7 ms·

It's crazy to cancel student loans and still keep issuing the exact same loans. If we believe the loans are unjust then the government should stop handing them

by loourr 4y ago

It's crazy to cancel student loans and still keep issuing the exact same loans. If we believe the loans are unjust then the government should stop handing them out as the very first step.

nr2x 4y ago
Free community college was in build back better, 49 republicans and Joe Manchin killed it.
- aksss 4y ago
  There were a couple other things with a few more dollars allocated in Build Back Better, if I recall, perhaps worthy of more criticism than community college for everyone. Anyway, I wonder how much of the student loan debt is from community college, both as total dollar figure and per borrower. Something tells me that in-state tuition for community college isn’t where all the underwater borrowers went to school.
- colpabar 4y ago
  If democrats wanted that, they would write a bill to do so. Not everything has to be bundled up in a multi trillion dollar bill that involves a ton of other unrelated things. The reason they haven't done that is because they don't really want to.
  - dogleash 4y ago
    Exactly. If them democrats actually wanted any of the programs they talk about, they would deploy them in states they control. Obama's big policy success of 8 years was Romneycare. Who can explain with a straight face why California still doesn't have universal heathcare?
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    Whoa whoa, don't crap on politician's favorite do-nothing-but-promote-everything method of working! If enough people realized what was really going on, our politicians might actually have to start working for us!
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Side rant (though somewhat similar to colpabar's reply): The Democrats tried to govern like they had a large majority, when they had 5 (I think) seats in the House, and a 50/50 Senate. Of course it failed! If you need every single vote, you can only go as far as the least-willing member will let you go. The Democrats never should have tried to govern that way. They should have been coalition building, trying to find some common ground where they could do some things. Instead, they acted like they could dictate their agenda to Congress. Both Biden and Pelosi should have known better; they have decades of experience in Congress. Why did they do this? You could argue that they did it because they knew that no Republican would ever cooperate on anything. But if that was the reason, they still should have gone for what they could get through the members they had, not going for the moon. Or you could suspect that they wanted to blame the Republicans (and maybe the more conservative Democrats) for their lack of progress, as a tactic to win the next election. Well, from all the indications so far, that's not working out for them. So why did they take the approach they took?
  - TrispusAttucks 4y ago
    Yep. The BBB bill was just an offering to appease their big $$$ donors. It's political theater at best. Contempt for their constituents at worst.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    > The Democrats never should have tried to govern that way. They should have been coalition building, trying to find some common ground where they could do some things. > So why did they take the approach they took? The Republicans set that precedent (trying to govern like they had a large majority). I don't mean that as a "the other side does it too", just that each side has become increasingly vindictive of the other, making it much more difficult to work together when doing so is necessary to get anything done at all. We will continue to see power swaps with the winning side spinning its wheels while shutting the other side out.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      > each side has become increasingly vindictive of the other For a number of reasons, no doubt. But partly I blame the efforts to remove pork from legislation. We thought that was a good idea, without realizing that it was the basis of compromise. When each little piece of legislation comes through on its own, there is no incentive to compromise, but just play tribal politics instead.
- smegsicle 4y ago
  free community college is already a thing, it's called 'Pell Grants' republicans don't want to talk about it because it's free money that works, and democrats don't want to talk about it because there's no reason to expand it
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    > free community college is already a thing, it's called 'Pell Grants' Hell, when I went to community college in the early 90’s it was basically free — $6/credit with a $60 cap. Since then California changed priorities or something, haven’t lived there for almost 25 years so don’t care what they get up to.
pmoriarty 4y ago
School should just be free in the US, as it is in other civilized countries.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  And make the already mostly worthless degrees even more worthless?
  - SSilver2k2 4y ago
    Education is never worthless.
  - whymauri 4y ago
    I know we're currently in the Church of Paul Graham, where college is useless and it's all about the startup grind. But college is known to lead to better outcomes on average for people who go to college, and there is an intrinsic value, to both individuals and society, in receiving an education. High school is free, for example, and it's not worthless.
    - sgjohnson 4y ago
      > But college is known to lead to better outcomes on average for people who go to college That largely depends on the field you're studying. STEM? Sure. Perhaps not for software engineering, because that these days can be entirely self-taught,if you're a person capable of it. But everything else? Probably worthless. A gender studies or liberal arts degree is not going to make you money.
      - whymauri 4y ago
        STEM has the highest class mobility, but even just an associates degree is shown to have a net positive outcome. For example of societal benefits and savings, education (yes, even in topics you may not deem 'useful') reduces crime. And is everything else really 'worthless?' Do we not need lawyers? Social workers? Teachers? Tutors? Librarians? Student debt is a barrier to solving teacher shortages, and not everyone is teaching STEM.
phkahler 4y ago
>> It's crazy to cancel student loans and still keep issuing the exact same loans. If we believe the loans are unjust then the government should stop handing them out as the very first step. A wise man once told me "The first thing you should do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging". This is my standard response to the student loan crisis and many others.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  You should put him in touch with the guy who won't stop digging a tunnel from the other front page thread
twblalock 4y ago
The really crazy thing would be to end the student loan system without providing an alternative. If you do that, only kids with rich parents get to go to college. The current system is far from perfect but it enables kids to attend college regardless of their parents' wealth. Any replacement system needs to enable that too.
- ben940830298432 4y ago
  The private market would just require people to be more responsible about taking out loans. If people that take out loans for basket weaving often don't pay them back nobody would give out a loan for basket weaving. If someone is on their 5th major or college without completing any credit they won't get any more loans without having some backing.
  - brewdad 4y ago
    Do we really want a world where the bankers get to decide what a person studies? Bankers have never gotten anything wrong before.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    The private market wouldn't issue loans at all. We are talking about 18-year-old kids with no assets and likely no income, who have potentially never had a job, asking to borrow thousands of dollars because they believe (but cannot prove) that they will graduate college several years from now and make enough money to pay it back. Any banker who would give them a loan on normal terms would be an idiot. The only reason this works is that student loan terms are uniquely different from the terms for other loans. That is what makes the risk acceptable to lenders. Change that, and guess what -- nobody gets loans.
fortran77 4y ago
Yes! And if they stopped issuing these loans, tuitions will drop quickly. Im against loan forgiveness, but if they’re going to do it that also need to stop backing these loans.
mr_spothawk 4y ago
> the government should stop handing them out Minor nit: The gov't doesn't give the loans, they underwrite & insure the loans.
- loourr 4y ago
  Semantics, they should stop underwriting them.
- outside1234 4y ago
  But there is a important point here too - these loans are issued with too low of an interest rate BECAUSE they are guaranteed by the government. Drop that guarantee and the interest rate is going to float to more of a credit card level, which will make them prohibitive for funding tuition, which will put an extreme downward pressure on tuition rates.
  - mr_spothawk 4y ago
    I believe you are absolutely correct.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  I had plenty of loans from the DoE. Getting the DoE into the student loan market was intentional and is seen as the first step to reworking the entire system. Navient et al are keen to keep the gravy train rolling.
throwaway894345 4y ago
And also reimburse the people who sacrificed to pay theirs off or avoid them in the first place. I’d donate my reimbursement if they did, but of course they won’t.
- InitialBP 4y ago
  Demanding "even-stevens" all the time doesn't help the situation at all. The people that were able to pay off their loan debt were people who chose a degree that would be able to make significant money, were talented enough to land a great job in a field without a lot, or had the circumstances that let them finish a degree where others were unable to. Do some people make bad decisions about degree choice? - Yes Do some people drop out of school because it's too hard or because of other circumstances (unexpected baby, financial hardship, etc) - Yes Do those people who either have made bad decisions, had less fortunate circumstances than others, or a combination of both deserve to live under a mountain of debt for the rest of their life? - No One other thing people don't consider is that Most 18 year olds don't have a good grasp on money or what they want to do in general and in my hometown (poor county in WV) there was a TON of pressure to go to college if you didn't know what you want to do. Kids don't know better to not get into debt for a degree because everyone tells them not to worry about it. There is a serious problem with financial education in the US. You can help out people who made a bad decision or had bad luck without being so uptight about how everything has to be complete "fair". The world isn't fair from the time we're born till the time we die.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > You can help out people who made a bad decision or had bad luck Yes. Make loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. I support that. Or make repayment based on income, which is already is, so the burden is bearable. But just forgiving bad decisions? That's not a precedent I think we need to set, especially not until we do something to fix the underlying problem. Otherwise the next bailout will be 10x as big.
  - leach 4y ago
    That’s all fine and dandy until you realize the people who where smart and careful have to foot the bill for those who weren’t. I was smart and sacrificed a little by going to community college so I wouldn’t have debt. I was also smart enough to get a degree in stem where jobs are actually available and in demand. Why should I have to foot the bill for someone who just partied and got a useless degree? I did everything in my power to avoid student loans because I knew they where insane, I shouldn’t have to pay for others student loans because they didn’t think about any of this.
buu700 4y ago
Exactly. Plug the hole first (or concurrently), and then worry about bailing water. Additionally, as others have mentioned, it needs to be done in such a way that we aren't punishing those who have been responsible and made sacrifices to pay off their loans. I'm not opposed to student loan forgiveness, but I don't think it's nearly as popular as many progressives would like to believe as a standalone proposal. Come up with some qualifications and limitations for reimbursing past loan payments, as well as a systemic fix for the future, and I'd be all for it. All that being said, is it still wise to forgive student loans at this particular time? Originally, the pitch was that it would help act as a stimulus during the pandemic downturn. Now that we're dealing with the opposite situation, I don't see the rush. Maybe a bill could be passed that had a delayed or gradual effect.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  I am starting to think this is a sign of a big weakness in the American system. These half baked actions are evident in health care, security, and all other categories. I think it has to do with the fact that there are so many parties acting in bad faith that it is hard to get comprehensive legislation that addresses the problem as a whole vs just piecemeal bits and pieces because that is all that can be pushed through. I don't know what the solution to this is other than a complete reset of the system (which itself would require the existing system to produce and pass)
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    Of course a spoon makes a crappy can opener if you try and use it for that job. Institutions get designed around their mandate. If you're trying to run a school system you wouldn't invent a court. If you were trying to deal with violations of law you wouldn't create a school board. The federal government's mandate was to manage issues that arise between states and each other, between states and other countries and to a lesser extent, to prevent the states from violating the rights of their inhabitants and its architecture reflects that mandate. Over the years the federal government has expanded in scope far beyond the types of issues it was designed with the intent of managing. Expecting that system to provide decisive action on issues that are outside of what the system was designed for is unrealistic.
elpool2 4y ago
I see this as basically just making amends for the failures of the PSLF program. This is for the folks who made years of payments expecting to get loan forgiveness after 10 years as promised, only to then be told none of the payments counted because they didn’t read the fine print or simply because of the loan servicer’s incompetence.
pxmpxm 4y ago
If the entire point of this public policy is to create votes for whoever is implementing it, this is exactly the dynamic you'd expect to see. To a politican about the only thing better than a vote buying scheme is perpetual vote buying scheme.
rockinghigh 4y ago
This program is for people working in the public sector. It's not known at the time of issuing the loan whether the student will quality for loan forgiveness.
tejohnso 4y ago
I'm curious to know how these loans became such a political issue. It's unusual to take out a loan and then complain about having to repay it. That's how it is supposed to work. We don't typically reward people for digging themselves into a hole by bailing them out. Unless they're large corporations. We bail them out in certain cases. But I don't think that's a popular idea either.
- dudul 4y ago
  It's just something that can be presented in a very divisive way for each party to easily capture sizable market shares of the electorate. It became a "valuable" problematic to put forward when the group of people who struggle to pay off their loan became big enough to make it worth it politically.
- dionidium 4y ago
  The way this works is that you just have to define something to be a "necessity" in the public consciousness, because there's a prevailing intuition that it's illegitimate to be asked to pay for anything that fits that description. Medical bills are a necessity, so it's illegitimate to be asked to pay them. You have to go to college to get a good job, so it's illegitimate to be asked to pay for an education. You need a place to live, so high rents are also illegitimate. And so on.
- timssopomo 4y ago
  We do, actually, at least in the US. It's called bankruptcy. We generally recognize that sometimes despite best intentions, debts become unpayable and in these cases, the debts get restructured and creditors are frequently wiped out (which is fair, since both borrower and lender take risks). Student loans can't be discharged through bankruptcy unless the borrower is permanently disabled. It's entirely possible to end up in default on a loan for a degree you never obtained, paying a loan your entire life, without ever decreasing the principal. Unsurprisingly, this rubs people the wrong way.
  - LadyCailin 4y ago
    It should be on the university and college, if you must have private higher education, and not just make it free. State that the institution and/or potential employers must give out a loan that will cover the entire cost of education, which can be paid back with x% of income for 120 months of full time employment. If the student cannot find a job, or is not desirable for a given industry with the degree, and has to take a waiter job, they still owe x% of their wages, but the absolute value of that will be much lower. Now, the university will stop offering loans for worthless degrees, and they will only give you a loan for things they think you can actually succeed in, ensuring that there is huge incentive for everyone to ensure the student succeeds if they end up needing a loan. Private cash payments can still be made to take whatever underwater basket weaving major you like, but you can’t go into debt for a degree that will bind you for the rest of your life.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Yes, I would rather see student loan reform rather than repayment with no other changes. It's a bandaid otherwise.
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
This sounds like an attitude og “If you believe your driving to fast, open the door and jump out the car. Pushing the brake won’t bring you to a stop immediately” This loan forgiveness is for a very specific subset of lenders who have been making payments for 10 years but not yet paid of the loans. Eliminating loans all together would not have put them or society in a better position, it would just mean that next semester there would be hardly any new students accepted at any higher education and the entire education sector in the US would be bracing for impact and trying to figure out how on earth they are going to continue while their normal revenue disappears overnight. If anything would be crazy, that would be it.
caeril 4y ago
Yes. Additionally, it's crazy that we're singling out this specific type of debt for forgiveness. What exactly is the criteria that makes this debt different from others? Is it because it's taken on when you're young and unable to understand the risks? If that's the case, I gambled away a LOT of money when I was 22 on casino credit, and I made the mistake of paying off my markers - I should have waited for the "you made a poor decision when you were young" forgiveness train to arrive. The same could be said for those parasitic $500 "Student Credit Card" offers we all received when we were young, or the kids who decide to finance that brand new Mustang they can't afford at loan shark rates due to no credit history. Why not forgive it all, if the standard is "they were young and didn't know any better"? And why stop at youth? It's pretty ageist to assume only the young are financially illiterate. There are plenty of older people who make poorly informed financial decisions. Bail them out too? When all the 5/1 ARMs written at 1.6% a year ago for homebuyers barely on the bubble of serviceability reset, we should definitely forgive them for their idiocy as well.

by loourr 4y ago

It's crazy to cancel student loans and still keep issuing the exact same loans. If we believe the loans are unjust then the government should stop handing them out as the very first step.

nr2x 4y ago

Free community college was in build back better, 49 republicans and Joe Manchin killed it.

aksss 4y ago
There were a couple other things with a few more dollars allocated in Build Back Better, if I recall, perhaps worthy of more criticism than community college for everyone. Anyway, I wonder how much of the student loan debt is from community college, both as total dollar figure and per borrower. Something tells me that in-state tuition for community college isn’t where all the underwater borrowers went to school.
colpabar 4y ago
If democrats wanted that, they would write a bill to do so. Not everything has to be bundled up in a multi trillion dollar bill that involves a ton of other unrelated things. The reason they haven't done that is because they don't really want to.
- dogleash 4y ago
  Exactly. If them democrats actually wanted any of the programs they talk about, they would deploy them in states they control. Obama's big policy success of 8 years was Romneycare. Who can explain with a straight face why California still doesn't have universal heathcare?
- jaywalk 4y ago
  Whoa whoa, don't crap on politician's favorite do-nothing-but-promote-everything method of working! If enough people realized what was really going on, our politicians might actually have to start working for us!
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Side rant (though somewhat similar to colpabar's reply): The Democrats tried to govern like they had a large majority, when they had 5 (I think) seats in the House, and a 50/50 Senate. Of course it failed! If you need every single vote, you can only go as far as the least-willing member will let you go. The Democrats never should have tried to govern that way. They should have been coalition building, trying to find some common ground where they could do some things. Instead, they acted like they could dictate their agenda to Congress. Both Biden and Pelosi should have known better; they have decades of experience in Congress. Why did they do this? You could argue that they did it because they knew that no Republican would ever cooperate on anything. But if that was the reason, they still should have gone for what they could get through the members they had, not going for the moon. Or you could suspect that they wanted to blame the Republicans (and maybe the more conservative Democrats) for their lack of progress, as a tactic to win the next election. Well, from all the indications so far, that's not working out for them. So why did they take the approach they took?
- TrispusAttucks 4y ago
  Yep. The BBB bill was just an offering to appease their big $$$ donors. It's political theater at best. Contempt for their constituents at worst.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  > The Democrats never should have tried to govern that way. They should have been coalition building, trying to find some common ground where they could do some things. > So why did they take the approach they took? The Republicans set that precedent (trying to govern like they had a large majority). I don't mean that as a "the other side does it too", just that each side has become increasingly vindictive of the other, making it much more difficult to work together when doing so is necessary to get anything done at all. We will continue to see power swaps with the winning side spinning its wheels while shutting the other side out.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > each side has become increasingly vindictive of the other For a number of reasons, no doubt. But partly I blame the efforts to remove pork from legislation. We thought that was a good idea, without realizing that it was the basis of compromise. When each little piece of legislation comes through on its own, there is no incentive to compromise, but just play tribal politics instead.
smegsicle 4y ago
free community college is already a thing, it's called 'Pell Grants' republicans don't want to talk about it because it's free money that works, and democrats don't want to talk about it because there's no reason to expand it
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > free community college is already a thing, it's called 'Pell Grants' Hell, when I went to community college in the early 90’s it was basically free — $6/credit with a $60 cap. Since then California changed priorities or something, haven’t lived there for almost 25 years so don’t care what they get up to.

pmoriarty 4y ago

School should just be free in the US, as it is in other civilized countries.

sgjohnson 4y ago
And make the already mostly worthless degrees even more worthless?
- SSilver2k2 4y ago
  Education is never worthless.
- whymauri 4y ago
  I know we're currently in the Church of Paul Graham, where college is useless and it's all about the startup grind. But college is known to lead to better outcomes on average for people who go to college, and there is an intrinsic value, to both individuals and society, in receiving an education. High school is free, for example, and it's not worthless.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    > But college is known to lead to better outcomes on average for people who go to college That largely depends on the field you're studying. STEM? Sure. Perhaps not for software engineering, because that these days can be entirely self-taught,if you're a person capable of it. But everything else? Probably worthless. A gender studies or liberal arts degree is not going to make you money.
    - whymauri 4y ago
      STEM has the highest class mobility, but even just an associates degree is shown to have a net positive outcome. For example of societal benefits and savings, education (yes, even in topics you may not deem 'useful') reduces crime. And is everything else really 'worthless?' Do we not need lawyers? Social workers? Teachers? Tutors? Librarians? Student debt is a barrier to solving teacher shortages, and not everyone is teaching STEM.

phkahler 4y ago

>> It's crazy to cancel student loans and still keep issuing the exact same loans. If we believe the loans are unjust then the government should stop handing them out as the very first step. A wise man once told me "The first thing you should do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging". This is my standard response to the student loan crisis and many others.

pcthrowaway 4y ago
You should put him in touch with the guy who won't stop digging a tunnel from the other front page thread

twblalock 4y ago

The really crazy thing would be to end the student loan system without providing an alternative. If you do that, only kids with rich parents get to go to college. The current system is far from perfect but it enables kids to attend college regardless of their parents' wealth. Any replacement system needs to enable that too.

ben940830298432 4y ago
The private market would just require people to be more responsible about taking out loans. If people that take out loans for basket weaving often don't pay them back nobody would give out a loan for basket weaving. If someone is on their 5th major or college without completing any credit they won't get any more loans without having some backing.
- brewdad 4y ago
  Do we really want a world where the bankers get to decide what a person studies? Bankers have never gotten anything wrong before.
- twblalock 4y ago
  The private market wouldn't issue loans at all. We are talking about 18-year-old kids with no assets and likely no income, who have potentially never had a job, asking to borrow thousands of dollars because they believe (but cannot prove) that they will graduate college several years from now and make enough money to pay it back. Any banker who would give them a loan on normal terms would be an idiot. The only reason this works is that student loan terms are uniquely different from the terms for other loans. That is what makes the risk acceptable to lenders. Change that, and guess what -- nobody gets loans.

fortran77 4y ago

Yes! And if they stopped issuing these loans, tuitions will drop quickly. Im against loan forgiveness, but if they’re going to do it that also need to stop backing these loans.

mr_spothawk 4y ago

> the government should stop handing them out Minor nit: The gov't doesn't give the loans, they underwrite & insure the loans.

loourr 4y ago
Semantics, they should stop underwriting them.
outside1234 4y ago
But there is a important point here too - these loans are issued with too low of an interest rate BECAUSE they are guaranteed by the government. Drop that guarantee and the interest rate is going to float to more of a credit card level, which will make them prohibitive for funding tuition, which will put an extreme downward pressure on tuition rates.
- mr_spothawk 4y ago
  I believe you are absolutely correct.
mywittyname 4y ago
I had plenty of loans from the DoE. Getting the DoE into the student loan market was intentional and is seen as the first step to reworking the entire system. Navient et al are keen to keep the gravy train rolling.

throwaway894345 4y ago

And also reimburse the people who sacrificed to pay theirs off or avoid them in the first place. I’d donate my reimbursement if they did, but of course they won’t.

InitialBP 4y ago
Demanding "even-stevens" all the time doesn't help the situation at all. The people that were able to pay off their loan debt were people who chose a degree that would be able to make significant money, were talented enough to land a great job in a field without a lot, or had the circumstances that let them finish a degree where others were unable to. Do some people make bad decisions about degree choice? - Yes Do some people drop out of school because it's too hard or because of other circumstances (unexpected baby, financial hardship, etc) - Yes Do those people who either have made bad decisions, had less fortunate circumstances than others, or a combination of both deserve to live under a mountain of debt for the rest of their life? - No One other thing people don't consider is that Most 18 year olds don't have a good grasp on money or what they want to do in general and in my hometown (poor county in WV) there was a TON of pressure to go to college if you didn't know what you want to do. Kids don't know better to not get into debt for a degree because everyone tells them not to worry about it. There is a serious problem with financial education in the US. You can help out people who made a bad decision or had bad luck without being so uptight about how everything has to be complete "fair". The world isn't fair from the time we're born till the time we die.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > You can help out people who made a bad decision or had bad luck Yes. Make loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. I support that. Or make repayment based on income, which is already is, so the burden is bearable. But just forgiving bad decisions? That's not a precedent I think we need to set, especially not until we do something to fix the underlying problem. Otherwise the next bailout will be 10x as big.
- leach 4y ago
  That’s all fine and dandy until you realize the people who where smart and careful have to foot the bill for those who weren’t. I was smart and sacrificed a little by going to community college so I wouldn’t have debt. I was also smart enough to get a degree in stem where jobs are actually available and in demand. Why should I have to foot the bill for someone who just partied and got a useless degree? I did everything in my power to avoid student loans because I knew they where insane, I shouldn’t have to pay for others student loans because they didn’t think about any of this.

buu700 4y ago

Exactly. Plug the hole first (or concurrently), and then worry about bailing water. Additionally, as others have mentioned, it needs to be done in such a way that we aren't punishing those who have been responsible and made sacrifices to pay off their loans. I'm not opposed to student loan forgiveness, but I don't think it's nearly as popular as many progressives would like to believe as a standalone proposal. Come up with some qualifications and limitations for reimbursing past loan payments, as well as a systemic fix for the future, and I'd be all for it. All that being said, is it still wise to forgive student loans at this particular time? Originally, the pitch was that it would help act as a stimulus during the pandemic downturn. Now that we're dealing with the opposite situation, I don't see the rush. Maybe a bill could be passed that had a delayed or gradual effect.

nebula8804 4y ago
I am starting to think this is a sign of a big weakness in the American system. These half baked actions are evident in health care, security, and all other categories. I think it has to do with the fact that there are so many parties acting in bad faith that it is hard to get comprehensive legislation that addresses the problem as a whole vs just piecemeal bits and pieces because that is all that can be pushed through. I don't know what the solution to this is other than a complete reset of the system (which itself would require the existing system to produce and pass)
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  Of course a spoon makes a crappy can opener if you try and use it for that job. Institutions get designed around their mandate. If you're trying to run a school system you wouldn't invent a court. If you were trying to deal with violations of law you wouldn't create a school board. The federal government's mandate was to manage issues that arise between states and each other, between states and other countries and to a lesser extent, to prevent the states from violating the rights of their inhabitants and its architecture reflects that mandate. Over the years the federal government has expanded in scope far beyond the types of issues it was designed with the intent of managing. Expecting that system to provide decisive action on issues that are outside of what the system was designed for is unrealistic.

elpool2 4y ago

I see this as basically just making amends for the failures of the PSLF program. This is for the folks who made years of payments expecting to get loan forgiveness after 10 years as promised, only to then be told none of the payments counted because they didn’t read the fine print or simply because of the loan servicer’s incompetence.

pxmpxm 4y ago

If the entire point of this public policy is to create votes for whoever is implementing it, this is exactly the dynamic you'd expect to see. To a politican about the only thing better than a vote buying scheme is perpetual vote buying scheme.

rockinghigh 4y ago

This program is for people working in the public sector. It's not known at the time of issuing the loan whether the student will quality for loan forgiveness.

tejohnso 4y ago

I'm curious to know how these loans became such a political issue. It's unusual to take out a loan and then complain about having to repay it. That's how it is supposed to work. We don't typically reward people for digging themselves into a hole by bailing them out. Unless they're large corporations. We bail them out in certain cases. But I don't think that's a popular idea either.

dudul 4y ago
It's just something that can be presented in a very divisive way for each party to easily capture sizable market shares of the electorate. It became a "valuable" problematic to put forward when the group of people who struggle to pay off their loan became big enough to make it worth it politically.
dionidium 4y ago
The way this works is that you just have to define something to be a "necessity" in the public consciousness, because there's a prevailing intuition that it's illegitimate to be asked to pay for anything that fits that description. Medical bills are a necessity, so it's illegitimate to be asked to pay them. You have to go to college to get a good job, so it's illegitimate to be asked to pay for an education. You need a place to live, so high rents are also illegitimate. And so on.
timssopomo 4y ago
We do, actually, at least in the US. It's called bankruptcy. We generally recognize that sometimes despite best intentions, debts become unpayable and in these cases, the debts get restructured and creditors are frequently wiped out (which is fair, since both borrower and lender take risks). Student loans can't be discharged through bankruptcy unless the borrower is permanently disabled. It's entirely possible to end up in default on a loan for a degree you never obtained, paying a loan your entire life, without ever decreasing the principal. Unsurprisingly, this rubs people the wrong way.
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  It should be on the university and college, if you must have private higher education, and not just make it free. State that the institution and/or potential employers must give out a loan that will cover the entire cost of education, which can be paid back with x% of income for 120 months of full time employment. If the student cannot find a job, or is not desirable for a given industry with the degree, and has to take a waiter job, they still owe x% of their wages, but the absolute value of that will be much lower. Now, the university will stop offering loans for worthless degrees, and they will only give you a loan for things they think you can actually succeed in, ensuring that there is huge incentive for everyone to ensure the student succeeds if they end up needing a loan. Private cash payments can still be made to take whatever underwater basket weaving major you like, but you can’t go into debt for a degree that will bind you for the rest of your life.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Yes, I would rather see student loan reform rather than repayment with no other changes. It's a bandaid otherwise.

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

This sounds like an attitude og “If you believe your driving to fast, open the door and jump out the car. Pushing the brake won’t bring you to a stop immediately” This loan forgiveness is for a very specific subset of lenders who have been making payments for 10 years but not yet paid of the loans. Eliminating loans all together would not have put them or society in a better position, it would just mean that next semester there would be hardly any new students accepted at any higher education and the entire education sector in the US would be bracing for impact and trying to figure out how on earth they are going to continue while their normal revenue disappears overnight. If anything would be crazy, that would be it.

caeril 4y ago

Yes. Additionally, it's crazy that we're singling out this specific type of debt for forgiveness. What exactly is the criteria that makes this debt different from others? Is it because it's taken on when you're young and unable to understand the risks? If that's the case, I gambled away a LOT of money when I was 22 on casino credit, and I made the mistake of paying off my markers - I should have waited for the "you made a poor decision when you were young" forgiveness train to arrive. The same could be said for those parasitic $500 "Student Credit Card" offers we all received when we were young, or the kids who decide to finance that brand new Mustang they can't afford at loan shark rates due to no credit history. Why not forgive it all, if the standard is "they were young and didn't know any better"? And why stop at youth? It's pretty ageist to assume only the young are financially illiterate. There are plenty of older people who make poorly informed financial decisions. Bail them out too? When all the 5/1 ARMs written at 1.6% a year ago for homebuyers barely on the bubble of serviceability reset, we should definitely forgive them for their idiocy as well.