once again exists without the forgiveness policy. Why do you think one cannot exist without the other? The pause is fine with or without the forgiveness, and the pause existing didn’t save the forgiveness.
      - neon_electro 3y ago
        The pause can also no longer be extended due to Congressional action: > Congress recently passed a law preventing further extensions of the payment pause. Student loan interest will resume starting on Sept. 1, 2023, and payments will be due starting in October. We will notify borrowers well before payments restart. Source: https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/covid-19/payment-pause-zero-interest https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/covid-19/payment...

sanderjd 3y ago

Sometimes band-aid solutions mess up the incentives to fix underlying problems. Personally, I think this is one of those times. It's like the debt ceiling thing; once you set the precedent that a problem can be "solved" by kicking it down the road until after the next election, there is essentially no incentive for anybody to ever fix it for real. This is not a problem that is going to be solved by injecting more unaccountable government cash into the system. Students would just take on more debt, expecting more forgiveness, and schools would thus simply continue raising prices. Why would anybody do anything differently?

oddtuple 3y ago
I dont even know where to start with this. How many times do we all have to have this same conversation. “Student loans being forgiven does not increase inflation, as no new money is being injected into the economy”. It’s either spent before being collected, or spent after being collected by the gov”. Guys, seriously, we’re not talking about people taking loans out to do blow and hookers, they’re trying to get an education. You’re all acting like we’re just going to give out forgiveness and then throw our hands up and doing nothing after that.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I'm not sure you responded to the right comment here? I didn't say any of the stuff you seem to be responding to. Maybe you're responding to what I said about unaccountable government cash? But you seem to be thinking I'm saying it's the students who lack accountability and whose incentives are screwed up by the government cash? That's not it at all, it's not the students' incentives that are a mess under the current system and an even worse mess under the perpetual forgiveness system. It is schools whose incentives are messed up. They have no reason to keep from raising tuition and fees indefinitely because they are guaranteed to be paid. It's that problem that setting a precedent for forgiveness makes worse. It has nothing to do with what people with student debt spend their money on.
  - oddtuple 3y ago
    Then nationalize the schools like every other major OEDC nation. This isn’t rocket science. I swear this country sometimes.

deelowe 3y ago

More often than not, politics is about optics, not solutions. This was doomed to fail from the beginning and I bet they knew it. Status quo continues, crisis remains, talking points for the next election cycle established. Sorry guys, we couldn't get it through this time, but next time, trust us, we'll succeed.

tivert 3y ago
> More often than not, politics is about optics, not solutions. This was doomed to fail from the beginning and I bet they knew it. Status quo continues, crisis remains, talking points for the next election cycle established. Sorry guys, we couldn't get it through this time, but next time, trust us, we'll succeed. Also points scored in the last election. IIRC, this plan was announced a single month before the 2022 election. They got to benefit from the votes of people who thought they were getting their loans forgiven, without ever actually doing that.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
  Only because the plan was opposed on equally political grounds. The idea was a welcomed one by the people who voted for the politicians in favor of it, and not welcomed by the ones they didn't vote for, so the points went where they belonged. If it was so certain that they had no intention of going through with it, why not call their bluff and turn the responsibility for killing it back on them?
  - tivert 3y ago
    > If it was so certain that they had no intention of going through with it, why not call their bluff and turn the responsibility for killing it back on them? That's the wrong question. It was never if they had "intention of going through with it," it was about if they would be able to actually pull it off. The GGP stated "This was doomed to fail from the beginning and I bet they knew it," and I have to agree. Their plan to push this through purely via executive action was very likely to fail (and did), and the lawyers and politicians who formulated almost certainly knew the odds.

bitshiftfaced 3y ago

If it's just about people struggling with their finances today, why not forgive any type of debt? Money is fungible after all. Suppose a grad has a net debt because they routinely spend more than they earn and like to go on all inclusive destination vacations every year. Now suppose you have someone who didn't take out student loans but had some unfortunate life circumstances that caused them to be in the same amount of debt. Forgiving either person's debt will improve each one's finances, but won't affect whether they've gone to college in the past. Edit: in case it wasn't obvious, the question is rhetorical. I'm not advocating for forgiving any kind of debt.

foogazi 3y ago
> why not forgive any type of debt? You can already do that with bankruptcy, but it specifically does not apply for student loans
- bitshiftfaced 3y ago
  There are long lasting negative repercussions of going into bankruptcy.
  - foogazi 3y ago
    Yes
    - bitshiftfaced 3y ago
      I'm sorry. I assumed you were trying to make a counterpoint and not simply naming factual information. When I asked, "why not forgive any type of debt," I was making a point about how there's no reason we would judge either debt to be more worthy of forgiveness if we accept parent poster's claim that this was just about peoples' present-day financial struggle. Bankruptcy is very different than student loan forgiveness. For example, 91% of people hire an attorney to do the bankruptcy, there are court fees, you take a huge hit on your credit score, you can't get credit, you either get put on a payment plan or you have to liquidate your assets, etc. Compared to that, student loan forgiveness is basically a freebie. When I asked, "why not forgive any type of debt," I meant it in the same kind of way that student loan forgiveness works.

tivert 3y ago

> It fixes a lot for the people struggling with them right now. > We need to solve the bigger issue too, but that shouldn't preclude shorter term action to correct past mistakes. But this plan stretched the law past its breaking point, which why it was struck down. IIRC, the plan would have been OK if Congress had only passed a law explicitly granting the authority to forgive the loans, which it didn't even when Democrats controlled Congress. IMHO, They'd fix the student loan issue immediately if Congress passed a law to allow the debt be discharged in bankruptcy (but maybe with some kind of delay or different fix to prevent the previous abuses of bankruptcy that led to the current regime), and perhaps added a claw-back from the schools for future government loans.

oddtuple 3y ago
Disagree, this is a lot of word salad to justify not helping people.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Disagree, this is a lot of word salad to justify not helping people. Come on. It's not no "unintelligible, extremely disorganized speech or writing manifested as a symptom of a mental disorder" to disagree with you. Furthermore, framing this as just about "not helping people" is simple-minded. There are almost always trade-offs between different goods, and maintaining separation of powers is an important good as well. There are serious, serious problems with allowing small provisions of law meant to solve small problems to be re-interpreted to allow the executive to unilaterally make massive policy changes.
  - oddtuple 3y ago
    You’re the one approaching this like it’s some incredibly complex issue, it’s really not. But okay, let’s play your game. Describe the real material harm caused by this forgiveness. Is it inflation? There’s a lot of research saying that’s bogus. Is it an overstretching of powers? Seems pretty minimal compared to existing powers, and it seems like this is right up the executive and DOE alley… what exactly are you upset with in the real tangible sense? What concrete harms are happening that are backed by data and not just a myopic world view? Please, really, enlighten me