4 ms·

Of course they're not paying their student debt. When the federal government of the moment is using student loan forgiveness to try bribe reelection votes, it

Of course they're not paying their student debt. When the federal government of the moment is using student loan forgiveness to try bribe reelection votes, it sends a pretty strong signal that this shit is frivolous. As a taxpayer who has never taken on loans of any kind, I find this all quite irritating. You take on debt, you pay the debt, don't turn my tax dollars into your negligence subsidy.

xnx 1y ago
> As a taxpayer who has never taken on loans of any kind No mortgage? Bravo
- shazbotter 1y ago
  No credit card, no mortgage, no "you cover dinner tonight and I'll Venmo you later"...
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  I would bet they inherited land which has benefitted tremendously from price increases due to taxpayer subsidized no prepayment penalty 30 year fixed rate mortgages.
  - pengaru 1y ago
    > I would bet they inherited land which has benefitted tremendously from price increases due to taxpayer subsidized no prepayment penalty 30 year fixed rate mortgages. Try again. I've inherited relatively little.
    - michaelfm1211 1y ago
      > Try again. I've inherited relatively little. Most people inherit nothing. Actually, most people end up spending money taking care of their parents.
      - nickff 1y ago
        Why do you think most people inherit nothing? Every person I know who has had an immediate family member die has received some sort of inheritance, though sometimes not a very valuable one. Do you have a citation for your very strong claim?
        bluGill 1y ago
        because for most inheiritance is a rounding error. Either I happens far too late in life and so you are already set or it is distributed between so many others your share is insignificant. though it appears most people will get something
        dahart 1y ago
        It’s crazy easy to Google that claim, why not try that first? “Every person I know” is also known as type of ‘survivor bias’. Googling, I get multiple answers that 30%-40% of US citizens get any inheritance, which is a minority. Here’s one of them: https://www.bls.gov/osmr/research-papers/2011/pdf/ec110030.pdf https://www.bls.gov/osmr/research-papers/2011/pdf/ec110030.p...
        dgfitz 1y ago
        When my grandmother-in-law passes away, my father-in-law will be about 500k+ “in the hole” because he will receive nothing, and has housed them for the past 25 years, in addition to paying for care, GIL has dementia.
dml2135 1y ago
On the flip side, your tax dollars made a bad loan. Usually, when a creditor did a bad job underwriting and makes a loan that cannot be repaid, the creditor is made to eat the cost.
- datavirtue 1y ago
  This. People want to act like they aren't the government when it does something stupid.
  - nickff 1y ago
    Voters have basically no power, and very little incentive to even bother voting wisely. There is abundant evidence that your vote does not matter, and to pretend otherwise is fantasy.
    - stonogo 1y ago
      Why would you claim evidence and not cite any?
    - nickpsecurity 1y ago
      Those of us who voted for the current President have seen him do so much of what he told us he would with so much progress. Even his opponents claim he's done dozens to fifty things in office that they wish didn't happen. Even they agree he's getting a lot done. So, he's proof that our vote counted. I'd rather have a person following Christ with godly character. That plus not taking a bribe and having skill at leading are the Bible's standard for picking rulers. Americans filter them for these rich, elitist egomaniacs. Then, we have to pick the lesser evil on policy grounds until that stops. God works even through the wicked to bless us in some ways, though. That's the bright side.
      - selfhoster11 1y ago
        Trump's character is not what a person following Christ should be. Just his remark that "they let you do anything" to women when you're rich and famous should be evidence of that, let alone the personality cult around him that he built, and the hundreds or thousands of things he's said since 2016.
michaelfm1211 1y ago
Congrats on not having to take out a loan. Most people aren't that lucky. Most people taking out student loans are still teenagers. Does anyone really expect a teenager to make good financial decisions? Also, most people can't get a solid job without going to college, so they're forced to take out loans. That "negligence subsidy" is really helping people who were put in an unfair situation by colleges and banks.
vineyardmike 1y ago
Sometimes the government can help someone who isn’t you, without it being a problem for you. And society is large and complex, so you’ve certainly benefited from lots of government spending on things that don’t benefit you. As a taxpayer who paid off all the debts they’ve incurred, I have no ill feelings towards those who can’t. As a taxpayer who has always been able to pay for food, I have no ill feelings towards those on food stamps. As a taxpayer who has been able to pay rent/mortgage, I have no ill feelings towards those in shelters. Some people need help, it’s the responsibility of everyone else in society to aid those in need.
- ChadNauseam 1y ago
  The difference is that people on food stamps and people who are in homeless shelters are in need of help. They are our most needy (perhaps in addition to those on mediaid). I am not needy, yet for some reason I would have been a beneficiary of Biden's original student loan forgiveness plan. Giving money to people for having loans for a college degree doesn't seem like a great way to redistribute to "those in need". I haven't looked it up, but I'd be willing to bet that people with student loans earn more than others their age, even after accounting for their loan payments. And it does create a massive moral hazard. I still have my student loans, because why would I pay them off? I'd rather wait for someone to get elected and decide to pay them off for me. (And you can bet that everyone considering taking loans is thinking the same thing, and factoring the chance of forgiveness into the expected cost of the loans.)
  - dahart 1y ago
    FWIW, that strikes me as a somewhat myopic view of ‘need’. Homelessness and food stamps are certainly an incredibly acute need, for daily survival. But investing in education is something our country needs for long term survival. The US makes more money on the additional income tax of college educated people than it costs to educate them, many times over. It’s in our collective interest to put you (and anyone who wants to go) through college. I totally get the personal responsibility angle here, but the actual moral hazard here is that our country chooses not to cover education in the first place, when it doesn’t make economic sense to do anything else, and not educating people is worse for everyone (except perhaps a few CEO billionaires). As a total side note, it’s also really interesting to me how strong our ingrained no-free-lunch and teach-someone-to-fish mores are, even when there’s lots of strong counter evidence. Poverty is extremely damaging and getting people out of poverty by giving them what they need is more important than forcing people to struggle through it and learn something. The (often) unspoken assumption that rides under that stuff is that people are poor because of bad choices and low work ethic, which is frequently completely and utterly wrong, and anyway extremely complicated because being poor forces people to make bad choices. Breaking the cycle allows people in need to live and breathe and make good choices.
cricketsandmops 1y ago
I look at it more as an investment in our citizens . If you don't keep your grades up or fail out you should have to pay it back, but if you graduate and start your life, pay taxes etc the loans should be forgiven. The country would eventually get their investment back via taxes. They could implement this and some type of oversight to reign in the university costs. Easier to control indebted people though so it wont happen.
- nickff 1y ago
  That would make sense as a program, though it might incentivize some strange Cobra-Effect type behaviour among both institutions and students. The problem is that the backwards-looking forgiveness/giveaway programs do not incentivize people to work hard or select degrees they can complete.
- gameman144 1y ago
  I think one difference is that for most investments, you get some say in what you invest in. For public schools, you have school districts. For infrastructure you have utility districts. For libraries and parks and amenities, you have municipal government. For student loans, though, the individual students are the ones making the decisions. The taxpayer is subsidizing students pursuing highly employable careers like engineering or medical science, but is equally subsidizing students pursuing unemployable degrees like cultural studies or literature. And to be clear, these areas do have value, but it also seems reasonable for taxpayers to call out the fact that these are terrible ROI investments, money-wise.
- dml2135 1y ago
  Practically, this makes no sense though. Those that do not complete school are the ones that will have the hardest time paying back their loans. You are just burying people further in their own failures. Young people make mistakes. It does not benefit society to make those mistakes ruin their lives.
nickpsecurity 1y ago
We were forced to go to school under penalty of law. We were told our whole time that you have to go to college to get a good job. Employers often demanded Bachelor's degrees to get hired at all. If not, "you'll be flipping burgers" was a common warning. The people requiring us to go to college usually wouodn't pay for it. The colleges got more expensive. So, if it's required or really helps, it was rational to take on college loans to get a Bachelor's in good specializations. Many of us did IT or Business. (I did both.) Once out of college, people looking for jobs found that most companies woukdnt hire them for lack of experience. If they did, they would pay them a little above minimum wage. That would either not cover the bills or barely cover them. The minimums on the loans were high, too. At this point, people with Business degrees are working in grocery stores making nothing but loaded with debt. They realize they were screwed by the whole system in what amounted to a long-term con about the ROI of a college degree. They feel that, if they got nothing for it, they shouldn't have to repay it at all or at least get a break on payments. They're paying less on the debts to experience some of the quality of life they were promised if they spent 4 years on a degree. That's what happened to a large number of hard-working people whose expensive degrees got them nothing but poverty and debt. They're barely scraping by now. They wish they ignored all the advice in school and never got one. Or maybe got the cheapest one they could find instead of really investing into a worthless asset. And the best part is we all get to read descriptions of us online that we were just irresponsible, lazy idiots. No mention of years of being forced by schools and businesses to get this debt to have a decent job. No mention that they often don't pay people with degrees anything. Something seems wrong about that.
AmVess 1y ago
One foolish decision after another. Believing that the loans would be hand waived away was peak naivety. And now, 2/3 of them are not even bothering to pay the loans. Good luck getting an apartment, house, car, or a top job with bad credit.

xnx 1y ago

> As a taxpayer who has never taken on loans of any kind No mortgage? Bravo

shazbotter 1y ago
No credit card, no mortgage, no "you cover dinner tonight and I'll Venmo you later"...
lotsofpulp 1y ago
I would bet they inherited land which has benefitted tremendously from price increases due to taxpayer subsidized no prepayment penalty 30 year fixed rate mortgages.
- pengaru 1y ago
  > I would bet they inherited land which has benefitted tremendously from price increases due to taxpayer subsidized no prepayment penalty 30 year fixed rate mortgages. Try again. I've inherited relatively little.
  - michaelfm1211 1y ago
    > Try again. I've inherited relatively little. Most people inherit nothing. Actually, most people end up spending money taking care of their parents.
    - nickff 1y ago
      Why do you think most people inherit nothing? Every person I know who has had an immediate family member die has received some sort of inheritance, though sometimes not a very valuable one. Do you have a citation for your very strong claim?
      - bluGill 1y ago
        because for most inheiritance is a rounding error. Either I happens far too late in life and so you are already set or it is distributed between so many others your share is insignificant. though it appears most people will get something
      - dahart 1y ago
        It’s crazy easy to Google that claim, why not try that first? “Every person I know” is also known as type of ‘survivor bias’. Googling, I get multiple answers that 30%-40% of US citizens get any inheritance, which is a minority. Here’s one of them: https://www.bls.gov/osmr/research-papers/2011/pdf/ec110030.pdf https://www.bls.gov/osmr/research-papers/2011/pdf/ec110030.p...
      - dgfitz 1y ago
        When my grandmother-in-law passes away, my father-in-law will be about 500k+ “in the hole” because he will receive nothing, and has housed them for the past 25 years, in addition to paying for care, GIL has dementia.

dml2135 1y ago

On the flip side, your tax dollars made a bad loan. Usually, when a creditor did a bad job underwriting and makes a loan that cannot be repaid, the creditor is made to eat the cost.

datavirtue 1y ago
This. People want to act like they aren't the government when it does something stupid.
- nickff 1y ago
  Voters have basically no power, and very little incentive to even bother voting wisely. There is abundant evidence that your vote does not matter, and to pretend otherwise is fantasy.
  - stonogo 1y ago
    Why would you claim evidence and not cite any?
  - nickpsecurity 1y ago
    Those of us who voted for the current President have seen him do so much of what he told us he would with so much progress. Even his opponents claim he's done dozens to fifty things in office that they wish didn't happen. Even they agree he's getting a lot done. So, he's proof that our vote counted. I'd rather have a person following Christ with godly character. That plus not taking a bribe and having skill at leading are the Bible's standard for picking rulers. Americans filter them for these rich, elitist egomaniacs. Then, we have to pick the lesser evil on policy grounds until that stops. God works even through the wicked to bless us in some ways, though. That's the bright side.
    - selfhoster11 1y ago
      Trump's character is not what a person following Christ should be. Just his remark that "they let you do anything" to women when you're rich and famous should be evidence of that, let alone the personality cult around him that he built, and the hundreds or thousands of things he's said since 2016.

michaelfm1211 1y ago

Congrats on not having to take out a loan. Most people aren't that lucky. Most people taking out student loans are still teenagers. Does anyone really expect a teenager to make good financial decisions? Also, most people can't get a solid job without going to college, so they're forced to take out loans. That "negligence subsidy" is really helping people who were put in an unfair situation by colleges and banks.

vineyardmike 1y ago

Sometimes the government can help someone who isn’t you, without it being a problem for you. And society is large and complex, so you’ve certainly benefited from lots of government spending on things that don’t benefit you. As a taxpayer who paid off all the debts they’ve incurred, I have no ill feelings towards those who can’t. As a taxpayer who has always been able to pay for food, I have no ill feelings towards those on food stamps. As a taxpayer who has been able to pay rent/mortgage, I have no ill feelings towards those in shelters. Some people need help, it’s the responsibility of everyone else in society to aid those in need.

ChadNauseam 1y ago
The difference is that people on food stamps and people who are in homeless shelters are in need of help. They are our most needy (perhaps in addition to those on mediaid). I am not needy, yet for some reason I would have been a beneficiary of Biden's original student loan forgiveness plan. Giving money to people for having loans for a college degree doesn't seem like a great way to redistribute to "those in need". I haven't looked it up, but I'd be willing to bet that people with student loans earn more than others their age, even after accounting for their loan payments. And it does create a massive moral hazard. I still have my student loans, because why would I pay them off? I'd rather wait for someone to get elected and decide to pay them off for me. (And you can bet that everyone considering taking loans is thinking the same thing, and factoring the chance of forgiveness into the expected cost of the loans.)
- dahart 1y ago
  FWIW, that strikes me as a somewhat myopic view of ‘need’. Homelessness and food stamps are certainly an incredibly acute need, for daily survival. But investing in education is something our country needs for long term survival. The US makes more money on the additional income tax of college educated people than it costs to educate them, many times over. It’s in our collective interest to put you (and anyone who wants to go) through college. I totally get the personal responsibility angle here, but the actual moral hazard here is that our country chooses not to cover education in the first place, when it doesn’t make economic sense to do anything else, and not educating people is worse for everyone (except perhaps a few CEO billionaires). As a total side note, it’s also really interesting to me how strong our ingrained no-free-lunch and teach-someone-to-fish mores are, even when there’s lots of strong counter evidence. Poverty is extremely damaging and getting people out of poverty by giving them what they need is more important than forcing people to struggle through it and learn something. The (often) unspoken assumption that rides under that stuff is that people are poor because of bad choices and low work ethic, which is frequently completely and utterly wrong, and anyway extremely complicated because being poor forces people to make bad choices. Breaking the cycle allows people in need to live and breathe and make good choices.

cricketsandmops 1y ago

I look at it more as an investment in our citizens . If you don't keep your grades up or fail out you should have to pay it back, but if you graduate and start your life, pay taxes etc the loans should be forgiven. The country would eventually get their investment back via taxes. They could implement this and some type of oversight to reign in the university costs. Easier to control indebted people though so it wont happen.

nickff 1y ago
That would make sense as a program, though it might incentivize some strange Cobra-Effect type behaviour among both institutions and students. The problem is that the backwards-looking forgiveness/giveaway programs do not incentivize people to work hard or select degrees they can complete.
gameman144 1y ago
I think one difference is that for most investments, you get some say in what you invest in. For public schools, you have school districts. For infrastructure you have utility districts. For libraries and parks and amenities, you have municipal government. For student loans, though, the individual students are the ones making the decisions. The taxpayer is subsidizing students pursuing highly employable careers like engineering or medical science, but is equally subsidizing students pursuing unemployable degrees like cultural studies or literature. And to be clear, these areas do have value, but it also seems reasonable for taxpayers to call out the fact that these are terrible ROI investments, money-wise.
dml2135 1y ago
Practically, this makes no sense though. Those that do not complete school are the ones that will have the hardest time paying back their loans. You are just burying people further in their own failures. Young people make mistakes. It does not benefit society to make those mistakes ruin their lives.

nickpsecurity 1y ago

We were forced to go to school under penalty of law. We were told our whole time that you have to go to college to get a good job. Employers often demanded Bachelor's degrees to get hired at all. If not, "you'll be flipping burgers" was a common warning. The people requiring us to go to college usually wouodn't pay for it. The colleges got more expensive. So, if it's required or really helps, it was rational to take on college loans to get a Bachelor's in good specializations. Many of us did IT or Business. (I did both.) Once out of college, people looking for jobs found that most companies woukdnt hire them for lack of experience. If they did, they would pay them a little above minimum wage. That would either not cover the bills or barely cover them. The minimums on the loans were high, too. At this point, people with Business degrees are working in grocery stores making nothing but loaded with debt. They realize they were screwed by the whole system in what amounted to a long-term con about the ROI of a college degree. They feel that, if they got nothing for it, they shouldn't have to repay it at all or at least get a break on payments. They're paying less on the debts to experience some of the quality of life they were promised if they spent 4 years on a degree. That's what happened to a large number of hard-working people whose expensive degrees got them nothing but poverty and debt. They're barely scraping by now. They wish they ignored all the advice in school and never got one. Or maybe got the cheapest one they could find instead of really investing into a worthless asset. And the best part is we all get to read descriptions of us online that we were just irresponsible, lazy idiots. No mention of years of being forced by schools and businesses to get this debt to have a decent job. No mention that they often don't pay people with degrees anything. Something seems wrong about that.

AmVess 1y ago

One foolish decision after another. Believing that the loans would be hand waived away was peak naivety. And now, 2/3 of them are not even bothering to pay the loans. Good luck getting an apartment, house, car, or a top job with bad credit.