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loan forgiveness is tantamount to asking me to participate in buying out someone else's loan a loan used to buy a degree a degree which isn't generating enoug

loan forgiveness is tantamount to asking me to participate in buying out someone else's loan a loan used to buy a degree a degree which isn't generating enough income to pay off the loan if you buy out other underperforming assets like foreclosed homes, there is a discount...where is the discount on these underperforming degrees? why do I want your underperforming asset? I already have a degree, but thanks!

mempko 3y ago
That is not how money works. Your income is other people going into debt. Your salary rise means more money in the system. Loan forgiveness means more income to you.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  Woah, we should just forgive all loans then.
- jallen_dot_dev 3y ago
  > Loan forgiveness means more income to you. But is it more in real or nominal terms?
  - mempko 3y ago
    In real terms.
EatingWithForks 3y ago
Frankly I think the problem of student debt is so large and so burdensome on the younger population that I don't really care if they're considered "underperforming assets" or whatever. The more money this generation spends on debt the less they have to buy houses and have children, and I personally will benefit from them being able to buy my house when I'm old and want to downsize and them having children so that there will be income into social security when I'm retired. All in all I would consider it an investment into my future retirement by ensuring the younger generation can support me.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Hey man. Some of us are GenX who took significant opportunity costs to pay down our student loan debt. Don't make us compete for our first house with jubileed Millennials and GenZers. We can't afford to do that and save for retirement as is (though at this point I can't afford to do either. Glad I have a pension).
  - ejstronge 3y ago
    At the same time, your education costs were much lower - through no fault of your own. Why should younger borrowers be penalized for market forces they did not contribute to?
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      I finished my AS and BS as a non-trad at the ages of 29 and 35. I'm currently in my mid 40s. Debt from my AS was paid by my parents, but the $31k in student loan debt and $20k in credit card debt for my BS was paid by me[1]. Most of that in the past 5 years, meaning that I lost out on the stock market gains by prioritizing the debt pay off. To add insult to injury, my final payment was Feb of 2020, just in time to miss out on the forgiveness (I accelerated payments with the proceeds of a second job). [1] - When you're hourly, and maintaining a household, it costs money to take time off from work to go to school.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    As a fellow Gen X, this is such an empathy-free opinion in my reading. There are so many times I say to myself "Wow, I'm so lucky that I graduated college in the 90s when school was expensive but nothing like the insanity it is today, and that I was able to afford housing before housing prices became completely disconnected from wages." And I did have to pay off student loans for years. To be clear, I'm not really in favor of debt forgiveness, but not because I believe it's "unfair", but because I think it actually makes the root cause problem (the astronomical cost of college) even worse. I think modifying bankruptcy laws to make more student debt dischargable is a much better solution. Basically I strongly believe that pretty much every generation up to the millennials got a much better deal when it comes to education and housing costs, even if they do get 10 or 20k debt forgiveness. Dude, you were one of the lucky ones (and you've got a pension to boot!!!).
searine 3y ago
Education is investment in community, not a profit generating vehicle. I will gladly invest in my communities knowledge base any day of the week. Tax me. Please. Pay the teachers what they're worth and make the NIMBYs and FYGMs cry.
- 0zemp2c 3y ago
  bailing out student loans is about paying banks, not schools or teachers...they already got paid (and socializing the loan debt just subtracts from capital available to raise public school teacher salaries)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- sushid 3y ago
  This is not about your local elementary/middle/high schools, this is about higher education and their costs for both private/public universities. These costs have been increasing YoY at a much higher rate than inflation and for what? More administrators? More useless degrees? The entire premise of student loans is everyone is eligible for them, regardless of their potential future financial ability to pay them off. They're also not ever allowed to default on these loans. These loans should be dictated by the free market for a multitude of reasons. One, it prevents the sociology student from incurring a 200k student debt that they'll not be able to repay because loan issuers will in fact realize that these students will never repay these bills. Two, if students cannot afford these outrageous loans, they'll have to cut back on their overpriced degree fees.
  - searine 3y ago
    >These loans should be dictated by the free market for a multitude of reasons It is a crime and tragedy that education needs loans at all. Students are not for your personal profit.
slg 3y ago
Why should I pay for the fire department when my house has never caught on fire? Why don't we instead have the fire department directly bill the property owners after they put out a fire?
- jallen_dot_dev 3y ago
  If people willingly burned down their houses, that analogy might begin to apply.
- chasd00 3y ago
  That analogy doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you have some people choosing to live ankle deep in gasoline. If that were the case then, yes, they should foot the bill to put out their perpetual fires.
  - slg 3y ago
    They aren't "perpetual fires". They are a one time decision that we convinced people to make after we have spent their whole lives telling them it was the only way to become successful. We have repeated for decades that going to college will earn someone an extra million dollars in lifetime income. We then asked most people to make this decision before society has deemed they are mature enough to vote in elections, smoke cigarettes, or rent a car. Yes, my analogy ended up being a stupid system that doesn't make sense. That was my intent. Asking 17-year-olds to make decisions about taking on 6 figures of debt is also a stupid system that doesn't make sense.
ouid 3y ago
800 billion dollars in PPP loan forgiveness seems more palatable to you, maybe?
- purpleblue 3y ago
  "Whataboutism" is not a proper argument.
  - ouid 3y ago
    I'm not engaging in whataboutism. I'm engaging in an analogical argument. I'm making certain assumptions about this guys political leanings, but that's strawmanning at worst, and he's free to refute it if he isnt rate limited.
  - DesiLurker 3y ago
    it IS a proper argument if you are using other cases to establish context and precedent about our priorities as a society.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> loan forgiveness is tantamount to asking me to participate in buying out someone else's loan So do government loan guarantees in the first place, though.
DesiLurker 3y ago
Yes loan forgiveness is not ideal but its a makeshift solution to a really bad situation government has created by federally backing student loans and making them non-dischargable in bankruptcy. IMO the ideal solution is to remove the non-dischargebility condition and let the market take its course but that needs congress to act & pass law, loan forgiveness does not! IMO the subtle reason why republicans hate it is because loan forgiveness effectively signals (to borrowers) that no need to pay this loan, just wait around for a Dem president to show up defer/cancel etc it. which is a step towards discharging the loan in 'special circumstances'. The basic economics politicians dont seem to get about education cost is that if you dont increase supply and just increase demand pool by making loan cheaper/federally backed all you will get is price inflation & thats been happening at rate way outpacing inflation.

mempko 3y ago

That is not how money works. Your income is other people going into debt. Your salary rise means more money in the system. Loan forgiveness means more income to you.

amadeuspagel 3y ago
Woah, we should just forgive all loans then.
jallen_dot_dev 3y ago
> Loan forgiveness means more income to you. But is it more in real or nominal terms?
- mempko 3y ago
  In real terms.

EatingWithForks 3y ago

Frankly I think the problem of student debt is so large and so burdensome on the younger population that I don't really care if they're considered "underperforming assets" or whatever. The more money this generation spends on debt the less they have to buy houses and have children, and I personally will benefit from them being able to buy my house when I'm old and want to downsize and them having children so that there will be income into social security when I'm retired. All in all I would consider it an investment into my future retirement by ensuring the younger generation can support me.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Hey man. Some of us are GenX who took significant opportunity costs to pay down our student loan debt. Don't make us compete for our first house with jubileed Millennials and GenZers. We can't afford to do that and save for retirement as is (though at this point I can't afford to do either. Glad I have a pension).
- ejstronge 3y ago
  At the same time, your education costs were much lower - through no fault of your own. Why should younger borrowers be penalized for market forces they did not contribute to?
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    I finished my AS and BS as a non-trad at the ages of 29 and 35. I'm currently in my mid 40s. Debt from my AS was paid by my parents, but the $31k in student loan debt and $20k in credit card debt for my BS was paid by me[1]. Most of that in the past 5 years, meaning that I lost out on the stock market gains by prioritizing the debt pay off. To add insult to injury, my final payment was Feb of 2020, just in time to miss out on the forgiveness (I accelerated payments with the proceeds of a second job). [1] - When you're hourly, and maintaining a household, it costs money to take time off from work to go to school.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  As a fellow Gen X, this is such an empathy-free opinion in my reading. There are so many times I say to myself "Wow, I'm so lucky that I graduated college in the 90s when school was expensive but nothing like the insanity it is today, and that I was able to afford housing before housing prices became completely disconnected from wages." And I did have to pay off student loans for years. To be clear, I'm not really in favor of debt forgiveness, but not because I believe it's "unfair", but because I think it actually makes the root cause problem (the astronomical cost of college) even worse. I think modifying bankruptcy laws to make more student debt dischargable is a much better solution. Basically I strongly believe that pretty much every generation up to the millennials got a much better deal when it comes to education and housing costs, even if they do get 10 or 20k debt forgiveness. Dude, you were one of the lucky ones (and you've got a pension to boot!!!).

searine 3y ago

Education is investment in community, not a profit generating vehicle. I will gladly invest in my communities knowledge base any day of the week. Tax me. Please. Pay the teachers what they're worth and make the NIMBYs and FYGMs cry.

0zemp2c 3y ago
bailing out student loans is about paying banks, not schools or teachers...they already got paid (and socializing the loan debt just subtracts from capital available to raise public school teacher salaries)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
sushid 3y ago
This is not about your local elementary/middle/high schools, this is about higher education and their costs for both private/public universities. These costs have been increasing YoY at a much higher rate than inflation and for what? More administrators? More useless degrees? The entire premise of student loans is everyone is eligible for them, regardless of their potential future financial ability to pay them off. They're also not ever allowed to default on these loans. These loans should be dictated by the free market for a multitude of reasons. One, it prevents the sociology student from incurring a 200k student debt that they'll not be able to repay because loan issuers will in fact realize that these students will never repay these bills. Two, if students cannot afford these outrageous loans, they'll have to cut back on their overpriced degree fees.
- searine 3y ago
  >These loans should be dictated by the free market for a multitude of reasons It is a crime and tragedy that education needs loans at all. Students are not for your personal profit.

slg 3y ago

Why should I pay for the fire department when my house has never caught on fire? Why don't we instead have the fire department directly bill the property owners after they put out a fire?

jallen_dot_dev 3y ago
If people willingly burned down their houses, that analogy might begin to apply.
chasd00 3y ago
That analogy doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you have some people choosing to live ankle deep in gasoline. If that were the case then, yes, they should foot the bill to put out their perpetual fires.
- slg 3y ago
  They aren't "perpetual fires". They are a one time decision that we convinced people to make after we have spent their whole lives telling them it was the only way to become successful. We have repeated for decades that going to college will earn someone an extra million dollars in lifetime income. We then asked most people to make this decision before society has deemed they are mature enough to vote in elections, smoke cigarettes, or rent a car. Yes, my analogy ended up being a stupid system that doesn't make sense. That was my intent. Asking 17-year-olds to make decisions about taking on 6 figures of debt is also a stupid system that doesn't make sense.

ouid 3y ago

800 billion dollars in PPP loan forgiveness seems more palatable to you, maybe?

purpleblue 3y ago
"Whataboutism" is not a proper argument.
- ouid 3y ago
  I'm not engaging in whataboutism. I'm engaging in an analogical argument. I'm making certain assumptions about this guys political leanings, but that's strawmanning at worst, and he's free to refute it if he isnt rate limited.
- DesiLurker 3y ago
  it IS a proper argument if you are using other cases to establish context and precedent about our priorities as a society.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> loan forgiveness is tantamount to asking me to participate in buying out someone else's loan So do government loan guarantees in the first place, though.

DesiLurker 3y ago

Yes loan forgiveness is not ideal but its a makeshift solution to a really bad situation government has created by federally backing student loans and making them non-dischargable in bankruptcy. IMO the ideal solution is to remove the non-dischargebility condition and let the market take its course but that needs congress to act & pass law, loan forgiveness does not! IMO the subtle reason why republicans hate it is because loan forgiveness effectively signals (to borrowers) that no need to pay this loan, just wait around for a Dem president to show up defer/cancel etc it. which is a step towards discharging the loan in 'special circumstances'. The basic economics politicians dont seem to get about education cost is that if you dont increase supply and just increase demand pool by making loan cheaper/federally backed all you will get is price inflation & thats been happening at rate way outpacing inflation.